of California n Regional Y Facility .^tfS^. '^ ( r^^^ ► ..•jmiM m w " Mdslova- started up " Photogravure. — From Painting by L. O. Pasternak \ \ ilUustratfli inUirarg iEiiittmi RESURRECTION VOLUMES I — II WHAT IS ART? THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING By COUNT LEV N. TOLSTOY Translated from the Original Russian and edited by PROFESSOR LEO WIENER BOSTON COLONIAL PRESS COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, ig04 By Dana Estes & Company Entered pt Stationers' Hall Colonial Press : Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, Mass., U. S. A. ^^hism^ CONTENTS PAGE 3 Part the First Part the Second LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Maslova started up (p. 46) .... Frontispiece The Judges 32 Mariettb in the Box • 440 Moscow Opera House 260 Siegfried fighting the Dragon 269 Vol. 11. RESURRECTION 1899 Parts I. and II. RESURRECTION " Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him ? till seven times ? "Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times : but Until seventy times seven." (Matt, xviii. 21-22.) " And why beh oldest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? " (Matt. vii. 3.) "He that is without sin among you, let hinl first cast a stone at her." (John viii. 7.) " The disciple is not above his master : but every one that is perfect shall be as his master." (Luke vi. 40.) PART THE FIRST No matter how people, congregating in one small spot to the number of several hundred thousand, tried to deform the earth on which they were jostling ; how they paved the earth with stones, that nothing might grow upon it ; how they weeded out every sprouting blade ; how they smoked up the air with coal and naphtha ; how they lopped the trees and expelled all animals and birds ; — spring was spring, even in the city. The sun gave warmth ; the grass, reviving, grew strong and lush wher- ever it had not been scraped away, not only on the greenswards of the boulevards, but also between the flag- 3 4 RESUKRECTION stones ; and the birches, the poplars, and the bird-cherries had unfolded their viscid, fragrant leaves, and the lindens had swelled their bursting buds ; the jackdaws, the sparrows, and the pigeons were cheerfully building their vernal nests, and the flies, warmed by the sun, were buzzing along the walls. Happy were the plants, and the birds, and the insects, and the children. But the people — the big, the grown people — did not stop cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. People regarded as sacred and important not this spring morning, nor this beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy, — a beauty which disposes to peace, concord, and love, — but that which they themselves had invented, in order to rule over each other. Thus, in the office of the provincial prison, what they regarded as sacred and important was not that the bhssful- ness and joy of spring had been given to all animals and to all people, but that on the previous day a numbered document, bearing a seal and a superscription, had been received, which said that at nine o'clock in the morning, of this, the twenty-eighth of April, three prisoners, two women and one man, who were kept in the prison subject to a judicial inquest, should be brought to the court-house. One of these women, being the most important criminal, was to be delivered separately. To carry out this instruction, the chief warden entered, at eight o'clock of the twenty-eighth of April, the malo- dorous corridor of the women's department. He was followed by a woman with a care-worn face and curling gray hair, wearing a jersey, with sleeves bordered by galloons, and girded with a blue-edged belt. This was the matron. "Do you want Maslova?" she asked, going up with the warden of the day to one of the cell doors which opened into the corridor. The warden, rattling his keys, turned the lock, and open- RESURRECTION O ing the door of the cell, from which burst forth an even greater stench than there was in the corridor, called out : " Maslova, to court ! " and again closed the door, while waiting for her to come. Even in the prison yard there was the brisk, vivifying air of the fields, wafted to the city by the wind. But in the corridor there was a distressing, jail-fever atmosphere, saturated by the odour of excrements, tar, and decay, which immediately cast a gloom of sadness on every new- comer. The same feeling was now experienced by the matron, who had just arrived from the outside, notwith- standing the fact that she was accustomed to this foul air. The moment she entered the corridor she was over- come by fatigue, and felt sleepy. A bustle, caused by feminine voices and by the steps of bare feet, was heard within the cell. " Livelier there, hurry up, Maslova, I say ! " shouted the chief warden through the door of the cell. About two minutes later, a short, full-breasted young woman, in a gray cloak, thrown over a white vest and a white skirt, walked briskly out of the door, swiftly turned around, and stopped near the warden. The woman's feet were clad in linen stockings, and over them she wore the prison shoes ; her head was wrapped in a white kerchief, underneath which, apparently with design, protruded ring- lets of curling black hair. The woman's whole counte- nance was of that peculiar whiteness which is found on the faces of persons who have passed a long time indoors, and which reminds one of potato sprouts in a cellar. Of the same colour were her small, broad hands, and her white, full neck, which was visible from behind the large collar of the cloak. In this countenance, especially against the dull pallor of the face, stood out strikingly a pair of jet-black, sparkling, slightly swollen, but very lively eyes, one of which was a bit awry. She carried herself very erect, extending her swelling bosom. 6 RESURRECTION Upon arriving in the corridor, she threw her head back a little, looked the warden straight in the eyes, and stood ready to execute anything that might be demanded of her. The warden was on the point of locking the door, when from it emerged the pale, austere, wrinkled face of a straight-haired old woman. The old woman began to tell Maslova something ; but the warden pressed the door against her head, and so it disappeared. In the cell a feminine voice burst out laughing. Maslova herself smiled, and turned toward the barred httle window of the door. The old woman pressed her face to it, and said in a hoarse voice : " Above all, don't say a superfluous word ; stick to the same story, and let that be the end of it ! " " That's all one, it can't be any worse," said Maslova, shaking her head. " Of course, it's one, and not two," said the chief warden, with an official consciousness of his wit. "After me, march ! " The eye of the old woman, visible through the window, disappeared, and Maslova stepped into the middle of the corridor, and with rapid, mincing steps walked behind the chief warden. They descended the stone staircase, passed by the men's cells, which were even more mal- odorous and noisy than the women's, and from which they were everywhere watched by eyes at the loopholes in the doors : they entered the office, where two soldiers of the guard, with their guns, were waiting for them. The clerk, who was sitting there, handed to one of the soldiers a document, wliich was saturated by tobacco smoke, and, pointing to the prisoner, said, " Take her ! " The soldier, a Nizhni-Novgorod peasant, with a red, pock- marked face, stuck the paper into the rolled-up sleeve of his overcoat, and, smiling, winked to his companion, a broad-cheeked Chuvash, in order to direct his attention to the prisoner. The soldiers, with the prisoner between RESURKECTION 7 them, descended the staircase, and walked over to the main entrance. A small gate was opened in the door of the main entrance, and, stepping across the threshold of the gate into the yard, the soldiers, with the prisoner, walked out of the enclosure, and proceeded through the city, keeping in the middle of the paved streets. Cabmen, shopkeepers, cooks, workmen, and officials, stopped to look with curiosity at the prisoner ; some shook their heads, and thought, "This is what a bad behaviour, not such as ours, leads to." Children looked in terror at the murderess, being reassured only because she was accompanied by soldiers, and could no longer do any harm. A village peasant, who had sold coal and had drunk some tea in the tavern, went up to her, made the sign of the cross, and gave her a kopek. The prisoner blushed, bent her head, and muttered something. Being conscious of the looks which were directed toward her, she imperceptibly, without turning her head, cast side glances at those who were gazing at her, and the attention which she attracted cheered her. She was also cheered by the vernal air, which was pure in com- parison with that in the jail ; but it was painful for her to walk on the cobblestones, for her feet were now unaccustomed to walking, and were clad in clumsy prison shoes ; and so she looked down at them, and tried to step as lightly as possible. As she passed near a flour shop, in front of which pigeons waddled, unmolested by any- body, she almost stepped on one : the pigeon fluttered up, and flapping its wings, flew past the prisoner's ear, fanning the air against her. She smiled, and drew a deep sigh, as she recalled her situation. n. The story of prisoner Maslova's life was nothing out of the ordinary. Maslova was the daughter of an unmarried manorial servant-girl, who had been living with her mother in the capacity of dairymaid, on the estate of two maiden sisters. This unmarried woman bore a child every year ; as always happens in the country, the baby was baptized, but afterward the mother did not suckle the undesired child, and it died of starvation. Thus five children had died. They had all been bap- tized, then they were not fed, and died. The sixth, begotten by an itinerant gipsy, was a girl, and her fate would have been the same, if it had not happened that one of the old maids had gone into the stable to upbraid the milkers on account of the cream, which smelled of the cows. In the stable lay the mother with her pretty, healthy, new-born baby. The old maid upbraided them on account of the cream and for having allowed a lying-in woman in the stable, and was about to leave, when, having espied the child, she took pity upon her, and offered to become her godmother. She had her baptized, and, pitying her godchild, gave the mother milk and money, and thus the girl remained alive. The old maids even called her the " saved " girl. The child was three years old when her mother fell ill and died. The old stable-woman, her grandmother, was harassed by her grandchild, and so the ladies took her to the house. The black-eyed girl grew to be exceedingly vivacious and charming, and the old maids took dehght in her. 8 RESURRECTION 9 The younger, Sofya Ivauovna, who had had the child baptized, was the kinder of the two, and the elder, Marya Ivanovna, was the more austere. Sofya Ivanovna dressed her, taught her to read, and wanted to educate her. Marya Ivanovna, however, said that she ought to be brought up as a working girl, — a good chambermaid, — and conse- quently was exacting, and punished and even struck her, when not in a good humour. Thus, between these two influences, the girl grew up to be partly educated and partly a chambermaid. She was even called by a dimin- utive, expressive neither of endearment, nor of command, but of something intermediate, namely, not Katka or Ka- tenka, but Katyusha. She did the sewing, tidied up the rooms, cleaned the pictures with chalk, cooked, ground, served the coffee, washed the small linen, and often sat with the ladies and read to them. Several men sued for her hand, but she did not wish to marry, feehng that a life with those working people, her suitors, would be hard for her, who had been spoiled by the comforts of the manor. Thus she hved until her sixteenth year. She had just passed her sixteenth birthday, when the ladies received a visit from their student-nephew, a rich prince, and Kat- yusha, not daring to acknowledge the fact to him or even to herself, fell in love with him. Two years later, this same nephew of theirs called on his aunts, on his way to the war, and passed four days with them ; on the day preceding his departure, he seduced Katyusha, and press- ing a hundred-rouble bill into her hand, he left her. Five months after his visit she knew for sure that she was pregnant. After that she grew tired of everything, and thought of nothing else but of a means for freeing herself from the shame which awaited her ; she not only began to serve the ladies reluctantly and badly, but once, not knowing herself how it came about, her patience gave way : she said 10 RESURRECTION some rude things to them, which she herself regretted later, and asked for her dismissal. The ladies, who had been very much dissatisfied with her, let her go. She then accepted the position of cham- bermaid at the house of a country judge, but she could stand it there no longer than three months, because the judge, a man fifty years of age, began to annoy her ; once, when he had become unusually persistent in his attentions, she grew excited, called him a fool and an old devil, and dealt him such a blow in the chest that he fell down. She was sent away for her rudeness. It was useless to take another place, for the child was soon to be born, and so she went to live with a widow, who was a country midwife and trafficked in liquor. She had an easy child- birth, but the midwife, who had dehvered a sick woman in the village, infected Katyusha with puerperal fever, and the child, a boy, was taken to the foundling house, where, according to the story of the old woman who had carried him there, he died soon after his arrival. When Katyusha took up her residence at the midwife's, she had in all 127 roubles, twenty-seven of which she had earned, and one hundred roubles which her seducer had given her. When she came away from that house, all she had left was six roubles. She did not know how to take care of money, and spent it on herself, and gave it away to all who asked for some. The midwife took for her two months' board — for the food and the tea — forty roubles ; twenty-five roubles went for despatching the child ; forty roubles the midwife borrowed of her to buy a cow with ; and twenty roubles were spent for clothes and for presents, so that there was no money left, when Katyusha got well again, and had to look for a place. She found one at a forester's. The forester was a married man, but, just hke the judge before him, he began the very first day to annoy Katyu- sha with his attentions. He was hateful to her, and she RESURRECTION 11 tried to evade him. But he was more experienced and ciiuning than she; above all, he vsras her master, who could send her wherever he pleased, and, waiting for an opportune moment, he conquered her. His wife found it out, and, discovering her husband alone in a room with Katyusha, she assaulted her. Katyusha defended her- self, and a fight ensued, in consequence of which she was expelled from the house, without getting her wages. Then Katyusha journeyed to the city and stopped with her aunt. Her aunt's husband was a bookbinder, who ' used to make a good living, but now had lost all his customers, and was given to drinking, spending every- thing that came into his hands. Her aunt had a small laundry establishment, and thus supported herself with her children and her good-for-nothing husband. She offered to Maslova a place in her laundry ; but, seeing the hard life which the laundresses at her aunt's were leading, Maslova hesitated, and went to the employment offices to look for a place as a domestic. She found such a place with a lady who was living with her two sons, students at the gymnasium. A week after entering upon her service, the elder boy, with sprout- ing moustaches, a gymnasiast of the sixth form, quit working and gave Maslova no rest, importuning her with his attentions. The mother accused Maslova of every- thing and discharged her. She could not find another situation ; but it so hap- pened that when Maslova once went to an employment office, she there met a lady with rings and bracelets on her plump bare hands. Having learned of Maslova's search for a place, the lady gave her her address, and invited her to her house. Maslova went there. The lady received her kindly, treated her to pastry and sweet wine, and sent her chambermaid somewhere with a note. In the evening a tall man, with long grayish hair and gray beard, entered the room; the old man at once sat 12 RESURRECTION down near Maslova, and began, with gleaming eyes, and smiling, to survey, her, and to jest with her. The land- lady called him out into another room, and Maslova heard her say : " She is fresh, straight from the country ! " Then the landlady called out Maslova and told her that this man was an author, who had much money, and who would not be stingy with it, if he took a liking to her. She pleased the author, who gave her twenty-five roubles, promising to see her often. The money was soon spent in paying her aunt for board, and on a new dress, a hat, and ribbons. A few days later the author sent for her again. She went. He again gave her twenty-five roubles, and proposed that she take rooms for herself somewhere. While living in the apartments which the author had rented for her, Maslova fell in love with a merry clerk, who was living in the same yard. She herself told the author about it, and took up other, smaller quarters. The clerk, who had promised to marry her, suddenly left for Nizhni-Novgorod, without saying a word to her, with the evident intention of abandoning her, and she was left alone. She wanted to keep the rooms by herself, but was not permitted to do so. The inspector of police told her that she could continue to live there only by gettiug a yellow certificate and subjecting herself to examination. So she went back to her aunt's. Her aunt, seeing her fashionable dress, her mantle, and her hat, received her respectfully, and did not dare to offer her a laundress's place, since she considered her as having risen to a higher sphere of life. For Maslova the question whether she had better become a laundress or not, no longer existed. She now looked with compassion at that life of enforced labour, down in the basement, which the pale laundresses, with their lean arms, — some of them were consumptive, — were leading, washing and ironing in an atmosphere of thirty degrees E^aumur, filled with steam from the soap- suds, the windows remaining open, winter and summer, — RESURRECTION 13 and she shuddered at the thought that she, too, might he brought to such a Hfe. Aud just at this time, which was exceedingly hard for Maslova, as she could not find a single protector, she was approached by a procuress, who furnished houses of prostitution with girls. Maslova had started smoking long before, and had be- come accustomed to drinking during the end of her con- nection with the clerk, and still more so after he had abandoned her. Wine attracted her, not only because it tasted good, but more especially because it made her forget all the heavy experiences in the past, and because it gave her ease and confidence in her own worth, which she did not have without it. Without wine she always felt sad and ashamed. The procuress treated her aunt to dainties, and having given wine to Maslova, proposed that she should enter the best establishment in the city, representing to her all the advantages and privileges of such a position. Maslova had the choice : either the humiliating position of a servant, where there would certainly be persecution on the side of the men, and secret, temporary adultery, or a secure quiet, legalized condition, aud open, legitimate, and well-paid constant adultery, — aud she chose the latter. Besides, she thought in this manner to be able to avenge the wrong done her by her seducer, the clerk, and all other people who had treated her shamefully. She was also enticed by the words of the procuress, — and this was one of the causes that led to her final decision, — that she could order any dresses she wished, of velvet, of gauze, of silk, or ball-dresses with bare shoulders and arms. And when Maslova imagined herself in a bright- yellow silk garment, with black velvet trimmings, — d^collet^, — she could not withstand the temptation, and surrendered her passport. On that same evening the pro- curess called a cab and took her to Kitaeva's well-known establishment. 14 RESURRECTION From that time began for Maslova that life of chronic transgression of divine and human laws, which is led by hundreds and thousands of thousands of women, not only by permission, but under the protection of the government caring for the well-being of its citizens : that life which ends for nine out of every ten women in agonizing disease, pre- mature old age, and death. In the morning and in the daytime — slumber after the orgies of the night. At three or four o'clock — a tired waking in an unclean bed, seltzer to counteract the effects of immoderate drinking, coffee, indolent strolling through the rooms in dressing-gowns, vests or cloaks, looking behind the curtain through the windows, a lazy exchange of angry words ; then ablutions, pomading, perfuming of the body and the hair, the trying on of dresses, quarrels with the landlady on account of these garments, surveying oneself in the mirror, painting the face, dyeing the eyebrows, eat- ing pastry and fat food ; then putting on a bright silk dress, which exposed the body ; then coming out into a bright, gaily illuminated parlour : the arrival of guests ; music, dances, sweetmeats, wine, smoking, and adultery with youths, half-grown men, half-children, and desperate old men ; with bachelors, married men, merchants, clerks, Ar- menians, Jews, Tartars ; with men who were rich, poor, healthy, sick, drunk, sober, coarse, tender ; with officers, private citizens, students,, gymnasiasts, — of all condi- tions, ages and characters. And cries, and jokes, and quarrels, and music, and tobacco and wine, and wine and tobacco, and music, from evening to daybreak. And only in the morning liberation and heavy slumber. And the same thing every day, the whole week. At the end of the week — a drive to a government institution, the police station, where officers in government service, the doctors, men who sometimes seriously and austerely, and some- times with playful mirthfulness, examined these women, annihilating that very sense of shame which has been RESURRECTION 15 given by Nature not only to men, but also to animals, in order to put a check to transgressions ; then they handed them a patent for the continuation of these transgressions, of which they and their partners had been guilty during the past week. And again such a week. And thus every day, — in summer and winter, on week-days and on holi- days. Maslova had passed seven years in this manner. Dur- ing that time she had changed houses twice, and had been once in a hospital. In the seventh year of her sojourn in a house of prostitution, and in the eighth since her first fall, when she was twenty-six years old, there had hap- pened to her that for which she had been imprisoned, and now was being led to the court-house, after six months in jail, with murderers and thievas. III. At the same time that Maslova, worn out by the long march, reached, with the soldiers of the guard, the build- ing of the circuit court, that very nephew of her educators, Prince Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov, who had seduced her, was lying on his high, crumpled spring bed, with its feather mattress, and, unbuttoning the collar of his clean linen night-shirt, with its ironed gussets, was smoking a cigarette. He was gazing in front of him with his motion- less eyes, and thinking of what he would have to do that day, and of what had happened the day before. As he recalled the previous evening, which he had passed at the house of the Korchagins, rich and dis- tinguished people, whose daughter, so all were convinced, he was going to marry, he drew a sigh, and, throwing away his finished cigarette, was on the point of taking another out of his silver cigarette-holder ; but he changed his mind, and, letting down from the bed his smooth white feet, found his way into his slippers ; he threw over his full shoulders a silk morning-gown, and, striding rapidly and heavily, walked into the adjoining dressing-room, which was saturated with the artificial odours of elixirs, eau de Cologne, pomatum, and perfumes. There, with a special powder, he cleaned his teeth, which were filled in many places, washed them with fragrant tooth-water, and then began to wash his body all over, and to dry himself with all kinds of towels. He washed his hands with scented soap, carefully cleaned his long nails with a brush, and rinsed his face and fat neck in the large marble wash- 16 RESLTRKECTION 17 stand ; then he walked into a third room, near the cham- ber, where a douche was waiting for him. He there washed his muscular, plump, white body with cold water, and rubbed himself off with a rough sheet ; then he put on clean, freshly ironed hnen, and his shoes, which shone like mirrors, and sat down in front of the toilet-table to brush his short, black, curly beard, and the curling hair on his head, which was rather scanty in front. All the things which he used, all the appurtenances of his toilet, the linen, the garments, the shoes, the ties, the pins, the cuff-buttons, — were of the best, of the most ex- pensive kind ; they were unobtrusive, simple, durable, and costly. Having selected from a dozen ties and pins those which he happened to pick up first, — at one time, it had been new aud amusing, but now it made no difference to him, — Nekhlyiidov put on his well-brushed clothes, which were lying on a chair, and, clean and perfumed, though not feeling very fresh, proceeded to the long dining-room, the parquetry of which had been waxed on the previous day by three peasants ; here stood an immense oak buffet, and an equally large extension table, which had a certain solemn appearance on account of its broadly outstretched carved legs in the shape of lion-claws. On this table, covered with a fine starched cloth with large monograms, stood a silver coffee-pot with fragrant coffee, a sugar-bowl of similar design, a cream-pitcher with boiling cream, and a bread-basket with fresh rolls, toast, and biscuits. Near the service lay the last mail, the papers, and a new num- ber of the Revue de Deux Mondes. Nekhlyiidov was on the point of taking up his letters, when the door from the corridor opened and a plump, elderly woman in mourning and with a lace head-dress, which covered the widened parting of her hair, glided into the room. This was Agraf(^ua Petrovna, the chambermaid of Nekhlyiidov's mother, who had. but lately died in this 18 RESURRECTION very house ; she was now staying with the son in the ca- pacity of housekeeper. Agraf^na Petrovna had at various times been abroad with Nekhlyudov's mother, and had the looks and manner of a lady. She had lived in Nekhyludov's house since her childhood, and had known Dmitri Ivanovich when he was a boy and when they called him Mitenka. " Good morning, Dmitri Ivanovich." " Good morning, Agraf^na Petrovna. What is the news ? " asked Nekhlyudov, jestingly. " A letter from the princess, or from her daughter. The chambermaid brought it long ago ; she is waiting in my room," said Agrafena Petrovna, handing him the letter, and smiling significantly. " Very well, in a minute," said Nekhlyudov, taking the letter and frowning, as he noticed Agrafena Petrovna's smile. Agrafena Petrovna's smile meant that the letter was from the young Princess Korchagin, whom, according to Agrafena Petrovna's opinion, Nekhlyudov was going to marry. " Then I will tell her to wait," and Agrafena Petrovna, picking up the crumb-brush, which was out of place, and putting it away, glided out of the dining-room. Nekhlyudov broke the seal of the perfumed letter, which Agrafena Petrovna had given him, and began to read : " In fulfilment of my self-assumed duty to act as your memory," so ran the letter on a sheet of thick gray paper with uneven margins, in a sharp, broad hand, " I remind you that to-day, the twenty-eighth of April, you are to serve on a jury, and consequently can by no means drive out with Kolosov and us to look at the pictures, as you yesterday, with your characteristic thoughtlessness, prom- ised us you would ; ct moins que vous ne soyez dispose h payer tt la cour d' assises les 300 roubles d'amende que vous RESURRECTION ' 19 refusez pour voti'c cheval -for not having appeared in time. I thought of it yesterday, the moment you left. So don't forget it. "Princess M. Korchagin." On the other page was the following addition : " Maman vous fait dire que voire convert vous attcndra jusqu'a la nuit. Veiicz absolument a quelle heure que cela so it. «M. K." Nekhlyudov frowned. The note was a continuation of that artifice which the young Princess Korchagiu had been practising on him for the last two months, and which consisted in drawing him evermore to herself by invisible threads. On the other hand, Nekhlyudov had, in addition to the usual indecision before marriage, which all people have who are past their first youth and are not passionately in love, another important reason, which kept him from proposing at once, even if he had made up his mind to do so. This reason was not that he had ten years before seduced and abandoned Katyusha, — this he had entirely forgotten, and did not regard as an im- pediment to his marriage ; the real cause was that at that time he had a liaison with a married woman, which, though broken by him, had not yet been acknowledged as broken by her. Nekhlyudov was very shy with women, and it was this very timidity which had provoked a desire in that married woman to subdue him. She was the wife of the marshal of the nobility of the county whither Nekhlyudov used to go for the elections. This woman had drawn him into a liaison, which from day to day became more bind- ing on him and at the same time more repulsive. At first, Nekhlyudov could not withstand her seductive 20 RESURRECTION charms ; theu, feeling himself guilty toward her, he was not able without her consent to tear asunder this union. This was the reason why Nekhlyildov felt that he had no right to propose to Princess Korchagin, even if he wished to do so. On the table happened to lie a letter from that woman's husband. Upon noticing the handwriting and postmark, Nekhlyiidov blushed, and immediately experienced an onrush of energy, which always came over him at the approach of danger. But his agitation was vain : her husband, the marshal of the nobility in the county where the more important estates of Nekhlyiidov were located, informed him that at the end of May there would be an extra session of the County Council, and asked him to be sure and come in order to donner un coup d'epaule in the important questions concerning schools and roads which were to be brought up before the coming meeting of the County Council, when it was expected that the reactionary party would put up a strong opposition. The marshal was a liberal, and with several party friends was engaged in struggling against the reaction which had set in during the reign of Alexander III. ; he was busily occupied with this struggle, and knew nothing of his unfortunate family life. Nekhlyiidov recalled all the painful minutes which he had passed in the presence of this man : he recalled how once he had thouglit that her husband had found out everything, and how he had prepared himself to fight a duel at which he had intended to shoot into the air ; and he recalled that terrible scene with her, when in despair she had rushed out into the garden ready to drown herself in its pond, and how he had run after her to find her. " I cannot go there, or undertake anything, unless I first hear from her," thought Nekhlyiidov. The week before he had written her a decisive letter in which he RESURRECTION 21 had confessed his guilt, and had declared himself ready for any atonement ; but, nevertheless, for her own good, he regarded their relations as for ever ended. He was expecting an answer to this very letter, but none had yet been received. The delay in replying he considered a good sign. If she had not agreed to the disruption of the union, she would have written him long ago, or would have come to see him, as she had done on previous occa- sions. Nekhlyiidov had heard that there was a certain officer in the country, who was paying her attentions, and this gave him a twinge of jealousy, and at the same time filled him with hope that he should be freed from the he which was harassing him. Another letter was from the superintendent of his estates. The superintendent wrote Nekhlyiidov that he would have to come down himseh, in order to be con- firmed in the rights of inheritance, and besides, to decide the question of how the estates were to be managed henceforth ; whether as in the days of the deceased prin- cess, or, as he had proposed to the defunct, and now was again proposing to the young prince, by increasing the inventory and himself working the land, which had been parcelled out to the peasants. The superintendent wrote that such an exploitation would be much more profitable. At the same time he excused himself for having some- what delayed the transmission of the three thousand roubles which, by order, had been due on the first. The money would be sent by the next post. The reason for this delay was that he had been absolutely unable to col- lect from the peasants, who had gone so far in their dis- honesty that it became necessary to invoke the authorities to compel them to pay their debts. This letter was both pleasant and unpleasant to Nekh- lyiidov. It was pleasant for him to feel his power over his extensive possessions, and unpleasant, because in his first youth he had been an enthusiastic follower of 22 RESURRECTION Herbert Spencer, and, being himself a large landed propri- etor, had been particularly struck by his statement in his Social Statics that justice did not permit the private ownership of land. With the directness and determina- tion of youth he then maintained that land could not form the object of private ownership, and he not only wrote a thesis on the subject while at the university, but at that time really distributed to the peasants a small part of the land, which did not belong to his mother, but which by inheritance from his father belonged to him personally, so as not to be possessed of land, contrary to his convictions. Having now become a large landed proprietor by inheritance, he had to do one of the two things : either to renounce his possessions, as he had done ten years before in connection with the two hundred desyatinas of his paternal estate, or by his silent consent to acknowledge all his former ideas faulty and false. He could not do the former, because he had no other means of subsistence but the land. He did not wish to serve in a government capacity, and in the meantime had acquired luxurious habits of life, from which he consid- ered it impossible ever to depart. Nor was there any reason why he should, since he no longer had that force of conviction, nor that determination, nor that ambition and desire to surprise people, which had actuated him in his youth. Similarly he was quite incapable of doing the latter, — to recant those clear and undeniable proofs of the illegality of private ownership of land, which he had then found in Spencer's Social Statics, and the brilliant confirmation of which he had found later, much later, in the works of Henry George. For this reason the superintendent's letter did not please him. IV. Having finished his coffee, Nekhlyildov went into his cabinet, to find out from the summons at what time he was to be at court, and to write the princess an answer. The cabinet was reached through the studio. Here stood an easel with a covered, unfinished picture, and studies were hanging on the wall. The sight of this picture, on which he had vainly worked for two years, and of the studies, and of the whole studio, reminded him of his feeling of impotence to advance farther in painting, a feeling which of late had overcome him with unusual force. He explained to himself this sensation as arising from a too highly developed aesthetic feeling, but still the consciousness of it was exceedingly disagreeable to him. Seven years before, he had given up his government position, having decided that he had a talent for painting, and from the height of his artistic activity he looked down somewhat contemptuously on all other activities. Now it appeared that he had no ground for such an assumption, and thus every reminder of it was extremely distasteful to him. He looked with a heavy heart at all these luxurious arrangements of his studio, and in an unhappy frame of mind entered his cabinet. The cabinet was a very large and high room, with all kinds of adorn- ments, appliances, and comforts. He immediately found in the drawer of the immense table, under the division of memoranda, the summons, which said that he had to be at court at eleven o'clock. He sat down and wrote a note to the princess, thanking 23 24 RESURRECTION her for the invitation, and promising to come to dinner, if he could. But after he had written this note, he tore it up : it was too famihar ; he wrote another, — and it was cold, almost offensive. He again tore it up, and pressed a button on the wall. On the threshold appeared an elderly, morose, cleanly shaven, whiskered lackey, in a gray calico apron. " Please send for a cab." " Yes, sir." "And tell her — there is somebody here from the Korchagins w^aiting for an answer — tell her that I am much obliged, and that I shall try to be there." " Yes, sir." " It is impolite, but I cannot write. I shall see her to-day, anyway," thought Nekhlyiidov, and went away to dress himself. When, all dressed, he appeared on the porch, his familiar cab with the rubber tires was already waiting for him. " Yesterday, the moment you had left Prince Korcha- gin," said the cabman, half turning around his powerful, sunburnt neck, in a white shirt collar, " I came back, but the porter told me, ' He has just left.' " " Even the cabmen know of my relations with the Korchagins," thought Nekhlyiidov, and the unsolved question, which had of late constantly preoccupied him, — whether he should marry Princess Korchagin or not, — rose before him, and, as happened with him in the majority of questions which presented themselves to him at that time, he was unable to solve it one way or the other. In favour of the marriage spoke the fact that marriage, in addition to supplying him with a domestic hearth, would remove the irregularities of sexual life, and would make it possible for him to lead a moral existence ; and, in the second place, and this was most important, Nekh- RESURRECTION 25 lyiidov hoped that a family and children would give a meaning to his empty life. So much for marriage in general. Against marriage in general was, in the first place, the fear of losing his liberty, a fear which is common to all old bachelors, and in the second, an un- conscious dread before the mysterious being of a woman. In favour of his marrying Missy in particular (Princess Korchagin's name was Mariya, but, as in all families of a certain circle, she was nicknamed Missy) was, in the first place, her breeding, for in everything, from her wear- ing-apparel to her manner of speaking, walking, and laughing, she stood out from among common people, not by any special features, but by her general " decency," — he could not think of any other expression for this quality, which he esteemed highly ; and in the second, because she respected him above all other men, conse- quently, according to his conceptions, she understood him. And it was this comprehension, that is, the acknowledgment of his high worth, which testified in Nekhlyudov's opinion to her good mind and correct judgment. Against his marrying Missy in particular was, first, that it was quite possible that he should find a girl who would possess an even greater number of desirable qual- ities than Missy had, and who consequently would be worthier of him ; and, secondly, the fact that she was twenty-seven years old and, therefore, must have been in love before, — and this thought tormented Nekhlyiidov. His pride could not make peace with the thought that at any time, even though it be in the past, she could have loved anybody but him. Of course, she could not have foreseen that she would meet him, but the very idea that she could have been in love with some one else offended him. Thus there were as many arguments in favour of marrying as against it ; at least these two classes of argu- 26 KESURRECTION ments were equally urgent, and Nekhlyudov, laughing at himself, called himself " Buridan's ass." And he remained one, for he could not make up his mind to which bundle to turn. " However, since I have received no answer from Mdrya Vasilevna (the marshal's wife), and have not completely settled that affair, I cannot begin anything," he said to himself. The consciousness that he could and should delay his decision was agreeable to him. " Still, I will consider all this later," he said to himself when his vehicle inaudibly drove over the asphalt drive- way of the court-house. " Now I must act conscientiously, as I always execute, and always should execute my public duties. Besides, they are frequently interesting," he said to himself, pass- ing by the doorkeeper, into the vestibule of the court- house. V. In the corridors of the court-house there was already animated motion, when Nekhlyudov entered it. The janitors were either walking rapidly, or even run- ning, without lifting their feet from the floor, but shuffling them, and out of breath, carrying orders and documents up and down. The bailiffs, the lawyers, and the judges passed from one place to another, while the plaintiffs and the defendants who were not under surveillance morosely walked up and down near the walls, or were sitting, wait- ing for their turns. " "WTiere is the circuit court ? " Nekhlyudov asked one of the janitors. " Which ? There is a civil division, there is a supreme court." " I am a juryman." " Criminal division. You ought to have said so. Here, to the right, then to the left, second door." Nekhlyudov followed his directions. At the door indicated two men stood waiting for some- thing. The one was a tall, fat merchant, a good-hearted man, who had evidently had something to drink and to eat, and was in a happy frame of mind ; the other was a clerk, of Jewish extraction. They were talking about the price of wool, when Nekhlyudov walked over to them and asked them whether this was the jury-room. " Here, sir, here. Are you one of our kin, a jury- man ? " the merchant asked good-naturedly, winking merrily. " Well, we shall aU work together," he continued, upon 27 28 RESURRECTION Nekhlyudov's affirmative answer. " Baklash6v, of the second guild," he said, extending his soft, broad, open hand. " We shall have to work. With whom have I the honour ? " Nekhlyiidov mentioned his name, and went into the jury-room. In the room there were some ten men of all descrip- tions. They had all just arrived, and some were seated, while others walked about, eyeing one another and getting acquainted. There was an ex-officer in his uniform ; the others wore long or short coats, and one was clad in a sleeveless peasant coat. Though many of those present had been taken away from their work, and complained that this was a tiresome affair, they all bore the imprint of a certain pleasure, as though they were conscious of performing an important public duty. The jurors, having become acquainted with each other, or merely guessing who was who, were talking about the weather, about the early spring, and about the work before them. Those who did not know Nekhlyiidov hastened to become acquainted with him, obviously regarding this as a special honour. Nekhlyiidov received their advances as something due him, as he always did when among strangers. If he had been asked why he regarded him- self higher than the majority of mankind, he would not have been able to answer the question, because no part of his life was distinguished for any particular qualities. The fact that he spoke English, French, and German correctly, and that his linen, his attire, his ties, and his cuff-buttons came from the first purveyors of these articles, could not have served at all, so he knew himself, as a reason for supposing any superiority in himself. And yet, he un- questioningly assumed this superiority, and received the expressions of respect as something due him, and felt offended whenever they were not forthcoming. In the RESURRECTION 29 jurors' room he had occasion to experience the disagree- able sensation arising from an expression of disrespect. Among the jurymen was an acquaintance of Nekhlyu- dov's. This was Peter Gerasimovich (Nekhlyiidov never had known his family name, and even boasted of this fact), who had formerly been a teacher of his sister's children. This Peter Gerasimovich had finished his course at the university, and now was a teacher at a gymnasium. Nekhlyudov never could bear him on account of his familiarity, and his self-satisfied laughter, — in general, on account of his " vulgarity," as Nekhlyudov's sister used to express herself. " Ah, you are caught, too," Peter Gerasimovich met Nekhlyiidov, with a guffaw. " You could not tear your- self away ? " " I did not even have any intention of tearing myself away," Nekhlyudov said, austerely and gloomily. " Well, this is a citizen's virtue. Just wait, when you get hungry, and don't have any sleep, you will sing a different song ! " Peter Gerasimovich shouted, laughing louder still. " This protopope's son will soon be saying ' thou ' to me," thought Nekhlyiidov, and with a face expressive of a sadness which would have been natural only if he had suddenly received the news of the death of all his rela- tives, he went away from him, and joined the group which had formed itself around a tall, cleanly shaven, stately gentleman, who was relating something with animation. The gentleman was telling of the law^suit which was being tried in the civil department, as of an affair which he well knew ; he called all the judges and famous law- yers by their Christian names and patronymics. He was expatiating on the wonderful turn which a famous lawyer had given to it, so that one of the contesting parties, an old lady, though entirely in the right, would have to pay an immense sum to the other party. 30 EESURRECTION " A brilliant lawyer ! " he said. He was listened to with respect, and some tried to put in a word of their own, but he interrupted them all, as though he were the only one who could know anything properly. Although Nekhlyiidov had arrived late, he had to wait for a long time. The case was delayed by one of the members of the court, who had not yet arrived. VI. The presiding judge had come early. He was a tall, stout man, with long, grayish side-whiskers. He was married, but led a very dissolute life, and so did his wife. They did not interfere with each other. On that morning he had received a note from the Swiss governess, who lived in their house in the summer and now was on her way to St. Petersburg, that she would wait for him in town, in " Hotel Italy," between three and six o'clock. And so he was anxious to begin and end the sitting of the court as early as possible, in order to get- a chance of visiting this red-haired Klara Vasilevna, with whom he had begun a love-affair the summer before, in the country. Upon entering the cabinet, he bolted the door, took out a pair of dumb-bells from the lowest shelf of the safe with the documents, and twenty times moved them up, for- ward, sidewise, and downward, and then three times squatted lightly, holding the dumb-bells above his head. " Nothing keeps up a man's physique so well as water and gymnastic exercises," he thought, feeling with his left hand, with a gold ring on its ring-finger, the swelling biceps of his right arm. He had still to make two wind- mill motions, which he always practised before a long session, when the door was shaken. Somebody was try- ing to come in. The presiding judge immediately put the dumb-bells away, and opened the door, " I beg your pardon," he said. Into the room stepped one of the members of the court, in gold spectacles ; he was short, with raised shoulders and frowning face. 31 32 RESURRECTION " Matvy^y Nikitich is again absent," said the member with displeasure. " He is not yet here," replied the presiding judge, donning his uniform. " He is eternally late." " I wonder he is not ashamed of himself," said the member, and angrily sat down and took the cigarettes out of his pocket. This member, who was a very precise man, had had an unpleasant encounter with his wife on that morning, because she had spent the money which was to have lasted her a whole month. She had asked for some more in advance, but he insisted that he would not depart from his rules. A scene ensued. His wife said that if he insisted upon this, there would be no dmner, — and that he had better not expect any. Thereupon he left, fearing that she would keep her word, for she was capable of anything. " So this is what you get for living a good, moral life," he thought, looking at the shining, healthy, gay, and good-hearted presiding judge, who, spreading wide his elbows, was with his beautiful white hands clawing his thick and long grayish side-whiskers on both sides of his embroidered collar. " He is always happy and content, and I suffer." The secretary entered, bringing some papers. " Very much obliged to you," said the presiding judge, lighting a cigar. " Which case shall we launch first ? " " I suppose the poisoning case," the secretary said, apparently with indifference. " Very well, let it be the poisoning case," said the presiding judge, reflecting that it was a case that might be ended by four o'clock, whereupon he could leave. " Has Matvy^y Nikitich not yet come ? " " Not yet." " And is Br^ve here ? " " He is," answered the secretary. RESUERECTION 33 " Tell him, then, if you see him, that we shall begin with the poisoning case." Br^ve was the assistant prosecuting attorney who was to prosecute at the present sitting. Upon reaching the corridor, the secretary met Breve. Eaising liigh his shoulders, he was almost running along the corridor ; his uniform was unbuttoned, and he carried his portfolio under one arm ; he continually struck his heels together, and swung his free arm in such a manner that the palm of his hand was perpendicular to the direction of his walk. " Mikhail Petrovich wants to know whether you are ready ? " the secretary asked him. " Of course I am," said the assistant prosecuting attor- ney. " Which case comes first ? " " The poisoning case." " Very well," said the assistant prosecuting attorney ; but he did not think it well at all, for he had not slept the whole night. There had been a farewell party, where they had drunk and played cards until two o'clock in the morning ; then they all called on the women in the very house where Maslova had been six months ago, so that he had not had any time whatsoever to read up the brief ; he hoped to be able to do so now. The secretary, who knew that he had not yet read up the poisoning case, had purposely advised the presiding judge to start with it. The secretary was a man of liberal, nay, even radical views. Br^ve, on the contrary, was a conservative, and, like all Germans in Eussian service, a devout Greek- Cathohc ; the secretary did not like him, and envied him his place. " Well, how about the Castrate Sectarians ? " asked the secretary. "I said, I could not," said the assistant prosecuting attorney. " For want of witnesses, — I shall so report to the court." 34 RESURRECTION « But, all the same — " " I cannot," said the assistant prosecuting attorney, and, swaying his arm as before, entered his cabinet. He delayed the case of the sectarians on account of the absence of an unimportant witness, who was not at all needed, and his reason for doing this was just because the case was to be heard in a court where the jury were an intelligent set, and where it might easily end in their favour. By agreement with the presiding judge, this case was to be transferred to the session in a county seat, where there would be more peasants on the jury, and a better chance to end the case unfavourably for the sectarians. The crowd in the corridor was getting more animated. Most people were gathered near the hall of the civil divi- sion, where the case was being tried, of which the stately gentleman, the lover of lawsuits, had been telling the jurors. During an intermission, from the hall emerged the same old woman from whom the brilliant lawyer had succeeded in wrenching away her whole property in favour of a pettifogger, who did not have the slightest right to it. The judges knew that, and the plaintiff and his attorney knew it even better ; but the Ctse had been conducted in such a manner that there was no other issue possible but that the property should be taken away from the old woman, and given over to the pettifogger. The old woman was a stout lady in her holiday clothes, and with enormous flowers on her hat. Upon coming out of the door, she stopped in the corridor, and, swaying her plump short arms, kept repeating, as she turned to her lawyer : " How will that be ? I beg you. How will that be ? " The lawyer was looking at the flowers on her hat, and, without hstening to her, was considering some- thing. Immediately after the old woman, there hurried out of the hall of the civil division, resplendent in his wide-open RESURRECTION . 35 vest, that same famous attorney, who had fixed matters in such a way that the old woman with the flowers was left penniless, while the pettifogger, who gave him a fee of ten thousand roubles, received more than one hundred thousand roubles. All eyes were directed upon the lawyer, and he was conscious of it, so that his whole countenance seemed to be saying, " Please, no special expressions of respect," as he rapidly passed by the group congregated there. VII. Finally Matvy^y Nikitich arrived, and a bailiff, a spare man, with a long neck and sidling gait, and also a lower lip that protruded sidewise, entered the jury-room. This baihff was an honest man, who had received a university education, but was not able to keep a place any length of time, because he was a confirmed tippler. Three months before, a countess, a protectress of his wife, had got this place for him, and he had so far been able to hold it, which made him feel happy. " Well, gentlemen, are you all here ? " he said, putting on his eye-glasses, and looking over them. " It seems, all," said the merry merchant. " Let us see," said the bailiff, and drawing a list from his pocket, he began to call out the names, looking now through his glasses, and now over them. " Councillor of State I. M. Nikiforov." " Here," said the stately gentleman, who knew about all the cases at law. " Ex-Colonel Ivan Semovich Ivanov." " Here," said the haggard man in the uniform of an officer out of service. " The Merchant of the second guild, Petr Baklashov." " Here he is," said the good-hearted merchant, smiling with his mouth wide open. " Ready ! " " Lieutenant of the Guard Prince Dmitri Nekhlyiidov." " Here," answered Nekhlyudov. The bailiff, looking with an expression of pleasurable politeness above his glasses, made a bow, as if to honour him above the rest. 36 RESURRECTION 37 " Captain Yiiri Dmitrievich Danch^nko, Merchant Gri- gdri Efimovich Kuleshov," and so on. All but two were present. " Now, gentlemen, please proceed to the hall," said the bailiff, pointing to the door with a pohte gesture. They started, and, letting one after another pass through the door into the corridor, went from the corridor into the court-room. The court-room was a large, long hall. One end of it was occupied by a platform, which was reached by three steps. In the middle of this elevation stood a table which was covered with a green cloth, bordered by a green fringe of a darker shade. Behind the table stood three chairs, with very high carved oak backs, and behind the chairs hung a bright life-sized picture of the emperor in the uniform of a general, with a sash ; he was repre- sented in the act of stepping forward, and resting his hand on his sabre. In the right-hand corner hung a shrine with the image of Christ in his crown of thorns, and stood a pulpit, while on the right was the desk of the prosecuting attorney. On the left, opposite the desk, was the secretary's table, set back against the wall ; and nearer to the audience was a screen of oak rounds, and back of it the unoccupied bench of the defendants. On the right on the platform stood two rows of chairs, also with high backs, for the jurors, and beneath them were the tables for the lawyers. All this was in the fore part of the hall, which was divided by the screen into two parts. The back half was occupied by benches, which, rising one behind the other, went as far as the back wall. In the front benches sat four women, either factory girls or chambermaids, and two men, also labourers, evidently oppressed by the splendour of the room's inte- rior, and therefore speaking to each other in a whisper. Soon after the jurors had entered, the bailiff went with his sidling gait to the middle of the room, and shouted in Q 8 RESURRECTION a loud voice, as though he wished to frighten some- body: " The court is coming ! " Everybody rose, and the judges walked out on the platform. First came the presiding judge, with his well- developed muscles and beautiful whiskers. Then came the gloomy member of the court, in gold spectacles, who now was even more gloomy, because just before the ses- sion began he had seen his brother-in-law, a candidate for a judicial position, who had informed him that he had just been at his sister's, and that she had told him that there would be no dinner. " Well, I suppose we shall have to go to an inn," said the brother-in-law, smiling. " There is nothing funny in this," repHed the gloomy member of the court, and grew gloomier still. And, finally, the third member of the court, that same Matvy^y Nikitich, who was always late. He was a bearded man, with large, drooping, kindly eyes. This member suffered from a gastral catarrh ; with the doctor's advice he had begun that morning a new regimen, and it was this new regimen which had detained him at home longer than usual. Now, as he was ascending the plat- form, he had a concentrated look, because he was in the habit of using all kinds of guesses, in order to arrive at a solution of such questions as he propounded to himself. Just now, he had made up his mind that if the number of steps from the door of the cabinet to the chair should be divisible by three, without a remainder, the new regimen would cure him of the catarrh, but if it did not divide exactly, the regimen would be a failure. There were in all twenty-six steps, but he doubled one, and thus reached the chair with his twenty-seventh step. The figures of the presiding judge and of the members, as they ascended the platform in their uniforms with the collars embroidered in gold lace, were very impressive. RESURKECTION 39 They were themselves conscious of this, and all three, as though embarrassed by their grandeur, swiftly and mod- estly lowering their eyes, sat down on their carved chairs, back of the table with the green cloth, on which towered a triangular Mirror of Law with an eagle, and a glass vase such as is used on sideboards for confectionery ; there also stood an inkstand, and lay pens, clean paper, and newly sharpened pencils of all dimensions. The associate prose- cuting attorney had come in at the same time as the judges. He at once walked up to his place near the window just as hurriedly, with his portfolio under his arm, and waving his hand in the same manner as before, and at once buried himself in the reading and examination of the papers, utiHzing every minute in order to prepare himself for the case. This was the fourth time he had had a case to prosecute. He was very ambitious and had firmly deter- mined to make a career, therefore he regarded it as neces- sary that the cases should go against the defendant every time he prosecuted. He was acquainted with the cliief points in the poisoning case, and had even formed a plan of attack, but he needed a few more data, and was now hurriedly reading the briefs, and copying out the necessary points. The secretary was seated at the opposite end of the platform, and, having arranged all the documents that might be needed, was looking over a proscribed article, which he had obtained and read the day before. He was anxious to talk about this article to the member of the court with the long beard, who shared his views, and was trying to become famihar with its contents before he spoke to him about it. VIII. The presiding judge looked through the papers, put a few questions to the bailiff and the secretary, and, having received affirmative answers, gave the order to bring in the defendants. The door back of the screen was imme- diately thrown open, and two gendarmes in caps, and with unsheathed swords, entered, and were followed by the defendants, — by a red-haired, freckled man, and by two women. The man was clad in a prison cloak, which was much too broad and too long for him. As he entered the court-room, he held his hands with their out- stretched fingers down his legs, thus keeping the long sleeves back in place. He did not glance upon the judges or upon the spectators, but gazed at the bench, around which he was walking, Having got to the other end, he let the women sit down first, and himself took up a seat on the very edge ; gazing fixedly at the presiding judge, he began to move the muscles of his cheeks, as though whispering something. After him came a young woman, also dressed in a prison cloak. Her head was wrapped in a prison kerchief ; her face was ashen- white, without eyebrows or lashes, but with red eyes. This woman seemed to be very calm. As she was going up to her seat, her cloak caught on something, but she carefully, without any undue haste, freed it, and sat down. The third defendant was Maslova. The moment she entered, the eyes of all the men who were in the court-room were directed upon her, and for a long time were riveted upon her white face, with her black, sparkling eyes, and her swelling bosom underneath 40 EESURRECTION 41 her cloak. Even the gendarme, near whom she passed, gazed at her uuiuterruptedly, until she had gone beyond him; when she sat down, he rapidly turned away, as though conscious of his guilt, and, straightening himself up, fixed his eyes upon the window in front of him. The presiding judge waited until the defendants had taken their seats, and the moment Maslova sat down, he turned to the secretary. Then began the usual procedure : the roll-call of the jurors, the discussion about those who had failed to make their appearance, and the imposition of fines upon them, the decision in regard to those who wished to be excused, and the completion of the required number from the reserve jurors. Then the presiding judge folded some slips of paper, placed them in the glass vase, and, rolliug up a little the embroidered sleeves of his uniform and baring his hirsute arms, began, with the gestures of a prestidigitator, to take out one shp at a time ; these he unrolled and read. Then the presiding judge adjusted his sleeves, and ordered the priest to swear in the jurors. The old priest, with a swollen, sallow face, in a cinna- mon-coloured vestment, with a gold cross on his breast and a smaR decoration pinned to his vestment, slowly moving his swollen legs under his garment, went up to the reading-desk which stood under the image. The jurymen arose and in a crowd moved up to the desk. " Please, come up," said the priest, touching the cross on his chest with his swollen hand, and waiting for the approach of all the jurors. This priest had taken orders forty-six years before, and was preparing himself in three years to celebrate his jubilee in the same manner in which the cathedral proto- pope had lately celebrated his. He had served in the circuit court since the opening of the courts, and was very proud of the fact that he had sworn in several tens of 42 RESUREECTION thousands of people, and that at his advanced age he con- tinued to labour for the good of the Church, of his country, and of his family, to whom he would leave a house and a capital of not less than thirty thousand roubles in bonds. It had never occurred to him that his work in the court-room, which consisted in having people take an oath over the Gospel, in which swearing of oaths is directly prohibited, was not good ; he was not in the least annoyed by his routine occupation, but, on the contrary, liked it very much, because it gave him an opportunity of getting acquainted with nice gentlemen. He had just had the pleasure of meeting the famous lawyer, who inspired him with great respect because he had received a fee of ten thousand roubles for nothing more than the case of the old woman with the immense flowers. When the jurors had walked up the steps of the plat- form, the priest, bending his bald, gray head to one side, stuck it through the greasy opening of the scapulary, and, arranging his scanty hair, addressed the jurors. ' " Eaise your right hands and put your fingers together like this," he said, in the delil^erate voice of an old man, lifting his plump hand, with dimples beneath every finger, and putting three fingers together. " Now repeat after me," he said, and began, " I promise and swear by Al- mighty God, before His Holy Gospel and before the Life- giving Eood of the Lord, that in the case, in which — " he said, making a pause after every sentence. " Don't drop your hand, but hold it like this," he addressed a young man, who had dropped his hand, — " that in the case, in which — " The stately gentleman with the whiskers, the colonel, the merchant, and others held their fingers as the priest had ordered them to do ; some of these held them high and distinctly formed, as though this gave them special pleasure ; others again held them reluctantly and in an indefinite manner. Some repeated the words too loudly, KESURRECTION 43 as though with undue zeal and with an expression which said, " There is nothing to prevent my speaking aloud ; " others again spoke in a whisper, and fell behind the words of the priest, and then, as if frightened, hastened to catch up with him ; some held their three fingers firmly folded, and flaunted them, as though they were afraid of freeing something from their hands ; others loosened their fingers and again gathered them up. All felt awkward, and the old priest alone was firmly convinced that he was per- forming a useful work. After the oath had been administered, the presiding judge told the jurors to elect a foreman. The jurymen arose, and, crowding each other, went into the council- room, where they immediately took out their cigarettes, and began to smoke. Somebody proposed the stately gentleman for a foreman ; he was chosen by unanimous consent, and, throwing away and extinguishing the ciga- rette stumps, they returned to the court-room. The stately gentleman announced to the presiding judge that he had been chosen foreman, and, stepping over each others' feet, they sat down in two rows, on the chairs with the high backs. Everything went without a hitch, almost with solem- nity, and this regularity, this sequence and solemnity, afforded all the participants pleasure, for it confirmed them in their conviction that they were performing a serious and important public duty. Nekhlyiidov, too, felt this. The moment the jurors had taken their seats, the pre- siding judge made a speech to them about their rights, their duties, and their responsibilities. While delivering his speech, the judge kept changing his pose : he leaned now on his right arm, now on his left, now on the back, and now on the arm of his chair ; he smoothed out the edges of the papers, or he stroked the paper-knife, or fingered a pencil. Their rights consisted, according to his words, in being 44 RESURRECTION permitted to ask questions of the defendants through the presiding judge, in having pencil and paper, and in being allowed to inspect the exhibits. Their duty consisted in judging justly, and not falsely. And their responsibility was this : if they did not keep their consultations secret, or if they established any communication with the out- side world, they would be subject to punishment. Everybody listened with respectful attention. The merchant, wafting around him the odour of liquor, and re- straining himself from loud belching, approvingly nodded his head at every sentence. IX. Having finished his speech, the judge turned to the defendants. " Simon Kartinkin, arise ! " he said. Simon got up with a jerk, and the muscles of his cheeks moved more rapidly. " Your name ? " •" Simon Petrov Kartinkin," he answered rapidly, in a crackling voice, evidently having prepared his answer in advance. " Your rank ? " " Peasant." " What Government and county ? " " From the Government of Tula, Krapivensk County, Kupyausk township, village of Borki." " How old are you ? " " Thirty-three ; born in one thousand — " " What is your religion ? " " I am a Kussian, an Orthodox." " Married ? " « No, sir." " What is your occupation ? " " I worked in the corridor of ' Hotel Mauritania.' " " Have you been in court before ? " " I have never been sentenced, because I used to live — " " You have not been tried before ? " " So help me God, never." " Have you received a copy of the indictment ? " " I have." 45 46 RESURRECTION " Take your seat ! Evfimiya Ivanovna Boclikova," the presiding judge addressed the uext defendant. But Simon continued standing, and Bochkova could not be seen behind his back. " Kartinkin, sit down." Kartinkin continued to stand. " Kartinkin, sit down ! " But Kartinkin still stood up ; he sat down only when the bailiff ran up, and, bending his head down, and un- naturally opening his mouth, said to him in a tragic whisper : " Sit down, sit down ! " Kartinkin dropped as fast into his seat as he had shot up before, and, wrapping himself in his cloak, began once more silently to move his cheeks. " Your name ? " the judge addressed the second defend- ant, with a sigh of fatigue, without looking at her, and looking up something in the document which was lying before him. The presiding judge was so used to his cases that, in order to expedite matters, he was able to attend to two things at the same time. Bochkova was forty-three years old ; her rank, burgess of Kolomna ; her occupation, corridor maid in the same " Hotel Mauritania." She had not been before under trial, and had received the indictment. She answered all the questions very freely, and with such intonations as though she meant to convey the idea : " Yes, I, Evfimiya Boch- kova, have received the copy, and am proud of it, and allow nobody to laugh at me." She did not wait for the permission to be seated, but sat down the moment the last question was answered. " Your name ? " the gallant presiding judge exceedingly politely addressed the third defendant. " You must stand up ! " he added, softly and kindly, noticing that Maslova was sitting. Maslova started up with a swift motion, and with an expression of readiness, thrusting forward her swelhng EESURKECTION 47 bosom, looked, without answering, at the face of the judge with her smiling and slightly squinting black eyes. " What is your name ? " " Lyubdv," she quickly replied. In the meantime, Nekhlyudov, who had put on his eye-glasses, was watching the defendants while the ques- tions were being asked. " It can't be," he thought, rivet- ing his eyes on the defendant. " But how is it Lyubov ? " he thought, upon liearing her answer. The judge wanted to continue his questions, but the member in the spectacles, saying something angrily under his breath, stopped him. The judge nodded consent, and again turned to the defendant. " Lyubov ? " he said. " A different name is given here." The defendant remained silent. " I ask what your real name is ? " " By what name were you baptized ? " the member asked, angrily. " Formerly I was called Katerina." " It is impossible," Nekhlyiidov kept saying to himself, and meanwhile he knew beyond any doubt that it was she, the same girl, half-educated, half-chambermaid, with whom he had once been in love, precisely, in love, but whom he had seduced during an uncontrollable transport and then had abandoned, and whom he later never thought of, because that recollection would have been too painful to him and would have condemned him ; it would have proved that he, who was so proud of his " decency," not only was not decent, but had simply treated this woman contemptibly. Yes, it was she. He now saw clearly that exclusive and mysterious individuality which separates one person from another and makes him exclusive, one, and unre- peated. Beneath the unnatural pallor and plumpness of her face, this individuality, this sweet, exceptional 48 RESURRECTION individuality, was in her face, her lips, her .slightly squint- ing eyes, and, above all else, in her naive, smiling glance, and in that expression of readiness, not only in her face, but in her whole figure. " You ought to have said so," the judge said, still very softly. " Your patronymic ? " " I am of illegitimate birth," said M^slova. " How were you called by your godfather ? " " Mikhaylovna." " What could her crime be ? " Nekhlyiidov continued to think, breathing with difficulty. " Your family name ? " continued the judge. " Maslova, by my mother." " Eank ? " " Burgess." " Of the Orthodox faith ? " « Yes." " Occupation ? What was your occupation ? " Maslova was silent. " What was your occupation ? " repeated the judge. " I lived in an establishment," she said. " In what kind of an establishment ? " angrily asked the member in the spectacles. " You know yourself in what kind," said Maslova, smiling, and, immediately turning around, she again fixed her eyes on the presiding judge. There was something so unusual in the expression of her face, and something so terrible and pitiable in the meaning of the words which she had uttered, in her smile, and in that rapid glance which she then cast upon the whole court-room, that the presiding judge lost his composure, and for a moment ensued a complete silence in the hall. The silence was broken by the laughter of somebody among the spectators. Somebody else cried, " Hush ! " The presiding judge raised his head and con- tinued the questions. RESURRECTION 49 " Have you ever been tried or under a judicial inquest before ? " " No," softly said Maslova, with a sigh. " Have you received the indictment ? " " I have." " Take your seat," said the presiding judge. The defendant lifted her skirt with a motion with which dressed up women adjust their train, and sat down, folding her small white hands in the sleeve of the cloak, without taking her eyes off the presiding judge. Then began the roll-call of the witnesses, and the re- moval of the witnesses, and the determination of the medical expert, and his call to the court-room. Then the secretary rose and began to read the indictment. He read with a clear and loud enunciation, but so rapidly that his voice, with its incorrectly articulated r's and I's, mingled into one uninterrupted, soporific din. The judges leaned now on one arm of the chair, now on the other, now on the table, or against the back, and now closed their eyes or opened them and passed some words to each other in a whisper. One gendarme several times held back his incipient convulsive yawning. Of the defendants, Kartinkin never stopped moving his cheeks. Bochkova sat very quiet and erect, occasionally scratching her head underneath her kerchief. Maslova sat motionless, listening to the reader and looking at him ; now and then she shuddered, as though wishing to contradict, blushed, and drew deep sighs ; she changed the position of her hands, looked around her, and again riveted her eyes on the reader. Nekhlyiidov sat in the first row, on his high chair, the second from the outer edge ; he did not take off his eye- glasses, and gazed at Maslova, while his soul was in a complicated and painful ferment. The indictment was as follows : On the seventeenth of January, 188- the police was informed by the proprietor of " Hotel Mauritania," of that city, of the sudden death of the transient Siberian merchant of the second guild, Ferapont Smyelkov, who had been staying in his establish- ment. According to the testimony of the physician of the fourth ward, Smyelkdv's death had been caused by a rupture of the heart, induced by an immoderate use of spirituous liquors, and Smyelkdv's body was committed to the earth on the third day. In the meantime, on the fourth day after Smyelkdv's death, there returned from St. Petersburg his countryman and companion, the Siberian merchant Timdkhin, who, upon learning of the death of his friend Smyelkov, and of the circumstances under which it had taken place, expressed his suspicion that Smyelkdv's death was due to unnatural causes, and that he had been poi- soned by evil-doers, who had seized his money and a gold ring, which were wanting from the inventory of his property. As a result of this, an inquest was instituted^ and the following was ascertained : First, that it was known to the proprietor of " Hotel Mauritania " and to the clerk of Merchant Starikdv, with whom Smyelkdv had had busi- ness affairs after his arrival in the city, that Smyelkdv ought to have had 3,800 roubles, which he had received from the bank, whereas in the travelhng-bag and pocket- book, which had been sealed up at his death, only 312 roubles and sixteen kopeks were found. Secondly, that the day- and night preceding his death, Smyelkdv had 60 RESURRECTION 51 passed with the prostitute Lyubdv, who had been twice to his room. Thirdly, that said prostitute had sold a diamond ring, belonging to Smyelkov, to the landlady. Fourthly, that the hotel maid Evfimiya Boehkova had deposited eighteen hundred roubles in a bank on the day after Smyelkov's death. And, fifthly, that, according to the declaration of the prostitute Lyubov, the hotel servant Simon Kartinkin had handed a powder to said prostitute Lyubov, advising her to pour it into the wine of Merchant Smyelkov, which she, according to her own confession, had promptly done. At the inquest, the defendant, said prostitute, named Lyub6v, deposed that during the presence of Merchant Smyelkov in the house of prostitution, in which, according to her words, she had been working, she had really been sent by the said Merchant Smyelkov to his room in the " Hotel Mauritania " to fetch him some money ; and that there she had opened his valise with the key which he had given her, and had taken from it forty roubles, as ordered to do, but that she had not taken any more money, to which Simon Kartinkin and Evfimiya Boehkova could be her witnesses, for she had opened and closed the vahse and had taken out the money in their presence. But as to the poisoning of Smyelkov, prostitute Lyubov deposed that upon her third arrival at Merchant Smyel- kov's room, she had really, at the instigation of Simon Kartinkin, given him some powders in his cognac, think- ing them to be such as would induce sleep, for the purpose of beiug freed from him as soon as he fell asleep ; that she had taken no money ; and that the ring had been given her by Smyelkov himself, when he had dealt her some blows, and she had intended to leave. At the inquisition, the defendants, Evfimiya Boehkova and Simon Kartinkin, deposed as follows : Evfimiya Boeh- kova deposed that she knew nothing of the lost money ; that she had not once entered the merchant's room ; and 52 KESURRECTION that Lyubov had been there by herself, and that, if any money had been stolen, it must have been stolen by Lyu- bov when she had come with the merchant's key for the money. At this point of the reading, Maslova shuddered, and,, opening her mouth, glanced at Bochkova. When the eighteen-hundred^rouble bank-bill was pre- sented to Evfimiya Bochkova, the secretary continued reading, and she was asked where she got such a sum of money, she deposed that it had been earned by her during twelve years in conjunction with Simon, whom she had intended to marry. At the inquest, the defendant Simon Kartinkin in his first deposition confessed that he and Bochkova had together stolen the money, at the instigation of Maslova, who had come from the house of prostitution with the key, and that he had divided it among himself, Maslova, and Bochkova ; he had also confessed that he had given the powders to Maslova, in order to induce sleep. But at the second deposition he denied his participation in the stealing of the money, and his having handed any powders to Maslova, and accused Maslova alone. But in regard to the money which Bochkova had deposited in the bank, he deposed, similar to her statement, that she had earned that money in conjunction with him during the eighteen years of her service at the hotel, from the gratuities of the gentlemen. To clear up the circumstances of the case, it was found necessary to hold an inquest over the body of Merchant Smyelkov, and consequently an order was given to ex- hume Smyelkdv's body and to investigate both the con- tents of his entrails, and the changes that might have taken place in liis organism. The investigation of his entrails showed that death had been occasioned by poison- ing. Then there followed in the indictment the descrip- tion of the cross-examination, and the depositions of the RESURRECTION 63 witnesses. The conclusion of the indictment was as follows : Smyelkov, merchant of the second guild, having in a fit of intoxication and debauch entered into relations with a prostitute in Kitaeva's house of prostitution, by the name of Lyubov, and having taken a special liking to her, had, on the seventeenth of January, 18 8-, while in Kitaeva's house of prostitution, sent the above-men- tioned prostitute Lyubov, with the key of his valise, to his room in the hotel, in order that she might procure from his valise forty roubles, which he had wished to spend. Having arrived at his room, Katerina Maslova, while taking this money, had entered into an agreement with Bochkova and with Kartinkin to seize all the money and the valuables belonging to Merchant Smyelkov, and to divide them up among themselves, which was promptly executed by them (again Maslova shuddered, raised her- self in her seat, and grew purple in her face), whereat Maslova received the diamond ring, — the secretary con- tinued reading, — and probably a small amount of money, which has been either concealed or lost by her, since during that night she happened to be in an intoxicated condition. In order to conceal the traces of their crime, the par- ticipants had agreed to entice Merchant Smyelkov back to his room and to poison him there with arsenic, which was in Kartinkin's possession. For this purpose, Maslova returned to the house of prostitution and there persuaded Merchant Smyelkov to drive back with her to his room in " Hotel Mauritania." Upon Smyelkov's return, Mas- lova, having received the powders from Kartmkin, poured them into the wine, and gave it to Smyelkov to drink» from which ensued his death. In view of the above-mentioned facts, Simon Kartin- kin, a peasant of the village of Borki, and thirty-three years of age. Burgess Evfimiya Ivanovna Bochkova, forty- 54 RESURRECTION three years of age, and Burgess Katerina Mikhaylovna Maslova, twenty-seven years of age, are accused of hav- ing, on January 17, 18 8-, conspired to seize the money of Merchant Smyelkdv, to the sum of twenty-five hundred roubles, and to deprive Merchant Smyelkdv of his life, in order to conceal the traces of their crime, for which purpose they administered poison to him, which caused his death. This crime is provided for in Article 1455 of the Crimi- nal Code. In pursuance thereof, and on the basis of article so and so of the Statutes of Criminal Procedure, Peasant Simon Kartinkin, Evfimiya Bdchkova, and Bur- gess Katerina Maslova are subject to the jurisdiction of the circuit court and are to be tried by jury. Thus the secretary ended the reading of his long indict- ment, and, putting away the documents, sat down in his seat, passing both his hands through his hair. Everybody drew a sigh of rehef, with the pleasant conviction that now the investigation would begin, when everything would be cleared up, and justice would be satisfied. Nekhlyiidov alone did not experience that sensation : he was all absorbed in the contemplation of the terrible charges brought against Maslova, whom he had known as an innocent and charming girl ten years before. XI When the reading of the indictment was ended, the presiding judge, having consulted with the members, turned to Kartinkin with an expression which manifestly said that now they would most surely ascertain all the details of the case. " Peasant Simon Kartinkin," he began, leaning to his left. Simon Kartinkin got up, holding his hands close at his sides, and bending forward with his whole body, while his cheeks continued to move inaudibly. "You are accused of having, on January 17, 18 8-, in company with Evfimiya Bdchkova and Katerina Mas- lova, appropriated from Smyelkov's vahse his money, and then of having brought arsenic, and having persuaded Katerina Maslova to give it to Merchant Smyelkov to drink in wine, from which his death ensued. Do you plead guilty ? " he said, leaning to his right. " It is entirely impossible, because it is our duty to serve the guests — " " You will tell that later. Do you plead guilty ? " "Not at all. I only— " " You will say that later. Do you plead guilty ? " the presiding judge repeated calmly, but firmly. " I can't do that because — " Again the bailiff ran up to Simon Kartinkin, and stopped him, in a tragic whisper. The presiding judge, with an expression on his face as though this matter had been settled, changed the position 55 56 RESURRECTION of the elbow of that arm, in the hand of which he was holding a paper, and addressed Evfimiya Bochkova. " Evfimiya Bochkova, you are accused of having taken, on January 17, 188-, in company with Simon Kartinkin and Katerina Maslova, from Merchant Smyelkov's valise, his money and ring, and after dividing the property up among yourselves, of having tried to conceal your crime by giving Merchant Smyelkdv poison, from which his death ensued. Do you plead guilty ? " " I am guilty of nothing," the defendant spoke boldly and firmly. " I did not even go into his room — And as this lewd one went in there, she did it." " You will tell that later," the presiding judge said again, just as gently and firmly as before. " So you do not plead guilty ? " " I did not take the money, and I did not give him anything to drink, and I was not in his room. If I had been in there, I should have kicked her out." " You do not plead guilty ? " " Never." " Very well." " Katerina Maslova," began the presiding judge, address- ing the third defendant, " you are accused of having come from the public house to the room of ' Hotel Mauri- tania,' with the key to Merchant Smyelkov's valise, and of having taken from that valise money and a ring," he said, as though reciting a lesson learned by rote, leaning his ear to the member on the left, who was informing him that according to the list of the exhibits a certain vial was wanting, " of having taken from that valise money and a ring," repeated the judge, " and, after having di- vided up the stolen property, and having arrived with Merchant Smyelkov at ' Hotel Mauritania,' of having offered Smyelkov poisoned wine to drink, from the effects of which he died. Do you plead guilty ? " " I am not guilty of anything," she spoke rapidly. RESURRECTION 67 " As I have said before, so I say now : I did not take it, I did not, I did not ; and the ring he gave me himself." " You do not plead guilty to the charge of having taken the twenty-five hundred roubles ? " said the presiding judge. " I say I took nothing but the forty roubles." " Do you plead guilty to having put some powders into the wine of Merchant Smyelkov ? " " I do. Only I thought that they were sleeping-powders, and that nothing would happen to him from them. I had no intentions of doing wrong. I say before God, I did not wish his death," she said. " And so you do not plead guilty to having taken the money and ring of Merchant Smyelkov," said the presid- ing judge. " But you do plead guilty to the charge of having administered the powders ? " " I plead guilty to this, only I thought they were sleeping-powders. I gave them to him to put him to sleep ; I had no other intention." " Very well," said the presiding judge, evidently satis- fied with the result. " Tell, then, how it all happened," he said, leaning against the back of the chair, and placing both his hands on the table. " Tell everything as it hap- pened. You may be able to alleviate your condition by a frank confession." Maslova continued to gaze at the presiding judge, and to keep silent. " Tell how it all happened." " How it happened ? " Maslova suddenly began, in a hurried voice. " I arrived at the hotel ; I was taken to his room, and lie was already there, very drunk." She pronounced the word " he " with a peculiar expression of terror, opening her eyes wide. " I wanted to drive home, but he would not let me." She stopped, as though having suddenly lost the thread of what she was saying, or recalling something else. 58 RESURRECTION "Well, and then?" " And then ? I stayed there, and then drove home." At that time the associate prosecuting attorney half raised himself, leaning unnaturally on one elbow. " Do you wish to ask a question ? " said the presiding judge, and, on the associate prosecuting attorney's affirma- tive answer, he indicated by a gesture that he could put the question. " I should like to ask whether the defendant had been acquainted with Simon Kartinkin before that," said the associate prosecuting attorney, without looking at Mas- lova. Having put the question, he compressed his lips and frowned. The judge repeated the question. Maslova gazed frightened at the assistant prosecuting attorney. " With Simon ? Yes," she said. " I should like to know wherein the defendant's ac- quaintance with Kartinkin consisted, and whether they had frequent communications." " What this acquaintance consisted in ? He used to invite me to his room, but there was no other acquaint- ance," replied Maslova, restlessly turning her eyes from the associate prosecuting attorney to the presiding judge, and back again. "I should Hke to know why Kartinkin used to invite Maslova exclusively, and no other girls ? " said the asso- ciate prosecuting attorney, half-closing his eyes, and with a light Mephistophelian smile. " I do not know. How can I know ? " replied Maslova, casting a frightened look all around her, and for a moment resting her eyes on Nekhlyiidov. " He invited whom he pleased." " Has she recognized me ? " Nekhlyiidov thought in terror, feeling all his blood rush to his face ; but Maslova did not separate him from the rest, and, turning imme- RESUKRECTION 59 diately away from him, riveted her eyes on the assistant prosecuting attorney, with an expression of terror in her face. " The defendant, then, denies having had any close rela- tions with Kartinkin ? Very well. I have nothing else to ask." And the associate prosecuting attorney immediately re- moved his elbow from the desk, and began to write some- thing down. In reality he was not writing anything at all, but only running his pen over the letters of his brief, but he pretended to imitate the prosecuting attorneys and lawyers who, after a clever question, make a note in their speeches that are to crush their opponents. The presiding judge did not at once turn to the defend- ant, because he was just then asking the member in the spectacles whether he agreed to his putting the previously prepared and noted down questions. " What happened next ? " the presiding judge continued his inquiry. " I came back home," continued Maslova, looking more boldly at the judge, " and gave the money to the land- lady, and went to bed. I had barely fallen asleep when one of our girls, B^rta, woke me up with * Go, your mer- chant has come again ! ' I did not want to go out, but the madam told me to go. In the meantime, he" she again uttered this word with manifest terror, "he had been all the time treating our girls ; then he wanted to send for some more wine, but his money was all gone. The landlady did not trust him. So he sent me to his room ; and he told me where his money was, and how much I should take. So I went." The presiding judge was whispering something to the member on the left, and did not hear what Maslova was saying, but to show that he was listening, he repeated her last words. " You went. Well, and then ? " he said. 60 RESURRECTION " I went there and did as he had ordered me to do. I went to liis room. I did not go by myself, but called Simon Mikhaylovich, and her," she said, pointing to Bochkova. " She is lying ; I did not put my foot in there — " began Evfimiya Bochkova, but she was stopped. " I took out four red bills in their presence," Maslova continued, frowning, and without glancing at Bochkova. " Well, did not the defendant notice how much money there was in it, while she was taking the forty roubles ? " again asked the prosecuting attorney. Maslova shuddered, the moment the prosecuting attor- ney addressed her. She did not know how to explain her feeling, but she was sure he meant her harm. " I did not count, but I saw there were some hundred-rouble bills there." " The defendant saw hundred-rouble bills, — I have nothhig else to ask." " Well, so you brought the money ? " the presiding judge went on to ask, looking at his watch. " I did." " Well, and then ? " asked the presiding judge. " Then he took me with him once more," said Maslova. "And how did you give him the wine with the powder ? " asked the judge. " How ? I poured it into the wine, and gave it to him." " Why did you give it to him ? " Without answering the question, she heaved a deep and heavy sigh. " He would not let me go," she said, after a moment's silence. " I got tired of him, so I went into the corridor, and said to Simon Mikhaylovich, ' If he'd only let me go, — I am so tired.' And Simon Mikhaylovich said, ' We are tired of him, too. Let us give him some sleep- ing-powders ; that will put him to sleep, and then you RESURRECTION 61 will get away.' And I said, ' Very well ! ' I thought it was a harmless powder. He gave me a paper. I went in, and he was lying behind a screen, and asked me at once to let him have some cognac. I took from the table a bottle of fine-champagne, filled two glasses, — one for myself, and one for him, — and poured the powder into his glass. I should never have given it, if I had known what it was." " Well, how did you get possession of the ring ? " asked the presiding judge. " He himself had made me a present of it." " When did he give it to you ? " " When we came to his room, I wanted to leave, and he struck me upon the head, and broke my comb. I grew angry, and wanted to go away. He took the ring off' his finger and gave it to me, asking me to stay," she said. Just then the associate prosecuting attorney half-raised himself, and, with the same feignedly naive look, asked the judge's permission to put a few more questions. His request being granted, he bent his head over his em- broidered collar, and asked : " I should like to know how long the defendant re- mained in Merchant Smyelkov's room." Again Maslova was overcome by terror, and, her eyes restlessly flitting from the associate prosecuting attorney to the presiding judge, she muttered, hurriedly : " I do not remember how long." " Well, does the defendant remember whether she called elsewhere in the hotel upon coming out of Merchant Smyelkov's room ? " Maslova thought awhile. " I went into the adjoining room, — it was unoccupied," she said. " Why did you step in there ? " said the associate prosecuting attorney, enthusiastically, and addressing her directly. 62 RESURRECTION " I went in to fix myself, and to wait for a cab." " And was Kartinkin in the room with the defendant, or not ? " " He came in, too." " What did he come in for ? " "There was some of the merchant's fine-champagne left, so we drank it together." " Ah, you drank it in company. Very well." "Did the defendant have any conversation with Simon ? " Maslova suddenly frowned, grew red in her face, and rapidly said: "What I said? Nothing. I have told everything that took place. I know nothing else. Do with me what you please. I am not guilty, and that's all." " I have nothing else," the prosecuting attorney said to the presiding judge, and, unnaturally raismg Ms shoulders, began swiftly to note down in the brief of his speech the confession of the defendant that she had been in an un- occupied room with Simon. There ensued a moment's silence. " Have you notliing else to say ? " " I have said everything," she declared, with a sigh, and sat down again. Thereupon the presiding judge made a note of some- thing, and, upon having listened to a communication which the member on the left had made to him in a whisper, he announced a recess of ten minutes in the session, and hurriedly rose and left the room. The con- sultation between the presiding judge and the member on his left, the tall, bearded man, with the large, kindly eyes, consisted in the latter's information that his stomach was slightly out of order, and that he wished to massage him- self a little and swallow some drops. It was this that he had told the presiding judge, and the judge acceded to his request and granted a ten minutes' recess. RESUEKECTION 63 Right after the judges rose the jurors, the lawyers, and the witnesses, and, with the pleasurable sensation of having performed a part of an important duty, they moved to and fro. Nekhlyudov went into the consultation room, and there sat down at the window. XII. Yes, this was Katyusha. Nekhlyudov's relations with Katyusha had been like this : Nekhlyudov saw Katyusha for the first time when, as a third-year student at the university, he passed the summer with his aunts, working on his thesis about the ownership of land. His vacations he usually passed with his mother and sister on his mother's suburban estate near Moscow ; but in that particular year his sister was married, and his mother went abroad to a watering- place. Nekhlyudov had to work on his essay, and so he decided to stay during the summer with his aunts. There, in the depth of the country, it was quiet, and there were no distractions ; and the aunts tenderly loved their nephew and heir, and he loved them and their old-fashioned ways and simplicity of life. During that summer Nekhlyudov experienced that rap- turous mood which comes over a youth when he for the first time discovers, not by the indications of others, but from within, all the beauty and significance of Hfe and all the importance of the work which is to be performed in it by each man ; when he sees the endless perfectibility of himself and of the whole universe ; and when he de- votes himself to that perfectibility not only with the hope, but with the full conviction of being able to attain the perfection of which he has been dreaming. During that year, while attending his lectures, he had had a chance of reading Spencer's Social Statics, and Spencer's reflec- tions on the ownership of land had produced a strong 64 RESURRECTION 65 impression upon him, especially since he himself was the son of a large proprietress. His father had not been rich, but his mother had received about ten thousand desyatinas of land as a dowry. It was then the first time that he had perceived the cruelty and injustice of private owner- ship, and, being one of those men to whom a sacrifice in the name of moral demands affords the highest spiritual enjoyment, he had decided not to make use of his right of the ownership of land, and had given away to the peas- ants the land which he had inherited from his father. And it was on this subject that he was writing his essay. His life on the estate of his aunts, during that summer, ran like this : he rose very early, sometimes at three o'clock, and before sunrise, frequently before the morning mist had lifted, went to bathe in the river at the foot of a hill, and returned home while the dew was still on the grass and the flowers. • At times, he seated himself, soon after drinking his coffee, to write on his essay, or to read up the sources for his essay ; but very frequently, instead of reading or writing, he went away from the house and wandered over fields and through woods. Before dinner he fell asleep somewhere in the shade of the garden ; then, at table, he amused his aunts with his jollity ; then he rode on horseback, or went out rowing, and in the evening he read again, or sat with his aunts, playing solitaire. Frequently he could not sleep during the night, especially when the moon was shining, because he was overflowing with a billowing joy of life, and so, instead of sleeping, he would stroll through the garden, dreaming and thinking. Thus he had quietly and happily passed the first month of his sojourn on the estate of his aunts, without paying the shghtest attention to the half-chambermaid, half-edu- cated, black-eyed, swift-footed Katyiisha. At that time, Nekhlyudov, who had been brought up under his mother's wing, though nineteen years of age, was an entirely innocent youth. He dreamed of woman 66 RESURRECTION only as of a wife. But all the women who, according to his opinion, could not be his wife, were people and not women, so far as he was concerned. But on Ascension day of that summer a neighbour happened to call with her chil- dren, two young ladies and a gymnasiast, and a young artist, of peasant origin, who was staying at their house. After tea they began to play the " burning " catching- game on the lawn before the house, which had already been mowed down. Katyusha was of the company. After several changes of places Nekhlyudov had to run with Katyusha. It was always a pleasure for Nekhlyudov to see Katyusha, but it had never occurred to him that there could be any special relations between them. " Well, I sha'n't be able to catch them," said the " burn- ing," jolly artist, who was very swift on his short and crooked, but strong peasant legs. " Maybe they will stumble ! " " No, you will not catch us ! " " One, two, three ! " They clapped their hands three times. With difficulty restraining her laughter, Katyusha rapidly exchanged places with Nekhlyudov, and, with her strong, rough, little hand pressing his large hand, she started running to the left, rustling her starched skirt. Nekhlyudov was running fast, and, as he did not wish to be caught by the artist, he raced as fast as his legs would carry him. As he looked around he saw the artist close at her heels, and she, moving her lithe young legs, did not submit to him, but got away to his left. In front was a clump of lilac bushes, behind which no one was running, and Katyusha, looking back at Nekhlyudov, made a sign with her head to him to join her behind the bushes. He understood her, and ran back of the clump. But here, back of the lilac bushes, there was a small ditch overgrown with nettles, of which he did not know ; he stumbled into it, and in his fall stung his hands with the RESURRECTION 67 nettles, and wet them in the evening dew ; but he imme- diately got up, laughing at himself, and ran out on a clear spot. Katyusha, gleaming with a smile and with her eyes as black as moist blackberries, was running toward him. They met and clasped each other's hands, " The nettles have stung you, I think," she said, adjust- ing her braid with her free hand ; she breathed heavily and, smiling, looked straight at him with her upturned eyes. " I did not know there was a ditch there," he said, him- self smiling, and not letting her hand out of his. She moved up to him, and he, himself not knowing how it all happened, moved his face up to hers ; she did not turn away, and he pressed her hand more firmly, and kissed her on the lips. " I declare ! " she muttered, and, with a swift motion freeing her hand, ran away from him. She ran up to the lilac bushes, picked off two bunches of withering white lilacs, and striking her heated face with them and looking around at him, waved her hands in a lively manner and went back to the players. From that time the relations between Nekhlyudov and Katyusha were changed for those other relations which are established between an innocent young man and an equally innocent young girl, who are attracted to each other. The moment Katyusha entered the room, or if he saw her white apron from a distance, everything seemed to him as though illuminated by the sunlight, everything became more interesting, more cheerful, more significant, and life was more joyful. She experienced the same. It was not merely Katyusha's presence and nearness that produced that effect upon Nekhlyudov ; it was also pro- duced by the mere consciousness that there was a Ka- tyusha, just as she was affected by the consciousness of his 68 KESUKRECTION existence. If Nekhlyiidov received an unpleasant letter from his mother, or if his essay did not proceed satisfac- torily, or if he felt an inexphcable youthful sadness, — it was enough for him to think of Katyusha's existence, and to see her, in order that all that should be dispersed. Katyusha had many household cares, but she generally had time to spare, and in such moments she read books ; Nekhlyiidov gave her the works of Dostoevski and of Turg(^uev, which he himself had just finished reading. Nothing gave her so much pleasure as Turg^nev's " The Calm." They conversed with each other by fits, while meeting in the corridor, in the balcony, in the yard, and sometimes in the room of the aunts' old chambermaid, Matr^na Pavlovna, with whom Katyusha was Hving, and to whose room Nekhlyudov used to go to drink unsweet- ened tea. The conversations which took place in the presence of Matr^na Pavlovna were the most enjoyable. It was much worse when they talked to each other with- out witnesses. Their eyes at once began to say something different, something much more important than what the lips were saying ; the lips pursed, and they felt uneasy, and hastened to get away from each other. These relations existed between Nekhlyiidov and Ka- tyusha during the whole time of his first visit at his aunts*. They noticed these relations, were frightened, and even wrote about them to Princess El^na Ivanovna, Nekhlyii- dov's mother. Aunt Mariya Ivanovna was afraid lest Dmitri should have a liaison with Katyusha. But her fears were groundless : Nekhlyudov, without knowing it, loved Katyusha, as only innocent people love, and his love was his main shield against his fall, and against hers. He not only had no desire of a physical possession of her, but was even terrified at the thought of such a possi- bility. There was much more reason for the fears of poetical Sofya Ivanovna, lest Dmitri, with his uncom- promising and determined character, being in love with RESURRECTIOIT 69 the girl, should make her his wife, without paying any attention to her origin and position. If Nekhlyudov had then clearly been conscious of his love for Katyusha, and especially if they had tried to convince him that he could not and should not by any means unite his fate with that of the girl, it might have easily happened that he, with his customary directness in everything, would have de- cided that there were no urgent reasons against marrying a girl, whoever she might be, if he loved her. But his aunts did not tell him their fears, and so he departed without confessing his love to Katyusha. He was convinced that his feeling for Katyusha was only one of the manifestations of those feelings of the joy of hving, which at that time filled all his being, and which was also shared by that dear, merry girl. As he was leaving, and Katyusha, standing on the porch with his aunts, saw him off with her black, slightly cross eyes, full of tears, he was conscious of leaving behind him something beautiful and dear, which would never be repeated. And he felt very sad. " Good-bye, Katyusha, I thank you for everything," he said, across Sofya Ivanovna's cap, seating himself in the vehicle. " Good-bye, Dmitri Ivanovich," she said, in her pleasant, soothing voice, and, restraining her tears, which filled her eyes, ran into the vestibule, where she could weep at her ease. XIII. After that Nekhlyudov did not see Katyusha for three years. And he saw her only when, having been promoted to the rank of a commissioned officer, he, on his way to join the army, came to see his aunts ; he was then a different man from what he had been three years before. At that time he had been an honest, self-sacrificing youth, ready to devote himself to any good cause ; but now he was a dissolute, refined egotist, who loved only his own enjoyment. Then, God's world had presented itself to him as a mystery, which he had joyfully and rapturously tried to solve ; but now, in his new life, everything was simple and clear, and was defined by those conditions of life in which he happened to be. Then, he had regarded as necessary and important a com- munion with Nature and with men who had lived, thought, and felt before him (philosophy, poetry) ; now human institutions and communion with comrades were the necessary and important things. Then, woman had presented herself to him as a mysterious and enchanting creature, — enchanting by dint of her very mysterious- ness; now, the significance of woman, of every woman, except such as were of his family, or the wives of his friends, was quite definite; woman was one of the best instruments of tasted enjoyment. Then, money had not been needed, and one-third of the money offered him by his mother had sufficed, and it had been possible to re- nounce the land left him by his father in favour of his peasants ; now, the fifteen hundred roubles granted him every month by his mother were not enough, and he had 70 RESURRECTION 71 had some unpleasant encounters with her on account of money. Then, he had regarded his spiritual being as his real ego ; now, he regarded his healthy, virile, animal ego as his actual personality. All this terrible change had taken place in him only because he had quit believing himself, and had begun to believe others. The reason he had quit believing himself and had begun believing others was because he had found it hard to live by beUeving himself : while believing him- self, every question had to be solved not in favour of his own animal ego, in search of frivolous enjoyments, but nearly always against himself ; whereas beheving others, there was nothing to solve, — everything had been solved before, and not in favour of the spiritual, but of the animal ego. More than that : while he believed himself, he was constantly subjected to the judgment of others ; while beheving others, he met the approval of those who surrounded him. Formerly, when Nekhlyiidov had been thinking, read- ing, and speaking about God, about truth, about wealth, about poverty, — all his neighbours had considered this out of place and even ridiculous, and his mother and his 'aunt had called him " iiotre cher philosophe " with good- natured irony ; but when he read novels, told nasty anecdotes, drove to the French theatre to witness ridicu- lous vaudevilles, and mirthfully narrated them, he was praised and applauded by everybody. When he had regarded it as necessary to limit his needs, and had worn an old overcoat, everybody had considered this an odd and boastful originahty ; but when he spent large sums on the chase, or on the appointments of his extremely luxurious cabinet, everybody praised his good taste and presented costly things to him. When he had been chaste and had intended to remain so until his marriage, his relatives had been afraid for his health, and even his mother was not grieved, but, on the contrary, rejoiced. 72 EESURRECTION when she heard that he was a real man and had won a certain French woman away from his comrade. But the princess could not think without horror of the incident with Katyusha, — namely, that it might have occurred to him to marry her. Similarly, when Nekhlyiidov, upon having reached his majority, had given away to the peasants the small estate inherited from his father, because he had considered the ownership of land to be an injustice, this deed of his had horrified his mother and his relatives and formed a constant subject of reproach and ridicule for all his kin. They never stopped telling him that the peasants who had received the land had not only not become any richer, but that, on the contrary, they had been impover- ished, through the establishment of three dram-shops and from their cessation from work. But when Nekhlyiidov, upon entering the Guards, had gambled away so much money in the company of distinguished comrades that El^ua Ivanovna was compelled to draw money away from the capital, she was hardly grieved, for she con- sidered it to be natural and even good to have this virus inoculated early in youth and in good society. At first Nekhlyiidov had struggled, but it was a hard struggle, because everything which he had considered good, while beheving himself, was regarded as bad by others, and, vice versa, everything which he, believing himself, had regarded as bad, was considered good by all the people who surrounded him. The end of it was that Nekhlyiidov succumbed, ceased believing himself, and be- gan to believe others. At first this renunciation of self had been unpleasant, but this disagreeable sensation lasted a very short time, and soon Nekhlyiidov, who in the meantime had begun to smoke and drink wine, no longer experienced this heavy sensation, but rather a great relief. Nekhlyudov surrendered himself, with all the passion RESURRECTION 73 of his nature, to this new life, which was approved by all his neighbours, and drowned that voice in himself that demanded something quite different. This had begun after his arrival in St. Petersburg and was an accom- plished fact after he had entered upon his military service. Mihtary service in general corrupts people by putting the military men into a condition of complete indolence, that is, by giving them no intelligent and useful work to do, and by liberating them from common human obliga- tions, in place of which it substitutes the conventional honour of army, uniform, and flag, and by investing them, on the one hand, with an unlimited power over other people, and, on the other, by subjecting them to servile humility before their superiors. But when to this corruption of the military service in general, with its honour of the army and flag, and its legalization of violence and murder, is added the seduc- tion of wealth and the communion with the imperial family, as is the case in the select regiments of the Guards, in which only rich and aristocratic ofiicers serve, this cor- ruption reaches in people who are under its influence a condition of absolute insanity of egotism. It was in such an insanity of egotism that Nekhlyildov was from the time when he entered the military service and began to live in the manner of his comrades. There was no other work to do but to put on a uniform which had been beautifully made and brushed, not by himself, but by others, and a helmet and weapons, which had also been made and burnished and handed to him by others ; to ride on a beautiful charger, which somebody else had brought up, exercised, and groomed ; to go thus to instruction or to parade, with people similarly ac- coutred, and to gallop, and sway his sword, to shoot, and teach others to shoot. There was no other occupation, and distinguished dignitaries, young and old men, and the Tsar and his suite, not only approved of this occupa- 74 RESURRECTION tion, but even praised and rewarded it. In addition to this, it was regarded good and proper to squander the money, which came from one knew not where, to come together in the clubs of the officers or in the most expen- sive restaurants to eat, or, more particularly, to drink ; then to the theatre, to balls, and to women, and then again riding, swaymg of sabres, galloping, and squander- ing of money, and wine, cards, and women. Such a life has a peculiarly corrupting influence upon the mihtary, because if any man, not belonging to the army, should lead such an existence, he could not help feeling ashamed of it to the bottom of his heart. But mihtary people think that it cannot be otherwise, and brag and are proud of such a life, particularly during war time, just as had been the case with Nekhlyudov, who had entered the army immediately after the declaration of the war with Turkey. " We are ready to sacrifice our lives in war, and therefore such a careless, gay life is not only permissible, but even necessary for us. And we do live such a life." Such were the thoughts which Kekhlyudov dimly thought during that period of his life ; he experienced during that time the rapture of liberation from moral barriers, which he had erected for himself before, and he continuously remained in a chronic state of egotistical insanity. He was in that condition when, three years later, he visited his aunts. XIV. Nekhlyudov made a call upon his aunts because their estate was on the way to the regiment, which was in advance of liim, and because they had earnestly requested it, and, chiefly, in order to see Katyusha. It may be that in the bottom of his heart there was already an evil intention in regard to Katyusha, which his unfettered animal man kept whispering to him, but he was not con- scious of this intention, and simply wanted to visit the places where he had been so happy before, and to see the somewhat funny, but dear and good-hearted aunts, who always surrounded him with an invisible atmosphere of love and transport, and to look at dear Katyusha, of whom he had such an agreeable recollection. He arrived at the end of March, on Good Friday, while the roads were exceedingly bad and the rain came down in sheets, so that he was wet to his skin and chilled, but brisk and wide awake, as he always was during that time. " I wonder whether she is still here ! " he thought, as he drove into the snow-covered old coun- try courtyard with its brick wall. He had expected her to come running out on the porch upon hearing the tin- kling of his bell, but on the servants' porch there came out only two barefooted old women with their dresses tucked up and buckets in their hands. They were evi- dently busy washing floors. Nor was she at the main entrance ; none came out but lackey Tikhon, in an apron, who, no doubt, was also busy cleaning up. In the ante- chamber he met Sofya Ivanovna, in a silk dress and a cap, who had come out to meet him. 75 76 EESUKKECTION " Now, it is nice that you have come ! " said Sdfya Ivanovna, kissing him, " Mariya is a httle Ul ; she was tired out in church. We have been to communion." " I congratulate you, Aunt Sofya," said Nekhlyudov, kissing Sdfya Ivanovna's hands. " Forgive me for having wet you." " Go to your room. You are dreadfully wet. I see you now have a moustache — Katyusha ! Katyusha ! Quick, get him some coffee." " Right away ! " was heard the familiar, pleasant voice from the corridor. Nekhlyudov's heart gave a joyful leap. " She is here ! " And he felt as though the sun had come out from behind the clouds. Nekhlyudov merrily followed Tikhon to his old room to change his clothes. Nekhlyudov wanted to ask Tikhon about Katyusha — how she was, and whether she was going to marry soon. But Tikhon was so respectful and, at the same time, so stern, and so firndy insisted upon pouring water from the pitcher upon Nekhlyudov's hands, that he did not have the courage to ask him about Katyusha, and inquired only about his grandchildren, about the old stallion, and about the watch-dog, Polkau. All were well and hale, except Polkan, who had gotten the hydrophobia the year before. He had barely thrown off his damp clothes, and was dressing himself, when he heard hurried steps, and some- body knocked at the door. Nekhlyudov recognized the steps and the knock at the door. Nobody walked or knocked that way but she. He threw over him his damp overcoat, and went up to the door. " Come in ! " It was she, Katyusha. The same Katyusha, only more charming than before. Her smiling, naive, slightly squint- ing, black eyes were as upturned as before. She wore, as KESURRECTION 77 formerly, a clean white apron. She brought from his aunts a cake of scented soap, fresh from the wrapper, aud two towels, one a large Eussian towel, and the other a towel of a rough texture. The untouched soap, with the letters distinctly marked upon it, aud the towels, and she herself, — everything was equally clean, fresh, untouched, agreeable. Her sweet, firm, red lips pursed as before from uncontrollable joy, when she beheld him. "I greet you upon your arrival, Dmitri Ivanovich!" she uttered with difficulty, and her face was all covered with a blush. " I greet thee — you," he did not know whether to say " thou " or " you " to her, and he blushed, just like her. " Are you alive and well ? " " Thank God. Your aunt has sent you your favour- ite rose-scented soap," placing the soap on the table, and the towels over the back of an armchair. " He has his own," said Tikhon, defending his guest's independence, and pointing proudly at Nekhlyiidov's large open toilet bag, with its silver lids and an immense mass of bottles, brushes, pomatums, perfumes, and all kinds of toilet articles. " Thank aunty for me. I am so glad I have come," said Nekhlyiidov, feeling that there was the same light and gentleness in his heart that used to be there in former days. She only smiled in return to these words, and went out. His aunts, who had always loved Nekhlyiidov, this time met him with even greater expressions of joy than usual. Dmitri was going to the war, where he might be wounded, or killed. This touched his aunts. Nekhlyiidov had so arranged his journey as to be able to pass but one day with his aunts; but, upon seeing Katyiisha, he consented to stay until past Easter which was to be in two days, and so he telegraphed to his 78 RESURRECTION friend and comrade Sh^nbok, whom he was to have met at Odessa, to have him also stop at his aunts'. Nekhlyiidov felt the old feeling toward Katyusha, from the first day he saw her. Just as formerly, he was not able even now to see with equanimity Katyusha's white apron, nor to restrain a paug of joy when he heard her steps, her voice, her laugh, nor without a soothing sensation to look into her eyes, which were as black as moist black- berries, especially when she smiled, nor, above all, could he help seeing with embarrassment that she blushed every time she met him. He felt that he was in love, but not as formerly, when tliis love had been a mystery to liim and he did not dare acknowledge that he was in love, and when he had been convinced that it was not possible to love more than once ; now he was consciously in love, and he was glad of it ; he had a dim idea what this love was, though he concealed it from himself, and what might come of it. In Nekhlyiidov, as in all people, there were two men ; one the spiritual man, who sought his well-being in such matters only as could at the same time do other people some good, and the other the animal man, who was look- ing out only for his own well-being, ready for it to sacri- fice the well-being of the whole world. During that period of his insanity of egotism, induced by his Peters- burgian and military life, the animal man was ruling within him, and had completely suppressed the spiritual man. But, upon seeing Katyusha and becoming actuated by the same feeling which he had had for her before, the spiritual man raised his head, and began to assert his rights. During the two days preceding Easter an internal struggle, though unconscious on his part, agitated him incessantly. In the depth of his soul he knew that he ought to depart, that there was no reason why he should stay at his aunts' any longer, and that nothing good would KESUKRECTION 79 come of it ; but he experienced such an agreeable and joyful sensation that he did not speak of it to himself, and remained. On the Saturday evening preceding Easter Sunday, the priest, with the deacon and the sexton, having with diffi- culty journeyed in a sleigh over puddles and dirt in order to make the three verstc which separated the church from the house of his aunts, arrived to serve the matins. During the matins, which were attended by Nekhlyiidov, his aunts, and the servants, he did not take his eyes from Katyusha, who was standing at the door and bring- ing the censers ; then he gave the Easter kiss to the priest and his aunts, and was on the point of retiring, when he saw in the corridor Matr^ua Pavlovna, Mariya Ivanovna's old chambermaid, and Katyusha getting ready to drive to church, in order to get the bread and Easter cakes blessed. " I will go with them," he thought. The road to the church was passable neither for wheel carriages, nor for sleighs, and so Nekhlyudov, who ordered things at his aunts' as though he were at home, told them to saddle the riding stallion for him, and, instead of going to bed, dressed himself in his gorgeous uniform with the tightly fitting riding pantaloons, threw his overcoat over his shoulders, and rode on the overfed, stout old stallion, that did not stop neighing, in the darkness, through puddles and snow, to church. XV. I This matin then remained during Nekhlyiidov's whole life as one of his brightest and strongest memories. The service had already begun, when, having groped through the dense darkness, lighted up occasionally by patches of snow, and having splashed through the water, he rode into the yard of the church on the stallion, that kept pricking his ears at the sight of the little street- lamps that were burning all around the church. Having recognized Mariya Ivanovna's nephew, the peasants took him to a dry place, where he could dis- mount, tied his horse, and led him into the church. The church was full of people celebrating the holiday. On the right were the old men, in home-made caftans and bast shoes and clean wliite leg-rags, and the young men, in new cloth caftans, girded with brightly coloured belts, and in boots. On the left were the women, in bright silk kerchiefs, plush vests, with brilliant red sleeves and blue, green, red, and variegated skirts, and small boots with steel heel-plates. The modest old women, in white kerchiefs, gray caftans, old skirts, and leather or new bast shoes, were standing back of them. Here and there, on both sides, stood the dressed-up children, with oily heads. The peasants were crossing themselves and bowing, tossing their heads ; the women, especially the old women, riveting their faded eyes upon one image with its tapers, firmly pressed tlieir joined fingers against the kerchief, the shoulders, and the abdomen, and, saying something under their breath, were standing and making 80 RESURRECTION 81 low obeisances, or were kneeling. The children imitated their elders, and prayed attentively, as long as they were watched. The golden iconostasis was resplendent from the tapers that on all sides surrounded the large gilt candles. The candelabrum was aglow with its candles ; from the choir were heard the joyous voices of the amateur choristers, with the roaring basses, and the descants of the boys. Nekhlyiidov went to the front. In the middle stood the aristocracy : a landed proprietor, with his wife and his son in a sailor blouse, the country judge, the tele- graphist, a merchant in boots with smooth boot-legs, the village elder with a decoration, and to the right of the ambo, back of the proprietress, Matrena Pavlovna, in a short lilac dress and white fringed shawl, and Katyusha, in a white dress with tucks, blue belt, and red ribbon on her black hair. Everything was holiday-like, solemn, cheerful, and beautiful: the priests in their bright silver vestments, with their golden crosses, and the deacon and sextons in their gala silver and gold copes, and the dressed-up ama- teur choristers, with their oily hair, and the gay dancing tunes of the holiday songs, and the continuous bless- ing of the people by the clergy with their triple, flower- bedecked candles, with the ever repeated exclamations, " Christ is arisen ! Christ is arisen ! " — everything was beautiful, but better than all was Katyusha, in her white dress and blue belt, with the red ribbon on her head, and with her sparkling, rapturous eyes. Nekhlyiidov was conscious of her seeing him, though she did not turn around. He noticed that as he passed by her, up to the altar. He had nothing to say to her, but he made up something and said, when abreast of her : " Aunty said that she would break her fast after the late mass." Her young blood, as always at the sight of him, flushed 82 RESURRECTION her sweet face, and her black eyes, smiling and rejoicing, looked naively upwards and rested on Nekhlyudov. " I know," she said, smiling. Just then a sexton, with a brass coffee-pot, making his way through the crowd, came past Katyusha, and without looking at her, caught the skirt of his cope in her dress. The sexton had done so evidently in his attempt to express his respect for Nekhlyudov by making a circle around him. Nekhlyudov could not understand how it was this sexton did not comprehend that everything that was there, or anywhere else in the world, existed only for Katyusha, and that one could disregard anything else in the world but her, because she was the centre of every- thing. For her gleamed the gold of the iconostasis, and burnt all these candles in the candelabrum and in the candlesticks ; for her were the joyous refrains, " The Easter of the Lord, rejoice, people ! " Everything good that was in the world was only for her. And Katyusha under- stood, so he thought, that it was all for her. So it seemed to Nekhlyudov, as he looked at her stately form in the white dress with its tucks, and upon her concentrated, joyful countenance, by the expression of which he could see that the same that was singing in his heart was sing- ing also in hers. In the interval between the early and late mass, Nekh- lyudov went out of the church. The people stepped aside before him and bowed. Some recognized him, and some asked, " Who is he ? " He stopped at the door. Mendicants surrounded him : he distributed the small change which he had in his purse, and walked down the steps of the entrance. It was now sufficiently light to distinguish objects, but the sun was not yet up. The people were seated on the churchyard mounds. Katyusha had remained in the church, and Nekhlyudov stopped, waiting for her to come out. RESURRECTION 83 The people still kept coming out, and, clattering with their hobnails on the flagstones, walked down the steps and scattered in the yard and cemetery, A decrepit old man, Marya Ivanovna's pastry-baker, with trembling head, stopped Nekhlyudov, to give him the Easter greeting, and his old wife, with wrinkled neck beneath her silk kerchief, took out of a handkerchief a saffron-yellow egg, and gave it to him. Then also came up a young, muscular peasant, in a new sleeveless coat and green belt. " Christ is arisen ! " he said, with laughing eyes, and, moving up toward Nekhlyudov, wafted an agreeable peasant odour upon him and, tickling him with his curly beard, three times kissed him in the middle of his mouth with his own strong, fresh lips. While Nekhlyudov was kissing the peasant and receiv- ing from him a dark brown egg, there appeared the shot dress of Matr^na Pavlovna, and the sweet black head with the red ribbon. She espied him above the heads of those who were walking in front of her, and he saw her countenance gleaming with joy. Matr(5na Pavlovna and Katyusha stopped before the door, to give alms to the mendicants. A beggar, with a healed-over scar in place of a nose, went up to Katyusha. She took something out of her handkerchief, gave it to him, and, without expressing the least disgust, — - on the contrary, with the same joyful sparkle in her eyes, — kissed him three times. While she was giving the beggar the Easter kiss, her eyes met Nekhlyiidov's glance. Her eyes seemed to ask : " Am I doing right ? " " Yes, yes, my dear, everything is good, everything is beautiful, I love it." They walked down the steps, and he walked over to her. He did not mean to exchange the Easter kiss with her, but only to be in her neighbourhood. 84 RESURRECTION " Christ is arisen ! " said Matr^na Pavlovna, bending her head and smiling, with an intonation which said that on that day all were equal, and, wiping her mouth with her rolled up handkerchief, offered him her lips. " Verily," replied Nekhlyiidov, kissing her. He looked around for Katyusha. She burst into a blush, and immediately v/ent up to him. " Christ is arisen, Dmitri Ivanovich ! " " Verily He arose," he said. They kissed twice and stopped, as though considering whether it was necessary to proceed, and having decided in the affirmative, kissed for the third time, and both smiled. " You will not go to the priest ? " asked Nekhlyiidov. " No, Dmitri Ivanovich, we shall stay here," said Katyusha, breathing with her full breast, as though after a labour of joy, and looking straight at him with her submissive, chaste, loving, slightly squinting eyes. In the love between a man and a woman there is always a minute when that love reaches its zenith, when consciousness, reason, and feeling are dormant. Such a moment was for Nekhlyiidov the night preceding Easter Sunday. As he now recalled Katyusha, this moment alone, of all the situations in which he had seen her, loomed up and effaced all the others : her black, smooth, shining little head, her white dress with the tucks, chastely embracing her stately figure and small bosom, and that blush, and those tender, sparkling eyes, and in her whole being two main characteristics, — the purity of the chastity of love, not only toward him, he knew that, but of her love for all and everything, not only for the good that there was in the world, but even for the beggar, whom she had kissed. He knew that she had that love, because he was conscious of it on that night and on that morning, as he was conscious that in that love he became one with her. RESUKRECTION 85 Ah, if all that had stopped at the feeling which he had experienced that night ! " Yes, all that terrible work was done after that night of Easter Sunday ! " he now thought, sitting at the window in the jury-room. XVI. After returning from churcli, Nekhlyiidov broke his fast with his aunts, and, to brace himself, followed the habit which he had acquired in the army, and drank some brandy and wine, and went to his room, where he fell asleep in his clothes. He was awakened by a knock at the door. He knew by the knock that it was she. He arose, rubbing his eyes and stretching himself. " Katyusha, is it you ? Come in," he said, rising. • She half-opened the door. " Dinner is served," she said. She was in the same white dress, but without the ribbon in her hair. As she glanced into his eyes, she beamed, as though she had announced something very joyful to him. " I shall be there at once," he said, taking up the comb to smooth his hair. She lagged behind for a minute. He noticed it and, throwing away the comb, moved toward her. But she immediately turned around and walked with her custom- ary light, rapid gait over the corridor carpet-strip. "What a fool I am!" Nekhlyildov said to himself, " Why did I not keep her ? " And he ran at full speed after her through the corridor. He did not know himself what it was he wanted of her ; but it seemed to him that when she had entered his room, he ought to have done what everybody does under such circumstances, and he had failed to do. " Katyusha, wait," he said. 86 RESURRECTION 87 She looked back. " What do you wish ? " she said, stopping. " Nothing, only — " And making an effort over himself, and recalling how other men would do in his situation, he put his arm around Katyusha's waist. She stopped and looked him in the eyes. " Don't do that, Dmitri Ivanovich, — don't do that," she muttered, blushing and with tears, and with her rough, strong hand pushed away the embracing arm. Nekhlyiidov let her go, and for a moment felt' not only uneasy and ashamed, but disgusted with himself. He ought to have beheved himself, but he did not understand that this uneasiness and shame were the best qualities of his soul begging to be freed, whereas he, on the contrary, thought that it was his stupidity that was speaking within him, and that it was necessary to do as everybody else did. He caught up with her a second time, again embraced her, and kissed her on the neck. This kiss was not at all like those first two kisses : the first, the unconscious kiss behind the lilac bush, and the other, in the morning, at church. This kiss was terrible, and she felt it. " What are you doing ? " she cried, in such a voice as though he had irretrievably broken something endlessly valuable, and ran away from him at full speed. He arrived in the dining-room. The dressed-up aunts, the doctor, and a lady from the neighbourhood were stand- ing near the appetizer. Everything was as usual, but in Nekhlyudov's soul there was a storm. He did not under- stand a word of what was said to him, answered to ques- tions at haphazard, and only thought of Katyusha, recalling the sensation of that last kiss, w^hen he had caught up with her in the corridor. He was not able to think of anything else. Whenever she entered the room, he, without looking at her, was with all his being conscious 88 RESURRECTION of her presence, and had to make an effort over himself in order not to gaze at her. After dinner he at once went back to his room, and long paced up and down in the greatest agitation, listen- ing to all the sounds in the house, and waiting to hear her steps. The animal man which was dwelling within him not only raised his head, hut had trampled underfoot the spiritual man which he had been during his first visit, and even on that morning while at church ; and now that terrible animal man ruled all alone in his soul. Though Nekhlyiidov lay all the time in watch for Katyusha, he did not succeed once during that day in seeing her alone. She obviously avoided him. But in the evening it so happened that she had to go into the room adjoining the one which he occupied. The doctor was to remain over- night, and Katyusha had to make the bed for him. Hear- ing her steps, Nekhlyiidov, stepping lightly and holding his breath, as though getting ready to commit a crime, walked up behind her. Having put both her hands into a pillow-sHp and hold- ing the comers of a pillow, she looked back at him and smiled, not a gay and joyful smile, but one expressive of fear and pity. This smile seemed to tell him that that which he was doing was bad. He stopped for a moment. A struggle was still possible. Though feebly, the voice of genuine love was still audible in him, which told him of her, of her feelings, of her life, but another voice kept say- ing to him, " Look out, or you will lose your enjoyment, your happiness." And this second voice drowned the first. He went up to her with firmness. And a terrible, uncontrollable, animal feeling took possession of him. Without letting her out of his embrace, Nekhlyiidov seated her on the bed, and, feeling that something else had to be done, sat down near her. " Dmitri Ivanovich, my dear, please let me go," she said, in a pitiful voice. " Matr^na Pavlovna is coming ! " she EESURKECTION 89 cried, tearing herself away ; there was, really, some one coming toward the door. " Then I will come to you in the night," he muttered. " You are alone ? " " What are you saying ? Never ! You must not," she spoke with her lips only, but her whole agitated being spoke something quite different. The person who came to the door was Matr^na Pav- lovna. She entered the door with a sheet over her arm, and, looking reproachfully at Nekhlyudov, angrily up- braided Katyusha for having taken the wrong sheet. Nekhlyudov went away in silence. He did not even feel ashamed. He saw, by Matr^na Pavlovna's expres- sion, that she condemned him, and knew that she was right in condemning him, just as he knew that that which he was doing was bad ; but the animal feeling, which straightened itself out from behind the former feeling of genuine love for her, took possession of him and reigned all alone, to the exclusion of everything else. He now knew what it was necessary to do in order to satisfy his sen- sation, and he was looking for means to attain his end. During the whole evening he was beside himself : he now went in to see his aunts, now went away from them to his room or upon the porch, and was thinking of noth- ing else but how he might see her alone ; but she avoided him, and Matr^na Pavlovna did not let her out of her sight. XVII. Thus passed the whole evening, and night approached. The doctor had retired. The aunts were going to bed. Nekhlyudov knew that Matr^na Pavlovna was now in the aunts' sleeping-room, and that Katyusha was alone in the maids' chamber. He again went out on the porch. The air was dark, damp, and warm, and filled with that white mist which in spring dispels the last snow, or itself rises from the melting snow. From the river, which was within one hundred feet of the house, down a hill, were borne strange sounds : the ice was breaking. Nekhlyiidov descended from the porch, and, walking through the puddles over the crusted snow, went up to the window of the maids' room. His heart beat so strongly in his breast that he could hear it ; his breath now stopped, now burst forth in a deep sigh. In the maids' chamber a small lamp was burning; Katyusha was sitting at the table and looking in front of her. Nekhlyudov did not stir, looking long at her, and wonder- ing what she would do, when unconscious of anybodj'^s presence. For a couple of minutes she sat motionless, then raised her eyes, smiled, shook her head as though reproachfully at herself, and, changing her position, abruptly placed both her hands in front of her on the table, and gazed ahead of her. He stood and looked at her, and at the same time heard the beating of his own heart and the strange sounds that were borne from the river. There, on the river, a continuous slow work was going on, and now 90 RESURRECTION 91 something crashed, or cracked, or rushed down ; and now the ice-floes tinkled hke glass. He stood and looked at the pensive face of Katyusha, which was tormented by an inward struggle, and he was sorry for her, but, strange to say, that pity only intensi- fied his passion for her. The passion took complete possession of him. He tapped at the window. She quivered with her whole body, as though from an electric shock, and terror was expressed in her face. Then she sprang up, went up to the window, and pressed her face to the window- pane. Nor did the expression of terror leave her face when, upon screening it with the palms of her hands, she recognized him. Her countenance was serious, such as he had never observed it before. She smiled, when he smiled, as though submitting to him, but in her soul there was no smile, but terror. He motioned to her with his hand, calling her out into the yard to him ; but she shook her head, to deny his request, and remained standing at the window. He put his face once more to the window, intending to cry to her to come out, but just then she turned to the door, — evidently somebody had called her. Nekhlyudov went away from the window\ The fog was so heavy that upon walking back five steps it was not possible to see the windows of the house, but only a black mass, from which stood out the gleaming light of the lamp, which seemed to be of enormous size. On the river was going on the same strange crashing, rustling, crackling, and tinkling of the ice. Near by, through the fog, crowed a cock, and others near him answered, and then from the village were borne the intermingling cockcrows, finally joining into one. But everything else around, except the river, was absolutely quiet. This was at second cockcrow. After having walked a couple of times around the cor- ner of the house, and having stepped several times into 92 RESURRECTION a puddle, Nekhlyudov once more went up to the window of the maids' room. The lamp was still burning, and Katyusha was again sitting at the table, as though in indecision. The moment he came up to the window, she looked at him. He knocked. And, without watching to see who it was that had knocked, she ran out of the maids' room, and he heard the back door smack and creak. He was waiting for her near the vestibule, and immediately embraced her, in silence. She pressed close to him, raised her head, and with her hps met his kiss. They were standing around the corner of the vestibule on a spot from which the ice had melted, and he was full of a tormenting, unsatisfied desire. Suddenly the back door smacked and creaked in the same manner, and Matr^na Pavlovna's angry voice was heard : " Katyusha ! " She tore herself away from him and returned to the maids' room. He heard the latch being fastened. Soon after all grew silent ; the red eye of the window disap- peared, and nothing was left but the fog and the noise on the river. Nekhlyiidov went up to the window, but no one was to be seen. He knocked, and nobody answered him. Nekhlyiidov returned to the house by the main entrance, but did not go to sleep. He took off his boots, and went barefooted along the corridor to her door, which was the one adjoining Matr^na Pavlovna's room. At first he heard Matrena Pavlovna's quiet snoring, and was on the point of entering, when suddenly she began to cough, and turned around on her creaking bed. He stood as though petrified for five minutes in one spot. When everything again grew silent, and the quiet snoring was heard again, he tried to walk on the deals that did not creak, and thus approached the door. Everything was quiet. Evidently she was not asleep, for he could not hear her breathing. But the moment he whispered, RESURRECTION 93 " Katyusha ! " she leaped up, went to the door, and angrily, so he thought, began to persuade him to go away. " That's not right ! How can you ! Your aunts will hear you," said her lips, but her whole being said : " I am all yours ! " And it was this only which Nekhlyudov understood. " Just for a moment, please open. I implore you," he uttered senseless words. She grew silent: then he heard the rustling of her hand as it groped for the latch. The latch clicked, and he slipped in through the opened door. He seized her, as she was, in her coarse, rough shirt with her bare arms, lifted her up, and carried her away. " Ah ! What are you doing ? " she whispered. But he paid no attention to her words, carrying her to his room. " Ah, you must not, — let me — " she said, all the time clinging to him. When she, trembling and silent, without saying a word, went away from him, he came out on the porch, trying to reflect on the significance of all that had taken place. It was now lighter in -the yard ; down below, on the river, the crackling and ringing and crashing of the floes was stronger than before, and to it was now added the sound of the rippling water. The fog was setthng, and behind the wall of the fog swam out the last quarter of the moon, dimly illuminating something black and terrible. " What is this ? Has a great happiness or a great mis- fortune come to me ? " he asked himself. " It is always this way, and all do this way," he said to himself, and went to sleep. XVIII. On the following day, brilliant, merry Sh^nbok came to the aunts' to fetch Nekhlyiidov, and he completely fasci- nated them with his elegance, kindness, merriment, gen- erosity, and love for Dmitri. His generosity very much pleased the aunts, but it baffled them somewhat by its exaggeration. To some blind beggars, who came to the house, he gave a rouble ; in gratuities he spent about fifteen roubles ; and when Suzette, Sofya Ivanovna's lap- dog, in his presence had so scratched her leg that the blood began to flow, he proposed to dress her wound, and, without a moment's hesitation, tore up his cambric lace- edged handkerchief (Sofya Ivanovna knew that such hand- kerchiefs cost not less than fifteen roubles a dozen), and made bandages of it for Suzette. The aunts had not yet seen such gentlemen and did not know that this Sh^nbok owed something like two hundred thousand roubles, which, he knew full well, would nevej be paid, and that there- fore twenty-five roubles more or less would not matter much. Sh^ubok stayed only one day, and on the following night drove off with Nekhlyiidov. They could not stay any longer because it was the last date for their leave of absence from the army. On this last day of Nekhlyudov's stay at his aunts', while the memory of the night was still fresh, two feel- ings rose and struggled in his soul: one, the burning, sensual recollections of the animal love, even though it had failed by much to give him what it had held out to him, and a certain self-satisfaction of having reached a 9i RESURRECTION 95 goal ; the other, the consciousness that he had done some- thing very bad, and that that evil had to be mended, not for her sake, but for his. In this condition of his insanity of egotism, in which he now found himself, he thought only of himself, — of whether he would be condemned, and how much he would be condemned, if it were found out how he had acted toward her, and not of what she was experiencing, or what would become of her. He thought that Sheubok guessed of his relations with Katyusha, and that flattered his vanity. " I now see what has made you so suddenly fall in love with your aunts," Sh^nbok said to him, when he saw Katyusha, " and why you have passed a week with them. If I were in your place, I would not leave myself. Superb ! " He also thought that although it was a shame to leave at once, without having had the full enjoyment of his love, the peremptory call to duty was advantageous in that it broke the relations at once, which otherwise it would have been difficult to sustain. He also thought that it was necessary to give her money, not for her sake, because the money might be useful to her, but because it was customary to do so, and he would have been regarded as a dishonest man, if, after seducing her, he did not pay her. And so he gave her money, — as much as he thought proper according to their respective positions. On the day of his departure, he watched for her in the vestibule. Her face flushed, when she saw him, and she wanted to pass by him, indicating with her eyes the open door into the maids' room, but he kept her back. " I wanted to bid you good-bye," he said, crumphng the envelope with the hundred-rouble bill in it. "I — " She guessed what it was, frowned, shook her head, and pushed his hand away. " Do take it," he mumbled, putting the envelope in the 96 RESURRECTION bosom of her garment, and running back to his room, frowning and groaning, as though he had burnt himself. He paced his room for a long time, and crouched, and even leaped and groaned, as though from physical pain, every time he thought of that scene. But what was to be done ? It was always that way. It had been so with Sheubok and the governess, of whom he had told him ; thus it had been with Uncle Grisha ; and thus it had been with his father, when he was hving in the country, and when that illegitimate son, Mitenka, was born to a peasant woman, who was alive even now. And if all do that way, it must be right. Thus he tried to console himself, without getting any real consolation. The memory of his deed burnt his conscience. In the depth, way down in the depth of his soul, he knew that he had acted so meanly, so contemptibly, and so cruelly that with the consciousness of this deed he not only . could not condemn any one, but even could not look straight into people's eyes, and that he certainly could not regard himself as a fine, noble, magnanimous young man, such as he considered himself to be. And yet he had to continue in that opinion of himself, if he wislied to lead the same free and happy life as before. For this there was but one means : not to think of it. And thus he did. The life which he now entered upon — the new places, comrades, and the war — was helpful to him. The longer he lived, the more he forgot, until, at last, he did not remember anything of it. Only once, when, after the war, he visited his aunts, with the hope of seeing her, and when he found out that Katyusha was no longer there, that soon after his depar- ture she had left them, to give birth to a child, that she had given birth to one, and that, so the aunts had heard, she had become entirely dissolute, — his heart gave him a painful twinge. To judge from the time of the child's birth, it might have been his, and yet it might have been RESURRECTION 97 somebody else's. The aunts said that she was demoral- ized, and just such a dissolute character as her mother had been. This reflection of his aunts gave him pleasure, because it in a certain way justified him. At first he in- tended to look up Katyusha and the child, but then, since in the depth of his soul he was too much ashamed and pained to think of it, he did not make every effort to locate her, and still more forgot his sin, and ceased think- ing of it. And just now this marvellous coincidence reminded him of everything, and everything demanded the confession of his heartlessuess, cruelty, and meanness, which had made it possible for him quietly to live ten years with such a sin upon his conscience. But he was still very far from such a confession, and now he was thinking only that all might be found out, that she or her counsel would bring out the facts, and would put him to shame before every one. XIX. Nekhlyudov was in this frame of mind when he left the court -room for the consultation-room. He sat at the window, listening to the conversations that took place about him, and smoking incessantly. The merry merchant obviously with all his heart sympathized with Merchant Smyelkdv in his pastime. " Well, he was a great carouser, in Siberian fashion. He knew a thing or two, when he selected such a girl to kiss." The foreman was expatiating on the importance of the expert testimony. Peter Gerasimovich was jesting with the Jewish clerk, and they were both laughing about something. Nekhlyudov answered in monosyllables to all the questions which were addressed to him and wished only to be left alone. When the bailiff, wdth his sidling gait, again called the jurors to the court-room, Nekhlyudov experienced a sen- sation of terror, as though he were going, not to give a verdict, but to be tried. In the depth of his soul he felt that he was a scoundrel who ought to be ashamed to look people in the eyes, and yet he, by force of habit, ascended the platform with his usual self-confident gait, and sat down in his seat, the second from the foreman's, and began to play with his glasses. The defendants had been removed, and now were being brought back. In the court-room there were new faces, — the wit- nesses, — and Nekhlyudov noticed that Maslova several 98 RESURRECTION 99 times gazed down, as though she could not take her eyes off a fat woman, all dressed up in silk and velvet, who, in a tall hat with a large ribbon, and with an elegant reticule on her arm, which was bare up to the elbow, was sitting in the first row, next to the screen. This was, as he later found out, the lan'^^1 Ay of the establishment in which Maslova had lived. Then the examination of the witnesses began : their names, religion, and so forth. Then, after the sides had been consulted as to whether the witnesses should be examined under oath or not, the same old priest, with difficulty moving his legs, and in the same manner ad- justing the gold cross on his silk vestment, with the same calm and conviction that he was performing an exceed- ingly useful and important work, administered the oath to the witnesses and to the expert. When the oath was finished, all the witnesses were led away, and only one, namely, Kitaeva, the proprietress of the house of prostitu- tion, was allowed to remain. She was asked what she knew of the affair. Kitaeva, with a feigned smile, duck- ing her head under her hat at every phrase, told, with a German accent, everything in detail and distinctly : At first the hotel servant Simon, whom she well knew, had come to get a girl for a rich Siberian merchant. She sent Lyubov. After awhile Lyubov returned with the mer- chant. The merchant was already in " raptures," Kitaeva said, with a slight smile, " and at our house continued to drink and treat the girls, but as his money gave out, he sent that same Lyubov, for whom he had a predilection" she said, glancing at the defendant. It seemed to Nekhlyildov that at these words Maslova smiled, and this smile seemed disgusting to him. A strange, indefinable feeling of loathing, mingled with compassion, arose in him. " And what has your opinion been of Maslova ? " timidly asked the blushing candidate for a judicial place 100 RESUKRECTION who had been appointed by the court to be Maslova's counsel. "The very best," answered Kitaeva. "An educated girl and chic. Educated in good family, and could read French. At times drank a little too much, but never lost her senses. A very gOv .^. girl." Katyusha looked at the proprietress, and then suddenly transferred her eyes to the jurors, and rested them on Nekhlyiidov, and her face became serious and even stem. One of her stern eyes squinted. For quite awhile these strange-looking eyes were turned upon Nekhlyudov, and, in spite of the terror which took possession of him, he was unable to turn his glance away from these squinting eyes with the bright white around them. He recalled that terrible night with the breaking ice, with its fog, and, above all, with that upturned last quarter of the moon, which rose before daybreak and illuminated some- thing black and terrible. These two black eyes, which gazed at him and past him, reminded him of something black and terrible. " She has recognized me," he thought. And Nekhlyii- dov seemed to crouch, as though expecting a blow. She calmly heaved a sigh, and once more began to look at the presiding judge. Nekhlyudov, too, sighed. " Oh, if it only came at once," he thought. He now experienced a sensation which he had experienced before at the chase, when he had to pick up a wounded bird, — he felt shame, and pity, and annoyance. The wounded bird would flutter in his game-bag, and he would feel loathing and pity, and would hke to kill it, and to forget. It was such a mixed feeling that Nekhlyiidov was now experiencing, as he listened to the examination of the witnesses. XX. As if to spite him, the case was drawn out long : after the examination of the witnesses and the expert, one after the other, and after the assistant prosecuting at- torney and the lawyers for the defence had, with sig- nificant looks, asked a number of useless questions, the presiding judge told the jurors to inspect the exhibits, which consisted of a ring of enormous size, with a setting of rose-diamonds, which evidently fitted on the stoutest of forefingers, and of a vial iu which the poison had been examined. These things were sealed, and there were small labels upon them. The jurors were just getting ready to inspect these objects when the assistant prosecuting attorney again raised himself in his seat and demanded the reading of the medical examination of the dead body, before passing to the inspection of the exhibits. The presiding judge, who was hurrying the case as fast as possible, in order to get to his Swiss woman, was very well convinced that the reading of that document could have no other effect then inducing ennui and delaying the dinner, and that the assistant prosecuting attorney had requested this only because he knew he had the right to make such a request ; still, he could not refuse, and so ordered it to be read. The secretary got the document, and again with his monotonous voice, with the guttural enunciation of the letters I and r, began to read. The external investigation had given the following results : 101 102 RESURRECTION (1) Ferapont Sinyelkov's height was two arshins and twelve vershoks.i " I declare, he was a strapping fellow," the merchant, with an interested mien, whispered over Nekhlyiidov's ear. (2) His age was from external appearances approx- imately fixed as forty years. (3) The body had a bloated appearance. (4) The colour of the integuments was greenish; here and there tinged with darker spots. (5) The cuticle on the surface of the body had risen in pustules of different size, and in places had come off and was hanging in the shape of large flaps. (6) His hair was dark blond, thick, and at the touch came out of the skin. (7) The eyes stood out of their sockets, and the cornea was dimmed. (8) From the apertures of the nose, of both ears, and of the cavity of the mouth a lathery, foamy, serous liquid was discharged, and the mouth was half open. (9) There was no perceptible neck, on account of the bloated condition of the face and chest. And so on, and so on. Four pages contained twenty-seven points of such kind of a description of all the details revealed at the external examination of the terrible, immense, fat and swollen, decomposing body of the merchant who had been carous- ing in the city. The sensation of indefinable loathing, which Nekhlyildov had been experiencing, was intensified at the reading of this description of the corpse. Katyu- sha's life and the serum which issued from his nostrils, and the eyes standing out from their sockets, and his treatment of her, seemed to him to be objects of one and the same order, and he • was on all sides surrounded 1 An arshfn equals twenty-eight inches, and a versh6k equals one and three-quarters inches. KESUERECTION 103 and absorbed by these objects. When, at last, the read- ing of the external examination was over, the presiding judge heaved a deep sigh and raised his head, hoping that all was ended, but the secretary immediately proceeded to the reading of the internal examinatiou. The presiding judge once more lowered his head, and, leaning on his arm, closed his eyes. The merchant, who was sitting next to Nekhlyiidov, with difficulty kept the sleep from his eyes, and now and then swayed to and fro ; the defendants, and the gendarmes behind them, sat motionless. The internal examination revealed that : (1) The cranial integuments easily separated from the cranial bones, and suffusion was nowhere notice- able. (2) The cranial bones were of medium thickness, and sound. (3) On the dura mater two small pigmented spots were observed ; they were approximately four lines in size ; the dura mater itself was of a pale white hue ; and so on, and so on, through thirteen points. Then followed the names of the coroner's jury, the signatures, and then the conclusion of the medical ex- aminer, from which it was seen that the modifications which had taken place in the stomach, and partly in the intestines and kidneys, as discovered at the inquest and as mentioned in the protocol, gave a right to conclude, vjith a great dxgree of probability, that Smyelkov's death had been caused by poison which had found its way into the stomach with the wine. From the modification in the stomach and intestines, which were at hand, it was diffi- cult to determine what kind of poison it was that had been introduced into the stomach ; but that it found its way into the stomach with the wine must be surmised from the fact that a large quantity of wine was discov- ered in Smyelkov's stomach. 104 RESURRECTION " Evidently he was a great hand at drinking," again whispered the merchant, waking from his sleep. But the reading of this protocol, which lasted nearly an hour, did not satisfy the assistant prosecuting attorney. When it was over, the presiding judge turned to him : " I suppose it would be superfluous to read the docu- ment referring to the investigation of the internal organs." " I should ask to have this examination read," sternly said the associate prosecuting attorney, without glancing at the presiding judge, raising himself with a sidewise motion, and giving the judge to feel, by the intonation of his voice, that the request for this reading constituted one of his privileges, that he would not be curtailed of his right, and that a refusal would serve as a ground for cassation. The member of the court with the long beard and the kindly, drooping eyes, who was suffering from the catarrh, feeling himself very weak, turned to the presiding judge : " What is the use of reading it ? It only delays matters. ' These new brooms sweep longer, but not cleaner." The member in the gold spectacles did not say any- thing, and looked gloomily and with determination in front of him, expecting nothing good from his wife, or from life in general. The reading of the document began : " On February 15, 188-, I, the undersigned, at the request of the medical department, as given in writing in No. 638," the secretary, who had such a soporific effect upon all persons present, began in a determined tone, raising the diapason of his voice, as though wishing to dispel sleep, " in presence of the assistant medical in- spector, have made the following examination of the internal organs : " (1) Of the right lung and of the heart (in a six-pound glass jar). KESURRECTION 105 " (2) Of the contents of the stomach (in a six-pound glass jar). " (3) Of the stomach itself (in a six-pound glass jar). "(4) Of the liver, the spleen, and the kidneys (in a three-pound glass jar). " (5) Of the intestines (in a six-pound glass jar) — " The presiding judge in the beginning of the reading bent down to one of the members and whispered some- thing to him ; then to the other, and having received an affirmative answer, interrupted the reading in this place : " The court finds the reading of the document to be superfluous," he said. The secretary stopped and picked up his papers. The assistant prosecuting attorney angrily made a note of something. " The jurors may examine the exhibits," said the pre- siding judge. The foreman and a few of the jurymen arose, and, embarrassed as to the disposition of their hands, went up to the table, and in turns looked at the ring, the jars, and the vial. The merchant even tried on the ring on his finder. Well, he had a good-sized finger," he said, upon re- turning to his seat. " As big as a cucumber," he added, obviously enjoying the conception of the hero which he had formed of the poisoned merchant. XXL When the examination of the exhibits was ended, the presiding judge declared the judicial inquest closed, and, without any interruption, wishing to get through as soon as possible, asked the prosecutor to begin his speech, in the hope that he, too, wishing to have a smoke and a dinner, would have pity on him. But the assistant prose- cuting attorney pitied neither himself nor them. The assistant prosecuting attorney was naturally very stupid, but he had the additional misfortune of having graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal, and of having received a reward at the university for his thesis on the servitudes of the Eoman law, which made him exceed- ingly self-confident and self-satisfied (which was still more increased by his success with the ladies), and in consequence of this he was extremely stupid. When the floor was given to him, he slowly rose, displaying his whole graceful figure, in an embroidered uniform, and, placing both his hands on the desk, and shghtly inclining his head, cast a glance upon the whole room, avoiding only the defendants, and then began : " The case which is presented to you, gentlemen of the jury," he began his speech, which he had prepared during the reading of the protocol and coroner's inquest, " is, if I may so express myself, a characteristic crime." The speech of the associate prosecuting attorney, ac- cording to his opinion, ought to have a public significance, like those famous speeches which had been delivered by those who later became famous lawyers. It is true, among the spectators were only three women, a sewing 106 EESUKRECTION 107 girl, a cook, aud Simon's sister, and one coachman, hut that was nothing. Those celebrities had begun in the same way. It was a rule of the associate prosecuting attorney always to be on the 'height of his calling, that is, to penetrate the depth of the psychologic significance of the crime, and to lay bare the sores of society. " You see before you, gentlemen of the jury, if one may so express oneself, a characteristic crime of the end of the century, bearing upon itself, so to speak, the specific characteristics of that melancholy phenomenon of de- composition, to which, in our day, are subjected those elements of society that, so to speak, are under the ultra- burning rays of that process — " The associate prosecuting attorney spoke a very long time, on the one hand trying to recall all those clever things which he had thought of, and, on the other, — and this was most important, — endeavouring not to stop for a moment, but to let his speech flow uninterruptedly for an hour and a quarter. Only once did he stop, and for awhile kept swallowing, but he soon found his bear- ings and made up for the interruption by his intensified eloquence. He spoke now in a tender, insinuating voice, stepping from one foot to the other, and looking at the jurors, and now in a quiet, businesslike tone, glancing at his notes, and now again in a loud, condemnatory voice, addressing now the spectators, and now the jurors. On the defendants, however, who had riveted their eyes upon him, he did not look once. In his speech were all the latest points which had become fashionable in his circle, and which had been accepted as the latest word of scientific wisdom. Here were heredity, and inborn criminality, and Lombroso, and Tarde, and evolution, and struggle for existence, and hypnotism, and suggestion, and Charcot, and decadence. Merchant Smyelkdv, according to the definition of the associate prosecuting attorney, was a type of a mighty, 108 RESUKRECTION uncorrupted Eussian, with his broad nature, who, on account of his confidence and magnanimity, had fallen as a victim of deeply perverted persons, into whose power he had come. Simon Kartinkin was an atavistic production of serf- dom, a crushed man, without education, without principles, even without religion. Evfimiya was his sweetheart, and a victim of heredity. In her could be observed all the characteristics of a degenerate personality. But the chief mainspring of the crime was Maslova, who represented the phenomena of decadence in its lowest form. " This woman," so said the associate prosecuting attorney, with- out looking at her, "has received an education, as we have learned here in court from the evidence of her land- lady. She not only can read and write, but can also speak French ; she is an orphan, who no doubt bears in herself the germs of criminality ; she has been edu- cated in a family of cultured gentlefolk, and could have lived by honest labour ; but she left her benefactors, abandoned herself to her passions, and, to satisfy them, entered a house of prostitution, where she stood out from among her companions by her education, and, above everything else, as we have heard here from her landlady, gentlemen of the jury, by her abihty to influence the visitors by that mysterious quality, which has of late been investigated by science, especially by the school of Charcot, and which is known under the name of sugges- tion. By means of that quality she took possession of a Eu^ian hero, that good-natured, trustful Sadko, the rich merchant, and used that confidence, first to rob him, and then pitilessly to deprive him of life." " He is getting dreadfully off on a tangent," said, smiling, the presiding judge, leaning down to the austere member. " He's a terrible blockhead," said the austere member. " Gentlemen of the jury," the associate prosecuting attorney continued in the meantime, gracefully bending EESUERECTION 109 his lithe form, " the fate of these persons is in your power, but, to a certain extent, the fate of society, which you influence by your sentence, is in your power. Carefully consider the meaning of this crime, the danger to wliich society is subjected by such pathological individuals, if I may so express myself, as is this Maslova, and guard it against contagion, guard the innocent, strong elements of society against contagion, and often against destruction." As though crushed by the importance of the impend- ing decision, the associate prosecuting attorney, evidently highly enraptured with his own speech, fell back in his chair. The pith of his speech, outside of the flowers of elo- quence, was that Maslova had hypnotized the merchant, by insinuating herself into his confidence, and, having arrived in the room with the key, in order to fetch the money, had intended to take it all for herself, but, hav- ing been caught by Simon and Evfimiya, had been com- pelled to share the booty with them. Later, intending to conceal the traces of her crime, she came with the merchant to the hotel, where she poisoned him. After the associate prosecuting attorney's speech there rose from tlie lawyers' bench a middle-aged man in a dress coat, with the broad semicircle of a white starched shirt front, and with animation defended Kartinkin and Bochkova. He was the attorney who had been employed by them for three hundred roubles. He justified their actions, and put all the guilt on Maslova's shoulders. He refuted Maslova's testimony that Bochkova and Kartinkin had been with her, when she took the money, pointing out the fact that her testimony, as that of an established poisoner, could have no weight. The money, — the twenty-five hundred roubles, — said the lawyer, could have been earned by two industrious and honest people, who received as much as three and five roubles a day in gratuities. The merchant's money had been stolen 110 RESURIiECTION by Maslova, and had been given to somebody, or probably was lost, since she was in an abnormal condition. The poisoning was done by Maslova alone. Therefore he asked the jury to declare Kartinkin and Bochkova not guilty of the robbery of the money, or, if they did declare them guilty of the robbery, to give a verdict without participation in the poisoning, and with- out premeditation. In conclusion, the lawyer, to sting the associate prose- cuting attorney, remarked that the eloquent reflections of the assistant prosecuting attorney explained the scientific questions of heredity, but were out of place in this case, because Bochkova was the child of unknown parents. The associate prosecuting attorney, as though to show his teeth, angrily made a note on his paper, and with contemptuous" surprise shrugged his shoulders. Then arose Maslova's counsel, and timidly and with hesitation made the defence. Without denying the fact that Maslova had taken part in the robbery, he insisted that she had had no intention of poisoning Smyelkdv, and had given him the powder merely to put him to sleep. He wanted to make a. display of eloquence, by surveying Maslova's past, how she had been drawn to a life of debauch by a man who remained unpunished, while she had to bear the whole brunt of her fall, but this excursus into the field of psychology was a perfect failure, so that all felt sorry for him. As he was muttering about the cruelty of men and the helplessness of women, the presid- ing judge, wishing to help him out, asked him to keep closer to the essentials of the case. After this defence, again rose the associate prosecuting attorney, and defended his position about heredity agauist the first counsel for the defence by saying that the fact that Bochkova was the daughter of unknown parents did not in the least invalidate the doctrine of heredity, because the law of heredity was so firmly RESURRECTION 111 established by science that we not only could deduce a crime from heredity, but also heredity from a crime. But as to the supposition of the defence that Maslova had been corrupted by an imaginary seducer (he dwelt with particular sarcasm on the word " imaginary "), all the data seemed to point to the fact that she had been the seducer of many, very many victims who had passed through her hands. Having said this, he sat down victorious. Then the defendants were asked to say something in their justitication. Evfimiya Bochkova repeated that she knew nothing, that she had not been present at anything, and stubbornly pointed to Maslova as the only culprit. Simon repeated several times : " Do as you please, but I am not guilty, and it is all in vain." Maslova did not say anything. To the presiding judge's invitation to say something in her defence, she only raised her eyes upon him, glanced at everybody, hke a hunted deer, and immediately lowered her eyes, arid burst out into loud sobs. " What is the matter with you ? " asked the merchant, who was sitting next to Nekhlyudov, upon hearing a strange sound, which Nekhlyudov was suddenly emi'oting. It sounded hke a checked sob. Nekhlyudov did not yet grasp the full significance of his position, and ascribed the restrained sobs and the tears, which had come out in his eyes, to the weakness of his nerves. He put on his eye-glasses, in order to conceal them, then drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and began to clear his nose. The dread of the disgrace with which he would cover himself, if all in the court-room should learn of his deed, drowned all the inner work which was going on within him. This dread was during that time stronger than anything else. XXII. After these words of the defendants and the consulta- tion of the sides about the putting of the questions, which lasted for quite awhile, the questions were put, and the presiding judge began his r^sum^. Before entering on the recapitulation of the case, he, with a pleasant, familiar intonation, for a long time explained to the jury that misappropriation was misappro- priation, and theft was theft, and robbery from a place under lock was robbery from a place under lock, and robbery from an unlocked place was robbery from an unlocked place. While giving this explanation, he very frequently glanced over to Nekhlyildov, as though anxious to impress him in particular with this important fact, in the hope that he, comprehending its whole import, would be able to explain it to his fellow jurors. Then surmising that the jury was sufficiently instructed in this truth, he began to expatiate on another truth, namely, that murder was an act from which ensues the death of a man, and that, therefore, poisoning was also murder. When this truth, too, had, in his opinion, been imbibed by the jury, he explained to them that when theft and murder are committed at the same time, then the crime constitutes both theft and murder. Notwithstanding the fact that he wanted to get through as soon as possible and that the Swiss girl was waiting for him, he was so accustomed to his occupation that, having begun to speak, he could not check himself, and so he minutely instructed the jury that if they found the defendants guilty, they had a right to give a verdict of 112 KESURRECTION 113 guilty, and that if they found them not guilty, they were empowered to pass a verdict of not guilty ; but if they found them guilty of one thing, and not guilty of another, they could declare them guilty of one thing, and not guilty of another. Then he explained to them that although they had such a right, they must use it with discretion. He also wished to instruct them that if they gave an affirmative answer to a given question, they there- with accepted the question in its entirety, and if they did not accept it in its entirety, they ought to specify what it was they excluded. But upon looking at his watch and seeing that it was five minutes to three, he decided to pass at once to the review of the case. " The circumstances of the case are as follows," he began, and repeated all that had previously been said by the defence, and the assistant prosecuting attorney, and the witnesses. The presiding judge spoke, and the members on both sides listened to him with a thoughtful mien, and occa- sionally looked at the clock, finding his speech very beautiful, that is, such as it ought to be, but rather long. Of the same opinion were the assistant prosecuting attorney and all the judicial persons and all the spectators in the court-room. The presiding judge finished his r^sum^. It seemed that everything had been said. But the presiding judge could not part from his privilege of speak- ing, — it gave him such pleasure to listen to the impressive intonations of his own voice, — and he found it necessary to add a few words on the importance of the right which was granted to the jurors, and how attentively and cautiously they ought to make use of that right, and not misuse it ; he said that they were under oath, and that they were the pubhc conscience, and that the secrecy of the jury-room must be kept sacred, and so on, and so on. From the time that the presiding judge began to speak, 114 RESURRECTION Maslova did not take her eyes away from him, as though fearing to lose a word, and therefore Nekhlyildov was not afraid of meeting her glance, and uninterruptedly looked at her. And in his imagination took place that common phenomenon, that the long missed face of a beloved person, at first striking one by the external changes which have taken place during the period of absence, suddenly becomes precisely like what it was many years ago : all the changes disappear, and before the spiritual eyes arises only that chief expression of an exclusive, unrepeated, spiritual personality. Precisely this took place in Nekh- lyiidov. • In spite of the prison cloak, and the plumper body and swelling bosom, in spite of the broadened lower part of her face, the wrinkles on her brow and temples, and the somewhat swollen eyes, it was unquestionably that same Katyusha who on that Easter night had so inno- cently looked at him, the man beloved by her, with her upturned loving eyes, smihng with joy and with the ful- ness of life. " Such a strange coincidence ! How wonderful that this case should come up during my turn as a juror, that after ten years I should meet her here, on the defendants' bench ! And how will all this end ? Ah, if it only would all end soon ! " He did not yet submit to that feeling of repentance which was beginning to speak within him. It appeared to him as an accident which would pass by without disturb- ing the tenor of his life. He felt himself to be in the condition of the pup, when, after he has misbehaved in the room, his master takes him by the back of his neck and sticks his nose into the filth which he has caused. The pup whines and pulls back, in order to get away as far as possible from the consequences of his deed, and to forget them, but the inexorable master does not let him go. Just so Nekhlyiidov was conscious of the filth which RESURRECTION 115 he was guilty of, and of the mighty hand of the master ; but he did not yet understand the significance of what he had done, and did not acknowledge the master himself. He did not wish to believe that that which was before him was his deed. But an inexorable, invisible hand held him, and he felt that he should never wring himseK away from it. He was still putting on a bold face, and, by force of habit, placed one leg over the other, carelessly played with his eye-glasses, and sat in a self-satisfied atti- tude on the second chair of the first row. In the mean- time he was conscious, in the depth of his soul, of all the cruelty, meanness, and rascality, not only of his deed, but of his whole indolent, dissolute, cruel, and arbitrary Hfe, and that terrible curtain, which as if by some magic had for twelve years concealed from himself that crime and all his consequent life, was already swaying, and he could get some short glimpses behind it. XXIIL Finally, the presiding judge finished his speech, and with a graceful motion raising the question-sheet, handed it to the foreman, who had walked over to him. The jury rose, glad to get away, and, not knowing what to do with their hands, as though ashamed of something, went one after another into the consultation-room. The moment the door was closed behind them, a gendarme went up to the door, and, unsheathing his sabre and shouldering it, took up a position near it. The judges arose and walked out. The defendants, too, were led away. Upon reaching the consultation-room, the jurors, as before, immediately took out their cigarettes and began to smoke. The unnaturalness and falseness of their situa- tion, which they all had been conscious of in a greater or lesser degree while seated in the court-room, passed the moment they entered the consultation-room and began to smoke, and, with a feeling of relief, they made them- selves at home and began to converse in an animated manner. " The girl is not guilty, she is just tangled up," said the good-natured merchant. " We must be indulgent with her ! " " This we shall consider later," said the foreman. " We must not be misled by our personal impressions." " The presiding judge has made a fine r^sum^," re- marked the colonel. " Very fine indeed ! I almost fell asleep." " The main thing is that the servants could not have 116 RESURRECTION 117 known of the money, if Maslova had not been in a con- spiracy with them," said the clerk of Jewish type. " Well, did she steal it, in your opinion ? " asked one of the jurors. " You can't make me believe it," cried the good-natured merchant. " The red-eyed wench has done it all." " They are every one of them a nice lot," said the colonel. " She says she never went inside the room." " Yes, you may believe her. I should not believe that slut for anything in the world." " But what of it if you would not believe her ? " said the clerk. " She had the key." " What of it if she did have it ? " retorted the merchant. " And the ring ? " " She told about it," again shouted the merchant. " The merchant had a temper, and had been drinking and walloping her. And then, of course, he was sorry for what he had done. ' Take this, and don't cry ! ' From what I heard, he must have been a strapping fellow, two and twelve, and weigliing some three hundred pounds." " This has nothing to do with the case," Peter Gerasi- movich interrupted him. " The question is, whether she did it all and persuaded the others, or whether the serv- ants took the initiative." " The servants could not have done it by themselves, for she had the key." The disconnected conversation lasted quite awhile. " Please, gentlemen," said the foreman. " Let us sit down at the table, and consider the case. Please," he said, sitting down in the foreman's chair. " Those girls are contemptible," said the clerk, and, in confirmation of his opinion that Maslova was the chief culprit, he told how one of these girls had stolen a watch from a friend of his in the boulevard. 118 KESURRECTION This gave the colonel an opportunity of relating a more wonderful theft of a silver samovar. " Gentlemen, let us take up the questions in order," said the foreman, tapping his pencil on the table. All grew quiet. The questions were expressed as fol- lows : (1) Is Simon Petrov Kartinkin, a peasant of the village of Borki, Krapivensk County, thirty-three years of age, guilty of having conspired on January 17, 18 8-, in the city of N- , to deprive Merchant Smyelkdv of his life, for the purpose of robbing him, in company with others, by administering to him poison in cognac, from which ensued Smyelkdv's death, and of having stolen from him about 2,500 roubles and a diamond ring ? (2) Is Burgess Evfimiya Ivanovna Bochkova, forty- three years of age, guilty of the crime described in the first question ? (3) Is Burgess Katerina Mikhaylovna Maslova, twenty- seven years of age, guilty of the crime described in the first question ? (4) If the defendant, Evfimiya Bochkova, is not guilty according to the first question, may she not be guilty of having, on January 17, 188-, in the city of N , while being a servant in " Hotel Mauritania," secretly stolen from the locked vahse of a hotel guest. Merchant Smyelkdv, which was in his room, the sum of 2,500 roubles, having for this purpose opened the valise with a false key ? The foreman read the first question. " Well, gentlemen ? " To this question, the reply was readily made. All agreed to answer, " Yes, guilty," finding him guilty of participation, both in the poisoning and in the robbery. The only one who would not agree to finding Kartinkin guilty was an old labourer, who answered all questions in an exculpatory way. The foreman thought that he did not understand, and RESURRECTION 119 explained to him that there was no possible doubt of Kartinkin's and Bochkova's guilt, but the labourer replied that he understood it all, but that it would be better to exercise mercy. " We ourselves are no saints," he said, and stuck to his opinion. To the second question about Bochkova, they replied, after long discussions and elucidations, " Not guilty," because there were no clear proofs of her participation in the poisoning, upon which her lawyer had dwelt so emphatically. The merchant, wishing to acquit Maslova, insisted that Bochkova was the chief instigator of the whole thing. Many jurors agreed with him, but the foreman, trying to remain within strictly legal bounds, said that there was no ground for finding her guilty of participation in the poisoning. After many discussions, the foreman's opinion pre- vailed. To the fourth question, about Bochkova, they replied, " Yes, guilty," but, since the labourer insisted upon it, they added, " but deserves mercy." The question about Maslova brought forth violent dis- cussions. The foreman insisted that she was guilty both of the poisoning and of the robbery, but the merchant did not agree with him, and he was joined by the colonel, the clerk and the labourer ; the others seemed to waver, but the opinion of the foreman began to prevail, especially since all the jurors were tired, and gladly accepted the opinion which was more likely to unite all, and therefore to free them. By all that had taken place at the inquest, and by what Nekhlyudov knew of Maslova, he was convinced that she was not guilty either of the robbery or of the poisoning ; at first he was certain that all would find it so, but when he saw that, on account of the merchant's awkward defence, which was based on the fact that Mas- 120 RESURRECTION lova pleased him in a physical way, a fact of which he made no secret, on account of the opposition of the fore- man for that very reason, and, especially, on account of the fatigue of all, the verdict was turning toward finding her guilty, he wanted to retort, but he felt terribly about saying anything in regard to Maslova, — it seemed to him that everybody would at once discover his relations with her. At the same time he felt that he could not leave the case as it was, but that he had to retort. He blushed and grew pale by turns, and was on the point of saying something, when Peter Gerasimovich, who had remained silent until then, evidently provoked by the foreman'^ authoritative tone, suddenly began to oppose him and to say the very thing Nekhlyudov had intended to bring out. " If you please," he said, " you say that she is guilty of the robbery because she had a key ; could not the hotel servants have later opened the vaUse with a false key?" " That's it, that's it," the merchant seconded him. " It was not possible for her to take the money, because in her situation she could not dispose of it." " That's what I say," the merchant confirmed him. " It is more likely that her arrival gave the servants the idea of utilizing the opportunity and throwing every- thing upon her shoulders." Peter Gerasimovich spoke in an irritated manner. His irritation was communicated to the foreman, who, for that very reason, began with greater stubbornness to insist upon his opposite views ; but Peter Gerasimovich spoke so con- vincingly that the majority agreed with him, finding that Maslova had not taken part in the robbery of the money and ring, and that the ring had been given to her. When the discussion about her share in the poisoning began, her warm defender, the merchant, said that she ought to be found not guilty, because she had no reason KESUKRECTION 121 for poisoning him. But the foreman said that they could not help tiudiug her guilty because she had herseK con- fessed to administeriug the poison to him. " She gave it to him, but she thought it was opium," said the merchant. " She could have deprived him of life with opium," said the colonel, who was fond of digressions, and began to tell that his brother-in-law's wife had poisoned herself with opium, aud that she w^ould certainly have died if a doctor had not been near, and if the proper measures had not been taken in time. The colouel spoke so persuasively, self-confidently, aud with such 'dignity, that nobody had the courage to interrupt him. Only the clerk, infected by his example, decided to interrupt him in order to tell his own story. " Some get so used to it," he began, " that they can take forty drops. A relative of mine — " But the colonel did not permit himself to be inter- rupted, and continued his story about the effect of the opium on the wife of his brother-in-law. " Gentlemen, it is already past four," said one of the jurors. " How is it, then, gentlemen ? " the foreman addressed them. "Let us find her guilty without premeditated robbery, and without seizing any property." " How is that ? " Peter Gerasimovich, satisfied with his victory, agreed to this. " But deserves mercy," added the merchant. All consented to this, only the labourer insisted upon saying " Not guilty." " That's what it amounts to," explained the foreman. " This makes her not guilty." " Put it down : ' and deserves mercy.' That means, clearing off the whole matter," merrily said the merchant. Everybody was so tired, and so confused by their dis- 122 KESURRECTION cussions that it did not occur to any one to add to the answer : " Yes, hut without the intention of killing" Nekhlyiidov was so agitated that he did not notice that. In this form the answers were written down and taken back to the court-room. Eabelais tells of a jurist, to whom people had come in a lawsuit, and who, after having pointed out all kinds of laws, and having read twenty pages of senseless jurid- ical Latin, proposed to the contending parties to cast dice : if they fell even, the plaintiff was right; if odd, the defendant was right. Thus it happened here. This or that verdict had been accepted, not because all had agreed to it, but, in the first place, because the presiding judge, who had made such a long r6sum6, had forgotten upon that occasion to say what he always said, namely, that they might answer the question : " Yes, guilty, but without the intention of kill- ing ; " secondly, because the colonel had told a long and tire- some story about his brother-in-law's wife ; thirdly, because Nekhlyiidov had been so agitated that he did not notice the omission of the clause about the absence of any inten- tion to kill, and because he thought that the clause, " without any premeditated murder," annulled the accu- sation : fourthly, because Peter Gerasimovich did not happen to be in the room — he had gone out — when the foreman reread the questions and answers ; and, chiefly, because everybody was tired, and all wanted to be free as soon as possible, and therefore agreed to a vei' diet which would bring everything to an end. The jury rang the bell. The gendarme, who was standing at the door with the unsheathed sword, put it back into the scabbard and stepped aside. The judges took their seats, and the jurors filed out from the room. The foreman carried the sheet with a solemn look. He went up to the presiding judge, and gave it to him. RESURRECTION " 123 The presiding judge read it, and, evidently surprised, waved his hands and turned to the members, to consult with them. The presiding judge was surprised to find that the jury had modified the first condition, by making it, " Without the intention of robbing," while they had not equally modified the second, by saying, " Without the in- tention of killing." It now turned out that Maslova had not stolen, not robted, and yet had poisoned a man with- out any evident cause. " See what absurdity they have brought here," he said to the member on the left. " This means hard labour, and she is not guilty." " Why not guilty ? " said the stern member. " Simply not guilty. In my opinion this case is pro- vided for in Statute 817." (This statute says that if a court finds the accusation unjust, it may set aside the jury's verdict.) " What do you think of it ? " said the presiding judge, turning to the kind member. The kind member did not answer at once. He looked at the number of the document which was lying before him, and it would not divide by three. He had made up his mind that he should be with him if the number would be divisible ; notwithstanding this, he, in the goodness of his heart, agreed with him. " I think myself this ought to be done," he said. " And you ? " the judge turned to the angry member. " On no condition," he answered, firmly. " The papers are saying, as it is, that the juries acquit the criminals. I sha'n't agree to it under any circumstances." The presiding judge looked at his watch. " I am sorry, but what is to be done ? " and he handed the list to the foreman to read. All arose, and the foreman, resting now on one foot and now on the other, cleared his throat, and read the questions and answers. All the judicial persons, the secre- 124 * KESUKRECTION tary, the lawyers, even the prosecuting attorney, expressed their surprise. The defendants sat unperturbed, obviously not under- standing the purport of the answers. Again, all sat down, and the presiding judge asked the prosecuting attorney to what punishment he proposed to subject the defend- ants. The prosecuting attorney, delighted at the unexpected turn which Maslova's case had taken, and ascribiag this success to his eloquence, looked up some points, rose, and said : " Simon Kartinkiu ought to be subjected to punish- ment on the basis of article 1,452 and paragraph four of article 1,453 ; Evfimiya B6chkova on the basis of article 1,659 ; and Katerina Maslova on the basis of article 1,454." All these punishments were the severest which it was possible to mete out. " The court will withdraw for the purpose of arriving at a sentence," said the prosecuting attorney, rising. All arose at the same time, and, with the relief and the agreeable sensation of a well- performed good work, began to leave the room, or to move up and down. " My friend, we have done a shameful piece of busi- ness," said Peter Gerasimovich, walking up to Nekhlyiidov, to whom the foreman was telling something. " We have sent her to hard labour." " You don't say ? " cried Nekhlyudov, this time not taking notice at all of the teacher's disagreeable famil- iarity. " Precisely so," he said. " We did not put down in the answer, ' Guilty, but without the intention of killing.' The secretary has just told me that the prosecuting attorney is giving her fifteen years of hard labour." " That's the way we gave the verdict," said the fore- man. RESURRECTION 125 Peter Gerasimovich began to argue with him, saying that it was self-evident that if she did not steal the money, she could not have had the intention of killing him. " But did I not read the answers before coming out ? " the foreman justified himself. " Nobody contradicted." " I was not in the room at that time," said Peter Gerasimovich. " But how is it you were napping ? " " I could not imagine it was that way," said Nekh- lyiidov. " This comes from not imagining." " But this can be corrected," said Nekhlyiidov. " No, now everything is ended." Nekhlyudov looked at the defendants. They, whose fate was being decided, sat just as motionless behind the screen, in front of the soldiers. Maslova was smiling at something. An evil feeling began to stir in Nekhlyiidov's breast. Before this,- while he saw her acquittal and so- journ in the city, he had been undecided as to how to act toward her. In any case, his relations with her would have been difficult ; but now, the hard labour and Siberia at once destroyed every possibility of any relations with her. The wounded bird would stop fluttering in the game-bag and reminding him of itself. XXIV. Peter Gerasimovich's suppositions were correct. Upon returning from tlie consultation-room, the pre- siding judge took the paper and read : " On April 28, 188-, by order of his Imperial High- ness N , the criminal department of the Circuit Court, by virtue of the jury's verdict, and on the basis of par. 3, art. 771, par. 3, art. 776, and art. 777 of the Code of Crim. Jur., has decreed : Peasant Simon Kartiukin, thirty-three years of age, and Burgess Kateriua Maslova, twenty-seven years of age, to be deprived of all civil rights, and to be sent to hard labour : Kartiukin for the period, of eight years, and Maslova for four years, with the consequences incident thereupon according to art. 25 of the Statutes. But Burgess Evfimiya Bochkova, forty-three years of age, to be deprived of all special rights, both personal and civil, and of all -privileges, to be incarcerated in prison, for the period of three years, with the consequences incident thereupon according to art. 48 of the Statutes. The expenses of the court incurred in this case to be borne in equal parts by all the defendants, and in case of their inability to meet them to be paid by the Crown. " The exhibits presented in the case to be sold, the ring to be returned, and the jars to be destroyed." Kartinkin stood as erect as before, holding his hands with their spreading fingers down his sides, and moving his cheeks. Bochkova seemed to be quite calm. Upon hearing her sentence, Maslova grew red in her face. " I am not guilty, I am not guilty ! " she suddenly 126 RESURRECTION 127 shouted through the court-room. " This is a sin. I am not guilty. I had no intention, no thought of doing wrong. I am telHng the truth ! The truth ! " And, letting herself down on the bench, she sobbed out aloud. When Kartinkin and Bochkova left, she still remained sitting in one spot and weeping, so that the gendarme had to touch her by the elbow of her cloak. " No, it is impossible to leave it thus," Nekhlyudov said to himself, entirely forgetful of his evil feeling, and, without knowing why, rusbing out into the corridor, in order to get another glimpse of her. Through the door pressed the animated throng of the jurors and lawyers, satisfied with the result of the case, so that he was kept for several minutes near the door. When he came out into the corridor, she was far away. With rapid steps, and without thinking of the attention which he was attracting, he caught up with her, and, going beyond, he stopped. She had ceased weeping, and only sobbed fitfully, wiping her flushed face with the end of the kerchief ; she passed beyond him, without looking around. After she was gone, he hurriedly went back, in order to see the presiding judge, but the judge had just left, and he ran after him and found him in the vestibule. " Judge," said Nekhlyudov, approaching him just as he had donned his bright overcoat and had taken from the porter his silver-kuobbed cane, " may I speak with you about the case which has just been tried ? I was one of the jurors." " Yes, certainly, Prince Nekhlyudov ! Very happy, we have met before," said the presiding judge, pressing his hand at the pleasant recollection of how well and gaily and how much better than many a young man he had danced on the evening of his first meeting with Nekh- lyudov. " What can I do for you ? " " There was a misunderstanding in the answer in regard to Maslova. She is not guilty of poisonino-, and 128 RESURRECTION yet she has been sentenced to hard labour," Nekhlyiidov said, with a concentrated and gloomy look. " The court has passed sentence according to the an- swers which you have handed in," said the presiding judge, moving toward the entrance door, " even though the answers seemed to the court not to be relevant to the case." He recalled that he had intended to explain to the jury that their answer, " Yes, guilty," without a specific denial of intentional murder, only confirmed the murder with the intention, but that, in his hurry, he had forgotten to do so. " Yes ; but cannot the error be corrected ? " "A cause for annulment may always be found. One must consult the lawyers," said the presiding judge, putting on his hat somewhat jauntily, and moving up toward the door. " But this is terrible." " You see, one of two things could have happened to Maslova," said the presiding judge, wishing to be as agreeable and polite to Nekhlyiidov as possible ; he straightened out all his whiskers above the collar of his overcoat, and, slightly linking his hand in Nekhlyiidov's arm, continued, on his way to the door : " You are going out, are you not ? " " Yes," said Nekhlyiidov, swiftly putting on his coat, and going out with him. They came out into the bright, cheering sun, and it became necessary to speak louder, in order to be heard above the rattling of the wheels on the pavement. " The situation, you see, is a strange one," continued the presiding judge, raising his voice. " One of the two things could have happened to her, I mean Maslova : either almost an acquittal, with incarceration in a prison, from which might have been deducted the time already passed in jail, or merely an arrest, or otherwise hard RESURRECTION 129 labour, — there was nothing between these two. If you ^ had added the words, * but without the intention of causing death,' she would have been acquitted." " It is inexcusable in me to have omitted them," said Nekhlyudov. " That's where the trouble is," said the presiding judge, smiling, and looking at his watch. There were only forty-five minutes left to the latest hour appointed by Klara. " If you wish it, invoke a lawyer's aid. You must find cause for annulment. It is always possible to find such. To the Dvoryanskaya," he said to a cabman; "thirty kopeks, — I never pay more than that." " If you please, your Excellency." " My regards to you. If I can be useful to you, call at Dvornikov's house, on the Dvoryanskaya, — that is easily remembered." And, bowing graciously, he drove o£f. XXV. The conversation with the presiding judge and the fresh air somewhat calmed Nekhlyiidov. He now con- cluded that the sensation experienced by him was ex- aggerated by his having passed the whole morning under such unaccustomed circumstances. " Of course, it is a remarkable and striking coincidence ! I must do everything in my power to alleviate her condi- tion, and I must do so at the earliest possible moment, — at once. I must find out in the court-house where Fanarin or Mikishin lives." He recalled the names of these two famous lawyers. Nekhlyudov returned to the court-house, took off his overcoat, and went up-stairs. He met Fauarin in the first corridor. He stopped him, aud told him that he had some business with him. Fanarin knew him by sight and by name, aud said that he would be happy to be useful to him. " Although I am tired — but if it will not take you long, tell me your business, — come this way." Fanarin led Nekhlyudov into a room, very likely the private cabinet of some judge. They sat down at the table. " Well, what is it about ? " " First of all I shall ask you," said Nekhlyiidov, " not to let anybody know that I am taking any interest in this matter." " That is self-understood. And — " " I served on the jury to-day, and we sentenced an innocent woman to hard labour. This torments me." 130 RESURRECTION 131 Nekhlyuclov blushed, quite unexpectedly to himself, and hesitated. Fanariu flashed his eyes upon him and again lowered them, and listened. " Well ? " was all he said. " We have sentenced an innocent woman, and I should like to have the judgment annulled and carried to a higher court." " To the Senate," Fanarin corrected him. " And so I ask you to take the case." Nekhlyiidov wanted to get over the most difficult point as soon as possible, and so he said, blushing : " I shall bear the expenses in this case, whatever they may be." " Well, we shall come to an understanding about that," said the lawyer, with a smile of condescension at his inexperience. " What case is it ? " Nekhlyudov told him. " Very well, I will take it up to-morrow, and look it over. And the day after to-morrow — no, on Thursday, come to see me at six o'clock, and I shall have an answer for you. Is that all right ? Come, let us go, I have to make some inquiries yet." Nekhlyudov said good-bye to him and went away. His conversation with the lawyer and the fact that he had taken measures for Maslova's defence calmed him still more. He went out. The weather was beautiful, and it gave him pleasure to breathe the vernal air. The cabmen offered him their services, but he went on foot. A whole swarm of thoughts and recollections in regard to ■ Katyusha and to his treatment of her at once began to whirl around in his mind, and he felt melancholy, and everything looked gloomy. " No, I will consider that later," he said to himself, "but now I must divert my mind from these heavy impressions." He thought of the dinner at the Korchagins, and looked 132 KESURRECTION at his watch. It was not yet late, and he could get there in time. A tramway car was tinkling past him. He ran and caught it. At the square he leaped down and took a good cab, and ten minutes later he was at the entrance of the large house of the Korchagins, XXVI. " Please, your Serenity ! They are expecting you," said the kindly, stout porter of the large house of the Korchagins, opening the oak door of the entrance, which moved noiselessly on its English hinges. " They are at dinner, but I was ordered to ask you to come in." The porter went up to the staircase and rang a bell. " Is anybody there ? " asked Nekhlyiidov, taking off his overcoat, "Mr. Kolosov and Mikhail Sergy^evich, and the family," answered the porter. A fine-looking lackey, in dress coat and white gloves, looked down-stairs. " Please, your Serenity," he said, « I am told to ask you in." Nekhlyudov ascended the staircase and through the familiar, luxurious, and spacious parlour passed to the dining-room. Here the whole family was sitting at the table, excepting the mother. Princess Sofya Vasilevna, who never left her cabinet. At the head of the table sat the elder Korchagin ; next to him, to the left, was the doctor; to the right, a guest, Ivan Ivanovich Kolo- sov, formerly a Government marshal of the nobility, and now a director of a bank, a liberal comrade of Korcha- gin 's ; then, on the left, Miss Eedder, the governess of Missy's little sister, with the four-year-old girl; on the right, exactly opposite, was Missy's brother, the only son of the Korchagins, a gymnasiast of the sixth form, P^tya, for whose sake the whole family was still staying in the city, waiting for his examinations, and his tutor ; then, on 133 134 RESUERECTION the left, Katerina Aleksy^evna, an old maid forty years of age, who was a Slavophile ; opposite her, Mikhail Sergy^- evich, or Misha Tely^gin, Missy's cousin, and at the lower end of the table, Missy herself, and, near her, an untouched cover. " Now, that's nice. Sit down, — we are just at the fish," said the elder Korchagin, carefully and with diffi- culty chewing with his false teeth, and raising his suf- fused, apparently lidless eyes. " Stepan," he turned, with his full mouth, to the stout, majestic butler, indicating wuth his eyes the empty plate. Although Nekhlyiidov was well acquainted with old Korchagin, and had often seen him, especially at din- ner, he never before had been so disagreeably impressed by his red face, with his sensual, smacking lips, with his napkin stuck into his vest, and by his fat neck, — in general, by his whole pampered military figure. Nekhlyiidov involuntarily recalled everything he had heard of the cruelty of this man, who, God knows why, — for he was rich and of distinguished birth, and did not need to earn recognition by zealous service, — had had people flogged and even hanged when he had been the chief officer of a territory. " He will be served at once, your Serenity," said Stepan, taking from the buffet, which was filled with silver vases, a large soup-ladle, and nodding to the fine-looking lackey with the whiskers ; the lackey at once arranged the un- touched cover near Missy's, on which lay a quaintly folded starched napkin with a huge coat of arms. Nekhlyiidov walked all around the table, pressing every- body's hands. All but old Korchagin and the ladies rose when he came near them. On that evening the walking around the table and the pressing of the hands of all per- sons present, though with some of them he never exchanged any words, seemed to him particularly disagreeable and ridiculous. He excused himself for being so late, and was KESUKRECTION 135 on the point of seating himself on the unoccupied chair, when old Korchagin insisted that, even if he did not take any brandy, he should take an appetizer from the table on which stood lobsters, caviare, various kinds of cheese, and herrings. Nekhlyudov did not know he was so hungry, but when he started on a piece of cheese sandwich he could not stop, and ate with zest. " Well, have you loosened the foundations ? " said K6- losov, ironically quoting an expression of a retrograde paper which was opposed to trial by jury. " Have you acquitted the guilty, and sentenced the innocent ? Yes ? " " Loosened the foundations — loosened the founda- tions — " laughingly repeated the prince, who had an unbounded confidence in the wit and learning of his lib- eral comrade and friend. Nekhlyudov, at the risk of being impolite, did not answer Kolosov, and, sitting down to the plate of steam- ing soup which had been served to him, continued to munch his sandwich. " Let him eat," Missy said, smiling ; she used the pro- noun " him " in order to point out her intimacy with him. Kolosov, in the meantime, proceeded, in a loud and brisk voice, to give the contents of the article attacking the trial by jury which had so exasperated him. Mi- khail Sergy^evich, the nephew, agreed with him, and gave the contents of another article in the same paper. Missy was very dtstinguec, as always, and well, unos- tentatiously well dressed. " You must be dreadfully tired and hungry," she said to Nekhlyudov, when he had finished chewing. - " No, not very. And you ? Did you go to see the pictures ? " he asked. " No, we have put it off. We were out playing lawn- tennis with the Salamantovs. Eeally, Mr. Crooks plays a marvellous game." Nekhlyudov had come here to divert his mind ; it was 136 RESURRECTION always pleasant for him iu that house, not only on account of that good taste in luxury which agreeably affected his feelings, but also on account of that atmosphere of insinu- ating kindness with which he was imperceptibly surrounded here. But, strange to say, on that evening everything in that house was distasteful to him, everything, beginning with the porter, the broad staircase, the flowers, the lackeys, the setting of the table, to Missy herself, who now appeared unattractive and unnatural to him. He was also disgusted with that self-confident, mean, hberalizing tone of Kolosov ; he was disgusted with the ox-hke, self-confi- dent, sensual figure of old Korchagin ; he was disgusted with the French phrases of the Slavophile Katerina Alek- sy^evna ; he was disgusted with the repressed countenances of the governess and the tutor ; and he was particularly disgusted with the pronoun " him," which had been used in regard to himself. Nekhlyiidov always wavered between two relations with Missy : now he saw her as though with blinking eyes, or as if in the moonlight, and everything in her was beauti- ful; she seemed to liim fresh, and beautiful, and clever, and natural. Then again, he saw her as though in the bright sunshine, and he could not help noticing her de- fects. That evening was just such an occasion. He now saw all the wrinkles on her face ; he knew that her hair was artificially puffed out ; he saw the angularity of her elbows, and, above everything else, observed the wide nail of her thumb, which reminded him of her father's thumb- nails. " It is an exceedingly dull game," Kolosov remarked about the tennis. " The ball game we used to play in our childhood was much more fun." " You have not tried it. It is awfully attractive," re- torted Missy, pronouncing with particular unnaturalness the word " awfully," as Nekhlyildov thought. And then began a discussion in which also Mikhail RESURRECTION 137 Sergy^evich and Katerina Aleksy^evna took part. Only the governess, the tutor, and the children were silent and, evidently, felt ennui. " Quarrelling all the time ! " exclaimed old Korchdgin, bursting out into a guffaw ; he took the napkin out from his vest, and, rattling his chair, which the lackey immedi- ately took away, rose from table. All the others got up after him and went up to a small table, where stood the finger-bowls, filled with warm scented water ; they wiped their mouths and continued the conversation, which did not interest anybody. "Am I not right?" Missy turned to Nekhlyiidov, trying to elicit a confirmation of her opinion that a man's character is nowhere manifested so well as at a game. She had noticed in his face that concentrated and, as she thought, condemnatory expression of which she was afraid, and wanted to know what it was that had caused it. " Eeally, I do not know ; I have never thought about it," replied Nekhlyiidov. " Will you go to see mamma ? " asked Missy. "Yes, yes," he said, taking out a cigarette, and in a tone which manifestly meant that he should prefer not to go. She looked at him in silence, with a questioning glance, and he felt ashamed. " How mean ! To call on people in order to make them feel bad," he thought about him- self, and, trying to say something agreeable, announced that it would give him pleasure to go, if the princess would receive him. " Yes, yes, mamma will be happy. You may smoke there. Ivan Ivanovich is there, too." The lady of the house. Princess Sofya Vasilevna, was a bedridden woman. For the last eight years she had received her guests while lying in bed, amidst laces and ribbons, amidst velvet, gold tinsel, ivory, bronze, lacquer, and flowers ; she did not drive out, and received only her 138 RESURRECTION " own friends," as she expressed herself ; that is, all such people as stood out from the crowd. Nekhlyiidov was among these select people, because she regarded him as a clever young man, because he and his mother were near friends of the house, and because it would be well if Missy married him. The room of Princess Sofya Vasilevna was beyond the large and small drawing-rooms, lu the large drawing- room, Missy, who preceded Nekhlyiidov, suddenly stopped and, holding on to the back of a gilt chair, looked straight at him. Missy was very anxious to get married, and Nekhlyii- dov was a good match. Besides, she liked him, and had accustomed herself to the idea that he would belong to her (not that she would belong to him, but he to her), and she reached out for her goal with unconscious, but persistent cunning, such as the insane are possessed of. She said something to him in order to elicit an explanation from him. " I see that something has happened to you," she said. " What is the matter with you ? " He recalled the incident in the court-room, frowned, and blushed. " Yes, something has happened," he said, trying to be truthful ; " a strange, unusual, and important thing." « What is it ? Can't you tell it ? " " Not now. Permit me not to mention it. Something has happened which I have not yet had time to reflect upon," he said, and his face became even redder. " And you will not tell me ? " A muscle on her face quivered, and she moved the chair to which she was hold- ing on. " No, I cannot," he answered, feeling that in answering her he was answering himself, and confessing that really something important had happened to him. " Well, let us go." RESUKRECTION 139 She tossed her head, as if to drive away importunate thouglits, and walked on with faster steps than usual. It appeared to him that she compressed her lips in an unnatural manner, as though to keep back tears. He felt ashamed and pained at having grieved her, but he knew that the least weakness would ruin him, that is, it would bind him. And on that evening he was afraid of it more than ever, and so he reached the princess's cabinet with her in silence. XXVII. Princess Sofya Vasilevna had finished her very refined and nourishing dinner, which she was in the habit of eating all alone, in order that she might not be seen at that unpoetical function. Near her lounge stood a small table with coffee, and she was smoking a cigarette. Princess Sofya Vasilevna was a lean, haggard brunette, with large teeth and big black eyes, who was trying to appear young. • There was a rumour about her having certain relations with her doctor. On previous occasions Nekhlyudov generally forgot about this ; on that evening he not only thought of it, but, when he saw near her chair the doctor, with his pomaded, shining forked beard, he was overcome by loathing. At Sofya Vasilevna's side, on a soft low armchair, sat Kolosov near the table, stirring his coffee. On the table stood a wine-glass with liqueur. Missy entered with Nekhlyudov, but did not remain in the room. " When mamma gets tired and drives you away, come to me," she said, turning to Kolosov and Nekhlyudov, in such a tone as though nothing had happened between them, and, with a merry smile, inaudibly stepping over the heavy rug, went out of the room. " Good evening, my friend ! Sit down and tell me all about it," said Princess Sofya Vasilevna with an artificial, feigned smile, which remarkably resembled a real smile, and showing her beautiful large teeth, which were as artistically made as though they were natural. " I am 140 RESURRECTION 141 told that you have come from court in a very gloomy mood. This must be very hard for people with a heart," she said in French. " Yes, that is so," said Nekhlyiidov. " One often feels his in — One feels that one has no right to sit in judg- ment." " Comme c'est vrai," she exclaimed, as though struck by the truth of his remark, and, as always, artfully flatter- ing .her interlocutor. " Well, how is your picture getting on ? — it interests me very much," she added. " If it were not for my ailment, I should have gone long ago to see it." "I have 'given it up altogether," dryly replied Nekh- lyiidov, to whom the insincerity of her flattery was now as manifest as her old age, which she was trying to conceal. He was absolutely unable to attune himself in such a way as to be pleasant. " I am sorry. Do you know, Eyepnin himself told me that he has positive talent," she said, turning to Kolosov. " How unashamed of lying she is," thought Nekhlyiidov, frowning. Having convinced herself that Nekhlyiidov was not in a good humour and that it was not possible to draw him into a pleasant and clever conversation, Sofya Vasi- levna turned to Kolosov, asking for his opinion about the latest drama, in such a tone as though Kolosov's opinion was to solve all doubts, and as though every word of that opinion was to be eternalized. Kolosov condemned the drama, and used this opportunity to expatiate on his conceptions of art. Princess Sofya Vasilevna expressed surprise at the correctness of his views, tried to defend the author of the drama, but immediately surrendered her- self, or found some compromise. Nekhlyiidov was looking and hearing, but he saw and heard something different from what was going on in front of him. Listening to Sofya Vasilevna and to Kolosov, Nekh- 142 EESURRECTION lyudov observed that neither Sofya Vasilevna nor Kolosov had the least interest in the drama, or in each other, and that they were conversmg only to satisfy a physiological necessity of moving the muscles of the mouth and throat after dinner ; secondly, that Kolosov, having drunk brandy, wine, and liqueur, was a little intoxicated, — not as intoxicated as peasants are who drink at rare intervals, but as people are who make a habit of drinking wine. He did not sway, nor say foolish things, but was in an abnormal, excitedly self-satisfied condition ; in the third place, Nekhlyiidov noticed that Princess Sofya Vasilevna during the conversation restlessly looked at the window, through which fell upon her the slanting rays' of the sun, for fear that too strong a light might be shed on her old age. " How true that is," she said about a remark of Kdlosov's, and pressed a button in the wall near the lounge. Just then the doctor arose, and, being a famihar friend, went out of the room without saying a word. Sofya Vasilevna followed him with her eyes, continuing to speak. " Please, Filipp, let down this curtain," she said, indicat- ing with her eyes the curtain of the window, when the fine-looking lackey had come in in answer to the bell. " You may say as you please, but there is something mystical in him, and without mysticism there can be no poetry," she said, angrily watching with one black eye the movement of the lackey who was fixing the curtain. " Mysticism without poetry is superstition, and poetry without mysticism is prose," she said, sadly smiling, and not letting out of sight the lackey, who was still busy about the curtain. " Filipp, not this curtain, — the one at the large window," Sofya Vasilevna muttered, with the tone of a RESURRECTION 143 sufferer, evidently regretting the effort which she had to make in order to pronounce these words, and imme- diately, to soothe her nerves, putting the fragrant, smok- ing cigarette to her mouth with her ring-covered hand. Broad-chested, muscular, handsome Filipp made a slight bow, as though to excuse himself, and, stepping softly over the rug with his strong, well-shaped legs, humbly and silently went up to the other window, and, carefully watching the princess, so arranged the curtain that not one single ray could fall upon her. But here he again did not do exactly right, and again exhausted Sofya Vasilevna was compelled to interrupt her conversation about mysticism and to correct Filipp, who was hard of understanding and who pitilessly tormented her. For a moment there was a flash m Filipp's eyes. " The devil can make out what it is you want, no doubt is what he said to himself," thought Nekhlyiidov, who was watching the whole game. But handsome, strong Filipp at once concealed his motion of impatience and began calmly to carry out the order of exhausted, powerless, artificial Princess Sofya Vasilevna. " Of course, there is a larger grain of truth in Darwin's teachings," said Kolosov, throwing himself back in the low armchair, and looking with sleepy eyes at Princess Sofya Vasilevna, " but he oversteps the boundary. Yes." " And do you believe in heredity ? " Princess Sofya Vasilevna asked Nekhlyiidov, vexed by his silence. " In heredity ? " Nekhlyudov repeated her question. " No, I do not," he said, being at that moment all absorbed in the strange pictures which for some reason were rising in his imagination. By the side of strong, handsome Filipp, whom he imagined to be an artist's model, he saw Kolosov naked, with a belly in the shape of a water- melon, and a bald head, and thin, whip-like arms. Just as disconsolately he thought of Sofya Vasilevna's shoul- ders, which now were covered with silk and velvet ; he 144 RESURRECTION imagined them in their natural state, but this conception was so terrible that he tried to dispel it. Sofya Vasilevna measured him with her eyes. " I think Missy is waiting for you," she said. " Go to her ; she wanted to play to you a new piece by Grieg, — it is very interesting." " She did not want to play anything. She is just lying for some reason," thought Nekhlyiidov, rising aad press- ing Sofya Vasilevna's translucent, bony hand, covered with rings. In the drawing-room he was met by Katerina Aleksy^- evua, who at once began to speak to him. " I see the duties of a juror have an oppressive effect iipon you," she said, speaking, as always, in French. " Pardon me, I am not in a good humour to-day, and 1 have no right to make others feel bad," said Nekhlyiidov. " Why are you out of humour ? " " Permit me not to tell you why," he said, trying to find his hat. " Do you remember how you told us that one must always tell the truth, and how you then told us such cruel truths ? Why, then, do you not want to tell now ? Do you remember. Missy ? " Katerina Aleksy^evna turned to Missy, who had come out to them. " Because that was a game," Nekhlyiidov answered seriously. " In a game one may, but in reality we are so bad, that is, I am so bad, that I, at least, am not able to tell the truth." " There is nothing worse than to confess that you are out of humour," said Missy. " I never acknowledge such a feeling in myself, and. so I am always in a happy frame of mind. Well, won't you come with me ? We shall try to dispel your mauvaise humeur." Nekhlyiidov experienced a sensation such as a horse must experience when it is being patted, in order to be bridled and hitched. But on that evening it was harder KESURRECTION 145 for hiin to pull than at any previous time. He excused himself, saying that he had to be at home, and began to say good-bye. Missy held his hand longer than usual. " Kemember that what is important to you is also important to your friends," she said. " Will you be here to-morrow ? " " Hardly," said Nekhlyudov, and, feehng ashamed (he did not know whether for himself or for her), he blushed and hurriedly went away. " What is the matter ? Comvic cela m'intrigue," said Katerina Aleksy^evna, when Nekhlyudov had gone. " I must find out. Some affaire d' amour propre, — il est tres susceptible, notre cher Mitya." " Flutot, une affaire d'amour sale," Missy wanted to say, but restrained herself, with a dimmed expression which was quite different from the one her face had when speaking with him ; she did not tell that bad pun to Katerina Aleksy^evna, but merely remarked : " We all have good and bad days." " I wonder whether he, too, will deceive me," she thought. " After all that has happened, it would be very bad of him." If Missy had been asked to explain what she under- stood by the words, " after all that has happened," she would not have been able to say anything definite, and yet she knew beyond any doubt that he had not only given her hope, but had almost promised her. All this was done not by distinct words, but by glances, smiles, insinuations, and reticence. Withal she regarded him as her own, and it would have been hard for her to lose him. XXVIIL " Disgraceful and disgusting, disgusting and disgrace- ful," Nekhlyudov thought in the meantime, walking home through familiar streets. The heavy feeling which he had experienced during his conversation with Missy did not leave him. He felt that formally, if one may so express oneself, he was right before her, for he had said nothing to her that would bind him, had made no pro- posal to her ; at the same time he was conscious of having essentially tied himself and promised, and yet he felt with all his being that he could not marry her. " Disgraceful and disgusting, disgusting and dis- graceful," he repeated to himself, not only in reference to his relations with Missy, but to everything. " Everything is disgusting and disgraceful," he repeated to himself, as he ascended the porch of his house. " I sha'n't eat any supper," he said to Korndy, who walked after him into the dining-room, where the table was set and the tea was ready. " You may go." " Yes, sir," said Korney ; he did not leave, but began to clear the table. Nekhlyiidov looked at Koru^y and was overcom3 by a hostile feeling toward him. He wanted to be left alone, and it seemed to him that everybody was annoying him, as though on purpose. When Korney had left with the dishes, Nekhlyildov went up to the samovar, in order to pour in the tea, but upon hearing Agrafena Petrovna's steps, he, in order not to be seen, hurriedly went into the drawing-room and closed the door behind him. This drawing-room was the one in which his mother had died three months before. Now, upon entering this 146 RESUREECTION 147 room, which was illuminated by two lamps with their reflectors, one near his father's picture, the other near his mother's portrait, he recalled his last relations with his mother, and they seemed to him unnatural and repulsive. And this, too, was shameful and mean. He recalled how during her last illness he had simply wanted her to die. He had said to himself that he wished it in order to see her liberated from her sufferings, but in reality he had wished himself to he freed from the sight of her agony. Wishiug to evoke a good memory of her, he looked at her portrait, which had been painted by a famous painter for five thousand roubles. She was represented in a black velvet gown, with bared breast. The painter had evidently spared no effort in painting the bosom, the interval between her breasts, and the shoulders and neck, dazzling in their beauty. This was absolutely disgraceful and disgusting. There was something loathsomely profane in the represen- tation of his mother in the form of a half-naked beauty, the more loathsome, since three months ago the same woman had been lying there, dried up like a mummy, and yet filling not only the room, but even the whole house with a painfully heavy odour which it was impos- sible to subdue. He thought he could scent it even now. And he recalled how the day before her death she had taken his strong, white hand into her bony, discoloured little one, had looked him in the eyes, and had said: " Do not judge me, Mitya, if I have not done right," and in her eyes, faded from suffering, stood tears. " How disgustin" ! " he said once more to himself, looking at the half-bare woman with her superb marble shoulders and arms, and with her victorious snule. The nudity of the bosom on the portrait reminded him of another young woman, whom he had also seen decolletee a few days before. It was IVIissy, who had found an excuse to invite him to the house, in order that she might appear before 148 RESURRECTION him in the evening dress in which she was going to a ball. He thought with disgust of her beautiful shoulders and arms. And that coarse animal father, with his past, his cruelty, and that spiritual mother, with her doubtful reputation ! Disgraceful and disgusting, disgusting and disgraceful ! " No, no," he thought, " I must free myself ; I must free myself from all these false relations with the Korchagins, and from Mariya Vasilevna, and from the inheritance, and from everything else — Yes, I must breathe freely. Abroad, — to Eome, to work on my picture." He recalled his doubts in regard to his talent. " What of it ? If only to breathe freely. First to Constantinople, then to Eome, only to get rid of all jury service. And I must arrange that matter with the lawyer." And suddenly the prisoner, with her black squinting eyes arose in his imagination with extraordinary vividness. How she did weep during the last words said by the defendants ! He hurriedly extinguished his finished cigarette and crushed it in the ash-tray, lighted another, and began to pace up and down in the room. And one after another the moments which he had passed with her rose in his imagination. He recalled his last meeting with her, that animal passion which then had taken possession of him, and the disenchantment which he had experienced when his passion was satisfied. He recalled the white dress with the blue ribbon, and the morning mass. " I did love her, did sincerely love her with a good and pure love during that night ; I had loved her even before, when I had passed my first' summer with my aunts, and had been writing my thesis ! " And he recalled himself such as he had been then. That fresh- ness, youth, and fulness of life was wafted upon him, and he felt painfully sad. The difference between what he had then been and what he now was was enormous ; it was just as great, if not RESURRECTION 149 greater, than the difference that existed between Katyu- sha at church and that prostitute, who had caroused with the merchant, and who had been sentenced on that very day. Then he had been a vigorous, free man, before whom endless possibiHties had been open ; now he was conscious of being on all sides caught in the snare of a foolish, empty, aimless, and insignificant life, from which he saw no issue, and from which, for the greatest part, he did not wish to emerge. He recalled how formerly he had prided himself on his straightforwardness ; how he had made it his rule always to tell the truth ; and how he now was all entangled in a lie, in a most terrible lie ; a lie which all the people who surrounded him regarded as the truth. And there was no way of getting out from this lie, — at least he did not see any way. And he was sunk deep in it, — was used to it, and pampered himself by it. How was he to tear asunder those relations with Mariya Vasilevna and with her husband in such a way that he should not be ashamed to look into his eyes and into the eyes of his children ? How was he to unravel his relations with Missy without lying ? How was he to extricate himself from the contradiction between the acknowledgment of the illegality of the ownership of land and the possession for life of his maternal inheritance ? How was he to atone for his sin before Katyusha ? He certainly could not leave it as it was. " I cannot aban- don a woman whom I have loved, and be satisfied with paying a lawyer and freeing her from hard labour, which she has not deserved, — that is, to settle the whole matter by giving money, just as I had thought then that I ought to do, when I gave her the money ! " And he vividly thought of the minute when he had caught up with her in the corridor, and put the money in her bosom, and had run away again. " Ah, that money ! " he recalled that minute with the same terror and dis- 150 RESUERECTION gust that had overcome him then. "Ah, ah ! how con- temptible ! " he said aloud, just as then. " Only a rascal, a scouudrel, could have doue that ! And I am that rascal, that scoundrel ! " he again said aloud. " And am I really," he stopped in his walk, " am I really such a scouudrel ? If not I, who is ? " he rephed to his own question. " And is this all ? " he continued to upbraid himself. " Are not your relations with Mariya Vasilevna and her husband mean and contemptible ? And your relations with property ? Under the pretence that the money is your mother's to make use of wealth which you regard as illegal ? And all your empty, bad Mfe. And the crown of all, — your deed with Katyusha. Scoundrel ! rascal ! Let people judge me as they please : I can deceive them, but I shall never be able to deceive myself." And he suddenly comprehended that that loathing which he had of late experienced for people — and espe- cially on that very day for the prince, and for Sofya Vasi- levna, and for Missy, and for Korn^y — was really a loathing for himself. And, strange to say, in this feeling of confessing his meanness there was something painful, and at the same time something pleasurable and soothing. Nekhlyiidov had had several times before what he called a " cleansing of his soul." By a cleansing of his soul he understood a condition of his soul such as when he suddenly, sometimes after a long interval of time, recognized the retardation, and sometimes the cessation of his internal work, and began to clean up all the dirt which had accumulated in his soul, and which was the cause of this retardation. After such awakenings Nekhlyudov formed certain rules which he intended to follow henceforth : he kept a diary and began a new life, which he hoped he would never change again, — ■ he " turned a new leaf," as he used to say to himself. But the temptations of the EESUKKECTION 151 world pressed hard on him, and he fell again, without noticing it, and often lower than before. Thus he had cleansed himself and had risen several times ; thus it had been with him the first time when he had gone to spend the summer with his aunts. That had been the most vivid, the most enthusiastic awakening, and its effects had remained for a considerable time. Then, he had another awakening when he left the civil service, and, wishing to sacrifice his hfe, entered the military serv- ice during the war. But here the pollution took place soon aft-er. Then, there was another awakening when he asked for his dismissal from the army, and went abroad to study art. Since then a long period had passed without any cleans- ing, and consequently he had never before reached such a pollution and such a discord between that which his conscience demanded and the life which he was leading, and he was horror-struck when he saw the distance. That distance was so great, the pollution so strong, that at first he despaired of being able to cleanse his soul. " I have tried often enough to perfect myself and become better, but nothing has come of it," said in his soul the voice of the tempter, " so what is the use trying again ? " " You are not the only one, — they are all like that, — such is life," said this voice. But the free, spiritual being, which alone is true, and powerful, and eternal, was already beginning to waken in Nekhlyudov. He could not help trusting it. No matter how great the distance was between what he had been and what he wanted to be, everything was possible for the awakened spiritual being. " I will tear asunder the lie which is binding me, at whatever cost, and I will profess the truth, and will tell the truth to everybody at all times, and will act truth- fully," he said to himself aloud, with determination. " I will tell the truth to Missy ; I will tell her that I am a liber- tine and that I cannot marry her, and that I have 162 RESURRECTION troubled her in vain ; and I will also tell the truth to Mariya Vasilevna. Still I have nothing to tell her ; I will tell her husband that I am a scoundrel, that I have deceived him, I will make such disposition of my inher- itance as to be in consonance with the truth, I will tell her, Katyusha, that I am a rascal, that I am guilty toward her, and I will do everything to alleviate her lot. Yes, I will see her, and will ask her to forgive me. " Yes, I will ask forgiveness, as children ask it," He stopped, " I will marry her, if that is possible." He stopped, crossed his hands over his breast, as he used to do when he was a child, raised his eyes upwards, and uttered these words : " Lord, help me, instruct me, come and take Thy abode within me, and cleanse me of all impurity," He prayed to God to help him, to take up His abode within him, and to purify liim, and in the meantime that which he asked f^or had already taken place. God, who was living within him, had awakened in his conscious- ness. He felt himself to be that new man, and there- fore he was conscious not only of freedom, of frankness, and of the joy of life, but also of all the power of good- ness. He now felt himself capable of doing everything, the very best that any human being could do. In his eyes were tears, as he was saying that to him- self, — both good and bad tears : good tears, because they were tears of joy at the awakening of the spnitual being within him ; and bad, because they were tears of pacifi- cation with himself, at his own virtue. He was warm. He went up to the window and opened it. It faced the garden. It was a quiet, fresh moonlight night ; in the street some wheels rattled, and then all was quiet. Right under the window could be seen the shadow from the branches of the tall, leafless poplar, which with all its forked boughs lay distinctly outlined on the sand of the cleaned-up open space. On the left RESURRECTION 153 was the roof of a barn, which appeared white in the bright moonlight ; in front were the intertwined branches of the trees, and behind them could be seen the black shadow of the fence. Nekhlyudov looked at the moonUt garden and roof and the shadow of the poplar, and he hstened, and inhaled the vivifying fresh air. " How good, how good, O Lord, how good ! " he said of what was in his soul. XXIX. Maslova. returned to her cell at six o'clock in the even- ing, tired and footsore from the unaccustomed fifteen- verst march over the cobblestones, and besides oppressed by the unexpectedly severe sentence, and hungry. During a recess, the guards had been eating bread and hard-boiled eggs, and her mouth had begun to water, and she had felt hungry, but had regarded it as humiliating to ask them for anything to eat. When, after that, three hours passed, she no longer felt hungry, but only weak. It was during that state that she listened to the sentence. At first she thought that she had not heard right, and was not able to beheve what she had heard : she could not think of herself as sentenced to hard labour. But when she saw the quiet, businesshke countenances of the judges and the jury, who received that information as something quite natural, she felt provoked and shouted aloud that she was not guilty. When she saw that her cry, too, was received as something natural, as something expected and incapable of affecting the case, she burst out into tears, feeling that it was necessary to submit to that cruel and amazing injustice which had been committed against her. She was particularly amazed at the fact that she had been so cruelly condenmed by men, — young men, not old men, — who had always looked so favourably upon her. One of them — the prosecuting attorney — she had seen in quite a different mood. While she was sitting in the prisoners' room, waiting for the court to begin, and during the recesses of the session, she had seen those men, pretending to be after something else, pass by the 154 RESURRECTION 155 door or walk into the room in order to take a look at her. And now these same men had for some reason or other sentenced her to hard labour, notwithstanding the fact that she was not guilty of what she had been accused of. She wept, but then grew silent, and in complete stupor sat in the prisoners' room, waiting to be taken back. She wanted only one thing, — to smoke. While in this condition, she was seen by Bdchkova and Kartin- kin, who were brought into the same room after the sen- tence had been passed. Bdchkova at once began to scold Maslova and to taunt her with the hard labour. " Well, did you succeed ? Did you justify yourself ? You could not get off, you slut ! You have received your deserts. You will give up your fine ways at the hard labour, I am sure." Maslova sat with her hands stuck into the sleeves of her cloak and, bending her head low, remained motionless, looking two steps ahead of her, at the dirty floor, and only said : " I am not bothering you, so you leave me alone. I am not botheriug you," she repeated several times, then grew entirely silent. She revived a little when Bdchkova and Kartiukin were led away, and the janitor came in and brought her three roubles. " Are you Maslova ? " he asked. " Here, take it ; a lady has sent it for you," he said, handing her the money. « What lady ? " " Take it, and don't get into discussions with us ! " Kitaeva had sent the money. Upon leaving the court- room she asked the baihff whether she could give Mas- lova some money. The bailiff said she could. Upon receiving this permission, she pulled the tliree-buttqn chamois glove off her plump white hand, took a fashion- able pocketbook out of the back folds of her silk skirt, eind selecting from a fairly large heap of coupons, which 156 RESURRECTION had been cut from bank-bills earned by her, one of the denomination of two roubles and fifty kopeks, added to this two twenty-kopek pieces and one ten-kopek piece, and handed the sum over to the bailiff. He called the janitor, and gave him the money in the presence of the donor. "Please, give it to her in full," Karolina Albertovna said to the janitor. The janitor felt insulted by the suspicion, and that was why he was so brusque with Maslova. Maslova was glad to get the money, because it would furnish her with what she now wanted. " If I could only get cigarettes, and have a puff at one," she thought, and all her thoughts were centred on this one desire lo smoke. She was so anxious for it that she eagerly inhaled the air if there was a whiff of tobacco smoke in it, as it found its way into the corridor through the doors of a cabinet. But she had to wait for quite awhile, because the secretary, who had to release her, having forgotten about the defendants, was busy discuss- ing a prohibited article with one of the lawyers. Finally, at about five o'clock, she was permitted to leave, and the two soldiers of the guard — the Nizhni- No vgorodian and the Chuvash — took her away from the court-house by a back door. While in the vestibule of the court-house, she gave them twenty kopeks, asking them to buy her two rolls and cigarettes. The Chuvash laughed, took the money, and said, "All right, we will buy it for you," and really honestly bought the cigarettes and rolls, and gave her the change. On the way she could not smoke, so that she reached the prison with the same unsatisfied desire to smoke. As she was brought to the door, about one hundred prisoners were being delivered from the railroad train. She fell in with them at the entrance. The prisoners, — bearded, shaven, old, young, Russians RESUKRECTION 157 and of other nationalities, — some of them with half their heads shaven, clanking their leg-fetters, filled the entrance- hall with the noise of their steps, their voices, and the pungent odour of their sweat. Passing by Maslova, the prisoners looked at her, and some went up to her, and teased her. " Oh, a tine girl," said one. " My regards to aunty," said another, blinking with one eye. A swarthy fellow, with a blue shaven occiput and with a moustache on his shaven face, tripping in his fetters and clanking them, rushed up to her and embraced her. " Did you not recognize your friend ? Stop putting on airs!" he cried, grinning and flashing his eyes upon her, as she pushed him away. " liascal, what are you doing there ? " cried the assistant superintendent, coming up to him. The prisoner crouched and swiftly ran away. The assistant began to scold Maslova. " What are you doing here ? " Maslova wanted to tell him that she was brought back from court, but she was too tired to talk. " From court, your honour," said the elder guard, com- ing out of the throng of prisoners, and putting his hand to his cap. " Well, transfer her, then, to the officer, and don't keep her in this crowd ! " " Yes, your honour ! " " Sokolov ! Receive her," cried the assistant superin- tendent. The officer came up, and, giving Maslova an angry push on the shoulder and indicating the direction to her l)y a motion of his head, led her to the women's corridor. There she was exammed and fingered all over, and, as nothing was found (the cigarette box had been stuck into a roll), she was admitted to the same cell which she had left in the morning. XXX. The cell in which Maslova was kept was a long room, nine arshins long and seven wide, with two windows, a protruding, worn-out stove, and sleeping-l^enohes with warped boards, which occupied two thirds of the space. In the middle, opposite the door, was a dark holy image, with a wax taper stuck to it, and with a dusty wreath of immortelles hanging underneath it. Behind the door, and to the left, was a black spot on the floor, and on it stood a stink-vat. The roll had just been called, and the women were locked up for the night. There were in all fifteen inmates in that cell : twelve women and three children. It was quite light yet, and only two women were lying on the benches : one of them, whose head was covered with her cloak, was a demented woman, who was locked up for having no passport ; she was asleep most of the time ; and the other, — a consumptive woman, — was serving a sentence for theft. She was not asleep, but lay, with her cloak under her head, with her eyes wide open, with difficulty keeping back the tickling and oozing moisture in her throat, in order not to cough. The other women, all of them with bare heads, in nothing but shirts of a coarse texture, were either sitting on the benches and sewing, or standing at the window and looking at the prisoners who were passing through the yard. Of the three women who were sewing, one was the same old woman who had seen Maslova off, Korabl^va by name ; she was a sullen, scowling, wrinkled, tall, strong woman, with skin hanging in a loose bag 168 RESURRECTION 159 under her chin, a short braid of blond hair that was streaked with gray over her temples, and a hirsute wart on her cheek. The woman had been sentenced to hard labour for having killed her husband with an axe. She had committed that murder because he had been making improper advances to her daughter. Korableva was the forewoman of the cell, and trafficked in liquor. She was sewing in spectacles, and holding the needle in her large working hands iu peasant fashion, with three fingers and the point towards her. Next to her sat a snub-nosed, swarthy httle woman, with small black eyes, good-hearted and talkative, also sewing bags of sail-cloth. She was a flagwoman at a railroad hut, sentenced to three months iu jail for ha\dng failed to flag a train, a failure by which an accident was caused. The third woman who was sewing, was Fedosya, — F^- nichka her companions called her, — a w^hite, red-cheeked, very young, sweet-faced woman, with clear, childish eyes, and two long blond braids circling around a small head, who was imprisoned for an attempt to poison her husband. She tried to poison him soon after her marriage, which had taken place when she was barely sixteen years old. In the eight months which she had been detained await- ing the court's session, she not only made up with her husband, but became so fond of him that the court found the two living in the greatest concord. Notwith- standing the fact that her husband and her father-in-law, and especially the mother-in-law, who had become exceed- ingly fond of her, tried to exculpate her, she was sentenced to hard labour in Siberia. Good, merry, frequently smil- ing Fedosya was Maslova's neigbbour on the bench, and she not only liked Maslova very much, but regarded it as her duty to care for her and attend to her. Two other women were sitting on the benches, without any work ; one of them, about forty years of age, with a 160 RESURRECTION pale, haggard face, had evidently once been very beautiful, but now was pale and lean, — she was holding a babe in her arms, and suckling it from her white, long breast. Her crime consisted in this : a recruit was taken away from their village, who, according to the peasants' under- standing, had been unlawfully drafted ; the people stopped the country judge and took away the recruit; this woman, the unlawfully seized recruit's aunt, was the first to lay hands on the reins of the horse which was to take away the recruit. The other was a short, wrinkled, good- natured old woman, with gray hair, and a hump on her back. The old woman sat on a bench near the stove and pretended to be catching the four-year-old, close-cropped, chubby little boy who was running past her and laughing loudly. He was clad in nothing but a shirt, and kept running past and repeating all the time, " You see, you did not catch me ! " This old woman, who with her son was accused of arson, bore her incarceration with the greatest good nature, feel- ing sorry, not for herself, but for her son, who was also in jail, and still more for her old husband, who, she was afraid, would be all covered with vermin, because the daughter-in-law had left, and there was no one at home to wash him. In addition to these seven women, four others were standing at one of the open windows, and, holding on to the iron grating, were with signs and shouts conversing with those prisoners with whom Maslova had fallen in at the entrance. One of these, who was serving for theft, was a large, heavy, flabby, red-haired woman, with sallow and freckled face, hands, and neck, which stuck out from her untied, open collar. She loudly shouted indecent words in a hoarse voice. Next to her stood a swarthy, misshapen woman, with a long spine and very short legs, looking not larger than a ten-year-old girl. Her face was red, and all spotted, and RESURRECTION 161 had widely separated black eyes, and short, stout lips, whicli did uot cover up her protruding white teeth. She was laughiug with a whine and fitfully at what was goiug on in the yard. This prisoner, nicknamed Beauty for her foppishness, was under trial for theft and arson. Back of them stood, in a very dirty gray shirt, a mis- erable-looking, haggard, venous, pregnant woman, with an immense abdomen, who was under trial for receiving stolen goods. This woman was silent, but all the time smiled approvingly and rapturously at what was going on without. The fourth woman at the window, who was serving a sentence for ilHcit traffic in liquor, was a short, thick-set peasant woman, with very bulging eyes and a good-natured face. This woman, the mother of the boy who was play- ing with the old woman, and of a seven-year-old girl, both of which children were with her in the prison because she had no place to leave them in, was looking through the window like the rest, but continued to knit a stocking, and kept frowning disapprovingly and closing her ears to what the transient prisoners in the yard were saying. Her daughter, the seven-year-old girl, with white, loose hair, was standing in nothing but a shirt near the red- haired woman, and, holding on with her thin little hand to her skirt, was, with arrested eyes, listening attentively to the vulgar words which the women were exchanging with the prisoners, and repeating them in a whisper, as though to learn them by heart. The twelfth prisoner was the daughter of a sexton, who had drowned her child in a well. She was a tall, stately girl, with tangled hair, which stuck out from her thick short blond braid, and with motionless protruding eyes. She did not pay the least attention to what was going on around her, was barefoot and clad in a dirty gray shirt, and was pacing to and fro in the free space of the cell, abruptly and rapidly turning around whenever she reached the walL XXXI. When the lock clicked, and Maslova was let into the cell, all turned to her. Even the sexton's daughter stopped for a minute, and looked at the newcomer with uplifted brows, but without saying anything immediately proceeded to walk up and down with her long, determined steps, Korableva stuck her needle into the coarse cloth, and questioningly turned her eyes, through her spectacles, upon Maslova, " I declare. You are back. And I thought you would be acquitted," she said, in her hoarse, -deep, almost mas- culine voice, " Evidently they have sent you up." She took off her spectacles, and put her sewing down on the l)ench, " Aunty and I have been talking about you, dear; we thought they would release you at once. Such things do happen. And if you strike it right, you get money, too," began the flagwoman, in her singing voice, " And just the opposite has happened. Evidently our guessing was wrong. The Lord evidently has decided differently, my dear," she chattered without cessation in her kind and melodious voice. " Have they really sentenced you? " asked Fedosya, with compassionate tenderness, looking at Maslova with her childish, light blue eyes; her whole cheerful, young face was changed, as though she were ready to weep, Maslova did not make any reply, and silently went up to her place, the second from the end, near Korableva, and sat down on the boards of the bench. " I suppose you have not had anything to eat," said Fedosya, getting up and walking over to Maslova. 162 RESURRECTION 163 Maslova put the rolls at the head of the bench, with- out saying a word, and began to undress herself: she took off her dusty cloak, and the kercliief from her curly black hair, and sat down. The humpbacked old woman who had been playing with the little fellow at the other end of the benches went up and stopped in front of Maslova. " Tss, tss, tss! " she hissed out, sympathetically shaking her head. The little boy also came up with the old woman, and opening his eyes wide, and pursing his upper lip in one corner, did not take them off the rolls which Maslova had brought. Upon seeing all these sympathetic faces after all that had happened during that day, Maslova felt like weeping, and her lips began to quiver. But she tried to restrain herself, and succeeded in doing so until the old woman and little boy came up to her. But when she heard the kindly, compassionate " tss " of the old woman, and especially when her eyes met those of the boy, who had now transferred his serious eyes from the rolls to her, she no longer could hold back. Her whole face treml^led, and she sobbed out loud. " I told you to get the right kind of a counsel," said Korableva. " Well, what is it, transportation? " she asked. Maslova wanted to answer but could not; sobbing, she took out of the roll the box of cigarettes, on which was represented a ruddy woman in a very high head-dress and with a triangular bare spot over her bosom, and handed it to Korableva. Korableva glanced at the picture, dis- approvingly shook her head, particularly because Maslova had so badly spent her money, and, taking out a cigarette, lighted it at the lamp, took herself a puff, and then put it into Maslova's hand. Maslova. without interrupting her weeping, eagerly began to puff the tobacco smoke in quick succession. 164 RESURRECTION " Hard labour," she muttered through sobs. " They are not afraid of God, spongers and accursed bloodsuckers," muttered Korableva. " They have sen- tenced a girl for nothing." Just then a roar of laughter was heard among the women who were standing at the window. The little girl was laughing, too, and her thin, childish laugh mingled with the hoarse and whining laughter of the grown people. A prisoner on the outside had done something that affected the women who were looking through the window. " Ah, shaven dog! See what he is doing," said the red-haired woman, and, shaking her whole fat body and pressing her face against the grating, she shouted some senseless and indecent words. " Stop, you skin of a drum! What are you yelling about? " said Korableva, shaking her head at the red- haired woman, and again turning to Maslova. " How many years? " " Four," said Maslova, and the tears flowed so copiously from her eyes that one fell on the cigarette. Maslova angrily crushed it, threw it away, and took another. The flagwoman, though she did not smoke, immediately picked it up and began to straighten it out, speaking all the time. " I must say, my dear," she said, " the wild boar must have chewed up all the truth. They now do as they please. And here we had been guessing that you would be released. Matvyeevna said that you would be, and I said, ' No! ' says I, ' my heart feels that they will undo her,' and so it is," she said, evidently finding pleasure in listening to the sound of her own voice. By that time all the prisoners had crossed the yard, and the women who had been conversing with them had left the window and had come over to Maslova. The first RESURRECTION 165 to come up was the staring dram-shopkeeper with her little girl. " Well, were they very severe? " she asked, sitting down near Maslova, and continuing rapidly to knit at the stocking. " They were severe because there was no money. If she had had money and had hired a first-class lawyer, I am sure she would have been acquitted," said Korableva. " That fellow, what is his name? that shaggy, big-nosed fellow, — he will take a man dry through the water. She ought to have had him." " That's easily said," retorted Beauty, who had seated herself near them, and was grinning. *' He won't as much as spit out for less than one thousand." " Yes, it is evidently your fate," remarked the old woman who w^as confined for arson. " It is no small matter they have done to me: they have taken the wife away from the young fellow, and have put him where he onh' breeds vermin, and me, too, in my old age," she began for the hundredth time to tell her story. " Evi- dently you can't get away from the prison and from the beggar's wallet. If not the wallet, it is the prison." " It seems it is always that way with them," said the dram-shopkeeper, looking at her daughter's head. She put down the stocking near her, drew the girl between her legs, and began with swift fingers to search through her head. " Then, wh}^ do you traffic in liquor? — How are j^ou otherwise going to feed your children? " she said, continuing her customary work. These words of the dram-shopkeeper reminded Maslova of liquor. " Let me have some liquor," she said to Korableva, dry- ing her tears with her sliirt-sleeve, and sobbing now and then. " Any dough? Very well, hand it to me," said Kora- bleva. XXXII. Maslova took the money out of the roll and gave Koralileva the coupon. Korableva took it, looked at it, and, though she could not read herself, trusted Beauty, who knew everything, that the paper was worth two roubles and a half, and so she moved over to the ven- tilator and took out from it the jar with the liquor, which was concealed there. Maslova, in the meantime, shook the dust out of her cloak and kerchief, climbed on her bench, and began to eat her roll. " I have kept some tea for you, but I am afraid it is cold now," Fedosj^a said to her, taking down from the shelf a rag-covered tin pot and a cup. The drink was quite cold and tasted more of the tin than of the tea, but Maslova filled the cup and drank it with her roll. " Finashka, here," she called out, and, breaking off a piece of the roll, gave it to the boy, who was looking straight into her mouth. Korableva in the meantime handed her the liquor bottle and the cup. Maslova offered some to Korableva and Beauty. These three prisoners formed the aristoc- racy of the cell, because they had money and shared what they had. In a few minutes Maslova was herself again and started to tell about the court, imitating the prosecuting attorney and everything which had especially impressed her in the court-room. She was particularly struck by the fact that wherever she happened to be, the men, according to her observation, ran after her. In the court-room they all 166 KESURRECTION 167 looked at her, she said, and they kept all the time filing into the prisoners' room. " The guard kept telUng me, ' They come to see you.' Now and then one would come in, pretending to be look- ing for a paper, or something else, but I saw that he did not want any paper, and only came to devour me with his eyes," she said, smiling and shaking her head as though in surprise. " The}^ are great." " That's the way," chimed in the flagwoman, and her singsong speech began at once to ripple. " Like flies on sugar. For other things they are not there, but for this they are always ready. Not with bread are they to be fed — " " But even here," Maslova interrupted her, " here I had the same trouble. When I was brought in, there was a party here from the train. They annoyed me so much that I did not know how to get rid of them. Fortunately, the assistant drove them off. One of them stuck to me so that I had the hardest time to keep him off." " What kind of a fellow was he? " Beauty asked. " Swarthy, with moustache." " That must be he." " Who? " " Shcheglov. The one that has just passed." " Who is that Shcheglov? " " You do not know who Shcheglov is? Shcheglov twice ran away from hard labour. They have just caught him, but he will get away again. The warders even are afraid of him," said Beauty, who carried notes to prisoners, and who knew everything that was going on in the prison. " He certainly will get away." " And if he does, he will not take us with him," said Korableva. " You had better tell me," she addressed Maslova, " what did the lawyer say about the petition which jj-ou will have to hand in? " Mdslova said that she did not know anything about that. 168 RESURRECTION Just then the red-haired woman, having put both her freckled hands in her tangled, thick, red hair, and scratch- ing her head with her nails, went up to the drinking prisoners. " I will tell you everything, Katerina," she began. " First of all, you must write, ' I am not satisfied with the judgment,' and then you must announce it to the prosecuting attorney." " What is that to you? " Korableva turned to her, in an angry bass. " You have smelled the liquor, but you need not wheedle. We know without you what is to be done; we do not need you." '' I am not talking to you. Don't get so excited! " " You want some liquor, that's why you have come up." " Give her some," said Maslova, who always gave away everything she had. " I will give her such — " " Come, come," said the red-haired woman, moving up to Korableva. " I am not afraid of you." " Jailbird! " " I hear this from a jailbird! " " Flabby tripes! " " You call me tripes? You convict, destroyer of souls! " cried the red-haired woman. " Go away, I say," gloomily muttered Korableva. But the red-haired woman moved up closer, and Kora- bleva struck her in the open fat breast. That was exactly what the red-haired woman seemed to have been waiting for, and suddenly she, with a swift motion, put one hand into Korableva's hair, and with the other was about to strike her face, but Korableva grasped that hand. Maslova and Beauty caught hold of the red-haired woman's hands, trying to tear her away, but the hand which had hold of the hair would not unbend. She let it go for a second, but only to wind it around her wrist. Korableva, with her head bent down, struck with one hand at the red- KESURKECTION 169 * haired woman's body and tried to bite her arm. The women gathered about the two who were fighting, trying to separate them, and shouting. Even the consumptive woman walked up to them, and, coughing, watched the fight. The children pressed close to each other and wept. At the noise the warden and matron came in. The fight- ing women were separated, and Korableva unbraided her gray hair, in order to take out the torn tufts, while the red-haired woman held her ripped-up shirt against her yellow chest; both cried, explaining and complaining. " I know, it is all on account of the hquor; I shall tell the superintendent to-morrow, — and he will settle you. I can smell it," said the matron. " Take it all away, or else it will go hard with you. I have no time to make it all out. To your places, and keep quiet! " But silence did not reign for quite awhile. The women continued to quarrel for a long time, telling each other how it had all begun, and who was to blame. Finally the warden and matron went away, and the women slowly quieted down and went to bed. The old woman stood before the image and began to pray. " Two convicts have come together," the red-haired woman suddenly said from the other end of the benches, in a hoarse voice, accompanying each word with fantastic curses. " Look out, or you will catch some more," immediately replied Korableva, joining similar curses to her speech. Both grew silent. " If they had not interfered, I should have gouged out your eye — " again said the red-haired woman, and again Korableva was not behind with an answer. Then there was a longer interval of quiet, and again curses. The intervals grew ever longer, and finally every- thing died down. All were lying on their benches, and some were already snoring; but the old woman, who always prayed long, 170 RESURRECTION was still making her obeisances before the image, and the sexton's daughter got up the moment the matron left, and once more started pacing up and down in the cell. Maslova did not sleep. She was thinking all the time that she was a convict, and that she had been twice called so, once by Bochkova and the other time by the red-haired woman, and she could not get used to the idea. Korableva, who was lying with her back toward her, turned around. " I had never expected this," softly said Maslova. " Others do terrible things, and they get off, and I am suffering for nothing at all." " Don't lose courage, girl. There are people in Siberia, too. You will not be lost there," Korableva consoled her. " I know that I sha'n't be lost, but it is disgraceful all the same. I ought to have had a different fate. I am so used to an easy life! " " You can't go against God," Korableva said, with a sigh. " You can't go against Him." " I know, aunty, but it is hard." They were silent for awhile. " Do you hear that blubberer? " said Korableva, direct- ing Miislova's attention to the strange sounds which proceeded from the other end of the benches. These sounds were the checked sobs of the red-haired woman. She was weeping because she had just been cursed and l^eaten, and had not received any liquor, which she wanted so much. She wept also because all her life she had seen nothing but scoldings, ridicule, affronts, and blows. She wanted to find consolation in thinking of her first love for F6dka Molodenkov, a factory hand; but upon recalling this love, she also recalled its end: Molo- di'nkov, while drunk, had for a joke smeared some vitriol on her in a most sensitive spot, and then had roared in company with his friends at the sight of her, contorted EESURRECTION 171 from pain. She recalled this, and she felt sorry for her- self, and, thinking that no one heard her, burst out into tears, and wept, as only children weep, — groaning and snuffling and swallowing her bitter tears. " I am sorry for her," said Maslova. " Of course it is a pity, but she ought not to push her- self forward." XXXIII. The first sensation which Nekhlyiidov experienced on the following morning, upon awakening, was the con- sciousness that something had happened to him, and even before he recalled what it was that had happened to him, he knew that something important and good had taken place. " Katyusha, the court. I must stop lying, and tell the whole truth." And, like a remarkable coincidence, that very morning arrived the long-expected letter from Mariya Vasilevna, the marshal's wife, the letter which he now needed so very much. It gave him full liberty, and wished him hapi)iness in his proposed marriage. " Marriage! " he muttered ironically. " How far I am now from it! " He recalled his determination of the day before to tell everything to her husband, to humlile himself before him, and to be ready for any satisfaction. But on that morn- ing it did not appear as easy to him as it had seemed the evening before. " Besides, why should I make the man unhappy, if he does not know it? If he should ask me, I would tell him. But to go on purpose to him to tell about it? No, that is not necessary." Just as difficult it seemed to him now to tell the whole truth to Missy. Here again, it was impossible to begin telling her, — it would simply be an insult. It had unavoidably to remain, as in many affairs of life, untold and merely suspected. There was, however, one thing which he decided on that morning he would do: he would not visit them, and would tell them the truth if they asked him. 172 KESURRECTION 173 But there was to be nothing unsaid in his relations with Katyusha. " I will go to the prison, will speak with her, and will ask her to forgive me. And if it is necessary, yes, if it- is necessary, I will marry her," he thought. The thought that for the sake of a moral satisfaction he would sacrifice everything and would marry her, was very soothing to him on that morning. For a long time he had not met day with such energy. To Agrafena Petrovna, who had come in, he immediately announced, with a decision which he had not expected of himself, that he no longer needed these apartments and her service. It had been established by silent consent that he kept these commodious and expensive quarters in order to get married in them. Consequently giving up the rooms had a special significance. Agrafena Petrovna looked at him with surprise. " I am very thankful to you, Agrafena Petrovna, for all the care you have taken of me, but I no longer need such large apartments and the servants. If you are willing to help me, I shall ask you kindly to look after things and to put them away for the time being, as was done during mamma's lifetime. When Natasha arrives, she will attend to the rest." (Natasha was Nekhlyiidov's sister.) Agrafena Petrovna shook her head. " But why put them away? You will need them," she said. " No, I sha'n't need them, Agrafena Petrovna, I shall certainly not need them," said Nekhlyudov, in reply to that which she had meant by her headshake. " Please, tell Korney also that I will pay him for two months in ad- vance, but that I no longer need his services." " You do not do right, Dmitri Ivanovich," she said. " Suppose even that you wih go abroad, — you will need the apartments later." " You are mistaken, Agrafena Petrovna. I sha'n't 174 RESURRECTION go abroad; if I leave here it will be for a different place." He suddenly grew red in his face. " Yes, I must tell her/' he thought. " There is no reason for conceahng it. I must tell everything to every- body." " A very strange and important thing happened to me yesterday. Do you remember Katyusha at Aunt Marya Ivanovna's? " " Of course I do; I taught her how to sew." " Well, Katyusha was yesterday tried in court, and I was on the jury." " O Lord, what a pity! " said Agrafena Petrovna. " What was she tried for? " " For murder, and it was I who have done it all." " How could you have done it? You are speaking so strangely," said Agrafena Petrovna, and fire flashed in her old e3^es. She knew Katyusha's history. " Yes, I am the cause of everything. And it is this which has entirely changed my plans." " What change can that have caused in you? " said Agrafena Petrovna, keeping back a smile. " It is this: if it is I who am the cause of her having gone on that path, I must do everything in my power in order to help her." " Such is your kindness, — but there is no particular guilt of yours in that. Such things have happened to others; and if they have the proper understanding, these things are smoothed over and forgotten, and they hve on," Agrafena Petrovna said, sternly and seriously, " and there is no reason why you should shoulder it. I have heard before that she had departed from the right path: but who is to blame for it? " " I am. And therefore I wish to mend it." " Well, this will be hard to mend." RESURRECTION 175 " That is my affair. And if you are thinking of your- self, that wliich mamma had desired — " " I am not thinking of myself. Your deceased mother has provided for me so well that I do not want anything. Lizanka wants me to stay with her " (that was her married niece), " and so I shall go to her house when I am no longer needed. But there is no reason for your taking it so to heart, — Guch things happen with everybody." " Well, I think differently about that. And I again re- peat my request for you to help me give up the apart- ments and put things away. Don't be angered at me. I am very, very thankful to you for everything." A strange thing had happened: ever since Nekhlyudov comprehended that he was bad and contemptible himself, others ceased being contemptible to him; on the contrary, he had a kind and respectful feeling even for Agrafena Petrovna and for Korney. He wanted to humble himself also before Korney, but his attitude was so impressively respectful that he could not make up his mind to do so. On his way to the court-house, passing through the same streets and riding in the same cab, Nekhlyudov was marvelhng at himself, for he felt such an entirely dif- ferent man. His marriage to Missy, which but 3'esterday had seemed so near, now appeared to him as entirely impossible. The day before he had been so sure of his position that there was no doubt but that she would have been very happ}^ to marry him; but now he felt himself to be unworthy of marrying her, and even of being near her. " If she only knew what I am, she would never receive me. How could I have had the courage to reproach her with coquet- ting with that gentleman? Suppose even she should marry me, how could I be happy, or even satisfied, since the other was in the prison and in a day or two would leave for Siberia on foot? The woman whom I have ruined will go to hard labour, and I shall be receiving 176 RESURRECTION congratulations and making calls with my young wife. Or I shall be with the marshal of the nobihty, whorr I have so disgracefully deceived in regard to his wife, and counting up with him at the meeting the votes for and against the proposed County Council inspection of the schools, and so forth, and then I shall be appointing a trysting-place for his wife (how detestable!); or shah I go on with my pic- ture, which will manifestly never be finished, because I have no business to occupy myself with such trifles, and anyhow I can't do anything of the kind now," he said to himself, incessantly rejoicing at the internal change which he was conscious of. " Above everything else," he thought, " I must now see the lawyer and find out his decision, and then — then I must see her in the prison, her, yesterday's prisoner, and tell her everything." As he presented to himself the picture of his meeting her, of telling her everything, of repenting of his sin before her, of announcing to her that he would do everything he could for her, of marrying her in order to atone for his guilt, — an ecstatic feeling took possession of him, and tears stood in his eyes. XXXIV. Upon arriving in the court-house, Nekhlyudov met the baiUff of the day before in the corridor; he asked him wliere the prisoners who had been sentenced by the court were kept, and who it was that would grant permission to see them. The bailiff explained to him that the pris- oners were kept in different places, and that previous to the announcement of the sentence in its final form the permission depended on the prosecuting attorney. " I will tell you when, and will take you myself to him after the session. The prosecuting attorney is not yet here. After the session he will be. And now please go to the court-room, — it will begin at once." Nekhlyudov thanked the bailiff for his kindness, though he seemed to him particularly wretched now, and went into the jury-room. As he went up to it, the jurors were coming out of it in order to go to the court-room. The merchant was as jolly, and had had as good a lunch and potation as on the previous day, and he met Nekhlyudov as an old friend. Nor did Peter Gerasimovich provoke any disagreeable feel- ing in Nekhlyudov by his familiarity and laughter. Nekhlyudov felt like telling all the jurors about his rela- tions to yesterday's defendant. " In reality," he thought, " I ought to have got up yesterday and have publicly announced my guilt." But when he came into the court- room with the other jurors, and the procedure of the day before was repeated, — again " The court is coming," again three men on the platform in their collars, again si- lence, and the sitting down of the jury on the high-backed 177 178 RESURKECTION chairs, the gendarmes, the priest, — he felt that, although he ought to have done so, he could not have had the heart on the previous day to have broken this solemnity. The preparations for the court were the same as the day before (with the exception of the swearing in the jury, and the speech of the presiding judge to them). The case on trial was for burglary. The defendant, guarded by two gendarmes with unsheathed swords, was a haggard, narrow-shouldered, twenty-year-old boy, in a gray cloak, and with a gray, bloodless face. He sat all alone on the defendants' bench, and looked with upturned eyes on all who came in. The lad was accused of having, with a companion of his, broken a barn lock, and having stolen from the barn old foot-mats worth about three roubles and sixty-seven kopeks. It appeared from the indictment that a policeman stopped the boy as he was walking with his companion, who was carrying the mats on his shoulders. The lad and his friend at once con- fessed, and both were confined in jail. The boy's com- rade, a locksmith, had died in prison, and now he was being tried by himself. The old mats lay on the table of the exhibits. The case was conducted just hke the one the day be- fore, with the whole arsenal of proofs, evidence, witnesses, their swearing in, inquests, experts, and cross-examina- tions. The poHceman, who was the witness, to all the questions of the presiding judge, of the prosecutor, and of the prisoner's counsel lifelessly retorted, " Yes, sir," " Don't know, sir," and again, " Yes, sir." Still, in spite of his soldierlike stupidity and mechanicalness, it was evident that he was sorry for the lad, and reluctantly told of his arrest. Another witness, the old man who had suffered the loss, the proprietor of the house and owner of the mats, obviously a bilious man, to the question whether he iden- tified his mats, ver^ reluctantl;^ answered that be did; but RESURRECTION 179 when the assistant prosecuting attorney began to ask him to what use he intended to put the mats, and whether he needed them very much, he grew angry and replied: " May these mats go to — I do not need them at all. If I had known how much bother I should have through them, I should not have tried to find them; on the contrary, I should willingly have given a ten-rouble bill, or two, to be delivered from these questions. I have spent some- thing like five roubles on cabs alone. And I am not well: I have a rupture and rheumatism." Thus spoke the witnesses; but the defendant himself accused himself of everything, and, looking senselessly around, like a trapped animal, in a broken voice told all that hatl happened. It was a clear ease; but the assistant prosecuting at- torney kept raising his shoulders as on the day before, and putting cunning questions with which to catch the criminal. In his speech he pointed out that the burglary had been committed in an occupied building; that conse- quently the lad ought to be subjected to a very severe punishment. The counsel appointed by the court proved that the theft was not committed in an occupied building, and that therefore, although the crime could not be denied, the criminal was not yet as dangerous to society as the assistant prosecuting attorney had made him out to be. The presiding judge, just as on the day before, looked dispassionateness and justice themselves, and explained to the jury in detail and impressed upon them what they already knew and could not help knowing. Just as on the previous day, recesses were made; and just so they smoked; and just so the bailiff cried, "The court is coming! " and just so, trying not to fall asleep, the two gendarmes sat with their unsheathed swords, threatening the prisoner. 180 RESURRECTION The case revealed that the lad had been apprenticed to a tobacco factory while still a boy, and that he had lived there five years. This last year he had been discharged by his master during some unpleasantness which had taken place between the master and his workmen, and, being without any occupation, he walked aimlessly through the city, spending his last money in drinks. In an inn he fell in with a locksmith, who, like him, had lost his place quite awhile ago, and who had been drink- ing heavily. In the night, while under the influence of liquor, they broke open the lock and took the first thing that fell into their hands. They were caught. They confessed everything. They were confined in jail, await- ing trial, and here the locksmith died. Now the lad was being tried as a dangerous creature against whom society must be protected. " Just as dangerous a creature as the criminal of yes- terday," thought Nekhlyudov, listening to everything which was going on before him. " They are dangerous. And are we not? — I, a libertine, a cheat; and all of us, all those who, knowing me such as I was, not only did not despise me, but even respected me ? " It is evident that this boy is not a peculiar criminal, but a simple man (all see that), and if he has turned out to be what he is, it is due to the conditions which breed such men. And therefore it is obvious that, in order not to have such boys, one must try and do away with the conditions under which such unfortunate creatures are produced. If only a man had been found," thought Nekhlyudov, looking at the lad's sickly, frightened face, " who would have taken care of him when from want he was taken from the village to the city, and would have attended to his want; or even when in the city, after twelve hours' work in the factory, he went with his older companions to the inn, — if a man had been found then, who would have said to him, ' Don't go, Vanya, it is \ RESURRECTION 181 not good! ' the lad would not have gone, would not have got mixed up, and would not have done anything wrong. " But no such man, who would have pitied him, was found, not a single one, when he, hke a little animal, passed his apprenticeship in the city, and, closely cropped in order not to breed vermin, ran his master's errands; on the contrary, everything he heard from his master and companions, during his sojourn in the city, was that clever is he who cheats, who drinks, who curses, who strikes, and who is dissolute. " And when he, sick and deteriorated by his unhealthy work, by drunkenness and debauch, in a stupor and be- side himself, as though in a dream, walked aimlessly through the city, and in his foolishness made his way into a barn and took perfectly worthless mats away from there, we did not try to destroy the causes which had led the boy to his present condition, but expect to improve matters by punishing this boy! — " Terrible! " Nekhlyudov thought all that, and no longer listened to what was going on before him. And he was horror- struck by what was revealed to him. He was amazed at the fact that he had not seen this before, even as others had not seen it. XXXV. When the first recess was made, Nekhlyudov arose and went into the corridor, with the intention of not return- ing to the court-room. Let them do what they would, he could no longer take part in such a comedy. Upon finding out where the prosecuting attorney's office was, Nekhlyudov went to it. The messenger did not wish to admit him, saying that the prosecuting attorney was busy now; but Nekhlyudov paid no atten- tion to him, walked through the door, and asked an official whom he met inside to announce to the prose- cuting attorney that he was a juror, and that he must see him on some very important business. Nekhlyiidov's title and fine apparel helped him. The official announced him to the prosecuting attorney, and Nekhlyudov was admitted. The prosecuting attorney received him stand- ing, manifestly dissatisfied with Nekhlyiidov's insistence to get an interview with him. " What do you wish? " the prosecuting attorney asked him, sternly. " I am a juror, my name is Nekhlyudov, and I must by all means see the defendant Maslova," Nekhlyudov spoke rapidly and with determination, blushing and feel- ing that he was committing a deed that would have a decisive influence on his whole life. The prosecuting attorney was a small, swarthy man, with short hair streaked with gray, quick, shining eyes, and a thick, clipped beard on a protruding lower jaw. " Maslova? Yes, I know her. She was accused of poisoning," the prosecuting attorney said, calmly. " Why 182 RESURRECTION 183 must you see her? " And then, as though wishing to be less harsh, he added, " I cannot give you the permission without knowing why you need it," " I need it for something which is of great importance to me," Nekhlyudov said, flaming up. " Very well," said the prosecuting attorney, and, rais- ing his eyes, " Has her case been tried? " " She was tried j-esterday and quite irregularly sen- tenced to four years of hard labour. She is innocent." " Very well. If she was sentenced yesterday," said the prosecuting attorney, not paying the slightest atten- tion to Nekhlyudov's announcement that Maslova was innocent, " she will be kept, until the promulgation of the sentence in its final form, in the house of detention. Visitors are permitted there only on certain days. I advise you to apply there." " But I must see her as soon as possible," said Nekhlyu- dov, with tremloling lower jaw, feeling the approach of the decisive moment. " But why must you? " asked the prosecuting attorney, raising his .eyebrows with some misgiving. " Because she is innocent and sentenced to hard labour. I am the cause of everything," said Nekhlyudov, in a quivering voice, feeling all the time that he was saying what he ought not to mention. " How is that? " asked the prosecuting attorney. " Because I have deceived her and brought her to the condition in which she now is. If she had not been what I have made her to be, she would not now have been sub- jected to such an accusation." " Still I do not see what connection that has with your visit." " It is this: I wish to follow her — marry her," Nekh- lyudov said, and, as always when he spoke of it, teai"s stood in his eyes. "Yes? I say!" remarked the prosecuting attorney. 184 RESURRECTION " This is indeed an exceptional case. You are, I think, a voter in the County Council of Krasnopersk County? " asked the prosecuting attorney, recalling the fact that he had heard before about this Nekhlyudov, who now was expressing such a strange determination. " Pardon me, but I do not think that this can have anything to do with my request," angrily answered Nekhlyudov, flaming. " Of course not," said the prosecuting attorney, with a hardly perceptible smile, and not in the least embar- rassed, " but your wish is so unusual and so transcends all customary forms — " " Well, shall I get the permission? " " The permission? Yes, I shall give you the permit at once. Please be seated." He went up to the table, sat down, and began to write. " Please be seated." Neklilyudov remained standing. Having written the permit, the prosecuting attorney gave the note to Neklilyudov, looking at him with curi- osity. " I must also inform you," said Nekhlyudov, " that I cannot continue to be present at the session of the court." " For this, you know, you must present good cause to the court." " The cause is that I regard every court not only as useless, but even as immoral." " Very well," said the prosecuting attorney, with the same hardly perceptible smile, as though to say with this smile that he had heard such statements before, and that they belonged to a well-known funny category. " Very well, but you, no doubt, understand that, as the prosecut- ing attorney of the court, I cannot agree with you; there- fore I advise you to announce it in court, and the court will pass on your information, and will find it sufficient \ RESURRECTION 185 or insufficient, and in the latter case will impose a fine upon you. Address the court! " " I have informed you, and sha'n't go elsewhere," Nekhlyudov rephed, angrily. " Your servant, sir," said the prosecuting attorney, bending his head, evidently wishing to be rid of that strange visitor. " Who was here? " asked the member of the court, who came into the prosecuting attorney's office as soon as Nekhlyudov had left. " Nekhlyudov, you know, who has been making all kinds of strange proposals in the County Council of Krasnopersk County. Think of it, he is a juror, and among the defendants there was a woman, or girl, who has been sentenced to hard labour, who, he says, was deceived by him, and whom he now wants to marry." " Impossible! " " He told me so. He was strangely excited." " There is a certain abnormality in modern young men." " But he is not so very young." " Oh, how your famous Ivashenkov has tired me out. He vanquishes by exhaustion; he talks and talks with- out end." " They simply have to be stopped, — they are nothing but obstructionists — " XXXVI. From the prosecuting attorney Nekhlyiidov drove directly to the house of detention. But it turned out that there was no Maslova there, and the superintendent told Nekhlyudov that she must be in the old transporta- tion jail. Nekhlyudov drove thither. Katerfna Maslova was actually there. The distance from the house of detention to the trans- portation jail was very great, and Nekhlyudov. reached the prison only toward evening. He wanted to walk up to the door of the huge, gloomy building, but the sentry did not let him in, and only rang a bell. A warden came out in reply to the bell. Neiihl3mdov showed him his permit, but the warden said that he could not let him in without his seeing the superintendent. Nekhlyudov went to the superintendent's apartments. While ascending the staircase, Nekhlyudov heard behind the door the sounds of a complicated, florid piece performed on the piano. When an angry chambermaid, with an eye tied up, opened the door for him, the sounds seemed to burst from the room and to strike his ears. It was a tiresome rhapsody by Liszt, well played, but only to a certain point. When- ever this point was reached, the same thing was repeated. Nekhlyudov asked the tied-up chambermaid whether the superintendent was at home. The chambermaid said he was not. ' " Will he soon be here? " The rhapsody again stopped, and was again repeated brilliantly and noisily up to the enchanted place. " I will ask." 186 RESTJRRECTIOK 187 The chambermaid went out. The rhapsody again started on its mad rush, but, before reaching the enchanted place, it broke off, and a voice was heard. " Tell him that he is not here and will not be to-day. He is out calhng, — and what makes them so persistent? " was heard a woman's voice behind the door, and again the rhapsody; but it stopped once more, and the sound of a chair's being removed was heard. Evidently the angered performer wanted to give a piece of her mind to the per- sistent visitor, who had come at such an unseasonable time. " Papa is not here," angrily spoke a puny, pale girl, with puffed-up hair and blue rings under her gloomy eyes, upon coming up. But when she saw a young man in a fine overcoat, she relented. " Come in, if you please. What do you wish? " " I wish to see a prisoner." " A political prisoner? " " No, not a political prisoner. I have a permit from the prosecuting attorney." " I can't help you; papa is away. Please, come in," she again called him away from the small antechamber. " You had better see his assistant, who is in the office, and speak with him. What is your name? " " Thank 3^ou," said Nekhlyiidov, without answering the question, and went out. The door was hardly closed behind him, when the same brisk, lively tune was heard; it was badly out of place, considering the surroundings and the face of the miserable-looking girl who was trying to learn it by heart. In the yard Nekhlyudov met a young officer with stiffly pomaded moustache, dyed black, and asked him for the superintendent's assistant. It was he. He took the permit, looked at it, and said that he could not take it upon himself to admit on a permit for the 188 RESURRECTION house of detention. " Besides, it is late. Please come to- morrow. To-morrow at ten o'clock anybody may visit. You come to-morrow, and you will find the superintendent at home. Then you may see her in the general visiting- room, or, if the superintendent gives you permission, in the office." Thus, without having obtained an interview, Nekh- lyiidov drove home again. Agitated by the thought of seeing her, Nekhlyudov walked through the streets, thinking not of the court, but of his conversations with the prosecuting attorney and the superintendents. His endeavour to get an interview with her, and his telling the prosecuting attorney of his intention, and his visit to two prisons so excited him that he was not able for a long time ^So compose himself. Upon arriving at home, he took but his long neglected diaries, read a few passages in them, and wrote down the following: " For two years I have not kept my diary, and I thought I should never return to this childish occupation. It was, however, not a childish tiling, but a converse with myself, with that genuine, divine self, which lives in every man. All this time my ego has been asleep, and I had no one to talk to. It was awakened by an unusual incident on the twenty-eighth of April, in court, while I was on the jury. I saw her on the defendants' bench, her, Ka- tyusha, seduced by me, in a prison cloak. By a strange misunderstanding, and by my mistake, she has been sen- tenced to hard labour. I have just come back from the prosecuting attorney and from the jail. I was not per- mitted to see her, but I have determined to do everything in order to see her, to repent before her, and to atone for my guilt, even by marrying her. Lord, aid me! My heart is light and rejoicing." XXXVII. Maslova could not for a long time fall asleep on that night; she lay with open eyes, and, looking for a long time at the door, which was now and then shaded by the sexton's daughter, who was pacing to and fro, was lost in thought. She was thinking that she would under no condition marry a convict on the island of Sakhalin, but that she would arrange, things differently. She would ente into relations with some official, with a scribe, or with a warden, or with some assistant. They were all prone to such things. " Only I must not be worn out, for then all is lost." And she recalled how the counsel looked at her, and the presiding judge, and all the people in the court- house, who met her or purposely came to see her. She recalled what Berta, who had visited her in the jail, had told her about the student, whom she had liked while living at Kitaeva's, and who, upon calling there, had asked for her, and was sorry for her. She recalled the * brawl with the red-haired woman, and she was sorry for her; she recalled the baker, who had sent her out an additional roll. She recalled many persons, but not Nekhlyiidov. She never thought of her childhood and youth, and especially of her love for Nekhlyiidov. That was too painful. Those recollections lay somewhere deep and untouched in her soul. Even in her sleep had she never seen Nekhlyiidov. She had not recognized him that morning at court, not so much because when she had seen him the last time he had been a military man, without a beard, with short moustache, and 189 190 RESURRECTION with short, thick, waving hair, whereas now he was a man of middle age, with a beard, as because she never thought of him. She had buried all her recollections of her past with him on that terrible, dark night, when he did not stop over at his aunts' upon his way from the army. Up to that night, while she had hoped that he would come to see them, she not only did not feel the burden of the child which she was carrying under her heart, but often with rapturous surprise watched its soft and fre- quently impetuous motion within her. But with that night everything was changed. The future child from then on was only a hindrance. The aunts expected Nekhlyudov and had asked him to stop over, but he telegraphed to them that he could not because he had to be in St. Petersburg on time. When Katyusha learned this, she determined to go to the station in order to see him. The train was to pass there in the night, at two o'clock. Katyusha saw the ladies off to bed; she asked the cook's daughter, Mashka, to accompany her, put on some old shoes, covered herself with a kerchief, tucked up her skirt, and ran down to the station. It was a dark, rainy, windy autumn night. The rain now splashed its large warm drops, now stopped. In the field, the road could not be seen underfoot, and in the forest everything was dark as in a stove, and Katyusha, who knew the road well, lost her way in the woods, and reached the small station, where the train stopped only three minutes, not ahead of time, as she had expected to do, but after the second bell. Upon running out on the platform, Katyusha immediately noticed him in the win- dow of a car of the First Class. There was a very bright light in that car. Two officers were sitting opposite each other on the velvet seats, and playing cards. On the little table near the window two stout, guttering candles RESURRECTION 191 were burning. He was sitting, in tightly fitting riding breeches and white shirt, on the arm of the seat, leaning against the back, and laughing at something. The moment she recognized him, she knocked at the window with her frosted hand. But just then the third bell rang out, and the train began slowly to move, — first backwards, — then one after another the carriages be- gan to move forwards in jerks. One of the card-players rose with his cards and looked through the window. She knocked a second time, and put her face to the pane. Just then the car at which she stood gave a jerk and began to move. She walked along with it, and looked through the window. The officer wanted to let down the window but could not do it. Nekhlyiidov pushed him aside, and started to let down the window. The train was increas- ing its speed, so that Katyusha had to run along. The train went faster still, and the window at last was let down. Just then the conductor pushed her aside and jumped into the car. She fell behind, but still contin- ued to run over the wet boards of the platform: then the platform came to an end, and Katyusha had to exert all her strength to keep herself from falling as she ran down the steps to the ground. She was still running, though the car of the First Class was already far beyond her. Past her raced the cars of the Second Class; and then, faster still, the cars of the Third Class, but she still ran. When the last car with the lamps rushed by her, she was already beyond the water-tower, beyond protec- tion, and the wind struck her and carried off the kerchief from her head, and on one side blew her garments against her running feet. The kerchief was borne away by the wind, but she still ran. " Aunty Mikhaylovna! " cried the girl, barely catching up with her, " you have lost your kerchief! " Katyusha stopped and, throwing back her head and clasping it with both her hands, sobbed out aloud. 192 RESURRECTION " He is gone! " she cried. " He, seated in a gaily lighted car, on a velvet seat, is playing and drinking, — and I am standing here, in the mud and darkness, in the rain and wind, and weeping," she thought to herself, and sat down on the ground and wept so loud that the girl was frightened and embraced her damp clothes. " Aunty, let us go home! " " A train will pass, — under the wheels, and the end of it," Katyusha thought in the meantime, without answering the girl. She decided she would do so. But just then, as always happens in the first quiet moment after agitation, the child, his child, wliich was within her, suddenly jerked, and thumped, and then moved more softly, and then again thumped with something thin, tender, and sharp. And suddenly all that which a minute ago had so tor- mented her, so that it seemed impossible to continue to live thus, all her anger at him and her desire to have her revenge upon him, even though through death, all that was suddenly removed from her. She calmed down, got up, put on her kerchief, and walked home. Fatigued, wet, soiled, she returned home, and from that day began that spiritual change, from the consequences of which she became what she now was. From that terrible night she ceased to believe in God and goodness. Ere this she had believed in God and had believed that others believed in Him; but from that night on she was convinced that nobody believed in Him, and that every- thing which was said of God and His Law was deception and injustice. He, whom she had loved, and who had loved her, — she knew that, — had abandoned her, mak- ing light of her feelings. And yet he was the best man she had ever known. All the others were worse still. Everything which happened to her confirmed her at every step in her view. His aunts, who were pious old RESURRECTION 193 women, sent her away when she was not able to serve them as before. All people with whom she came in contact wanted to get some advantage from her : women tried to gain money through her, while men, beginning with the country judge, coming down to the wardens of the prison, looked upon her as an object of pleasure. Nobody in the world cared for anything else. She was still more confirmed in this by the old author, with whom she lived in the second year of her free life. He told her straight out that in this — he called it poetry and aesthetics — consisted all happiness. Everybody lived only for himself, for his pleasure, and all words about God and goodness were only a deception. If ever questions arose such as why everything in the world was so bad that everybody harmed everybody else and everybody suffered, one ought not to think of them. If you feel lonely, you smoke a cigarette or take a drink, or, still better, you make love to a man, and it all dis- appears. XXXVIII. On the following day, it being a Sunday, at five o'clock in the morning, when the customary whistle was blown in the women's corridor of the prison, Korableva, who was not sleeping, awoke Maslova. " Convict," Maslova thought in terror, rubbing her eyes and involuntarily inhaling the terribly stinking air of the morning; she wanted to fall asleep again, to pass into the realm of unconsciousness, but the habit of fear was stronger than sleep, and she got up, drew up her legs, and began to look around. The women w^ere all up, but the children were still asleep. The dram-shopkeeper with the bulging eyes softly pulled the cloak from under- neath the children, so as not to wake them. The riotous woman was hanging out near the stove some rags that served as diapers, while the baby was yelling in the arms of blue-eyed Fedosya, who was swaying with it and singing to it in her gentle voice. The consumptive woman, holding her chest, and with suffused face, was coughing and, in the intervals, breath- ing heavily, and almost crying. The red-haired woman lay awake, with her abdomen upwards, and bending under her stout legs, and in a loud and merry voice told the dream which she had had. The old incendiary again stood before the image and, continually repeating the same words in an undertone, crossed herself and made low obeisances. The sexton's daughter sat motionless on the bench and gazed in front of her with her sleepy, dull eyes. Beauty was curling her coarse, oily black hair about her finger. 194 RESUREECTION" 195 In tlio corridor were heard steps of i)lasliing prison shoes; the keys rattled, and there entered two convict privy-cleaners, in blouses and gray trousers that did not reach down to their ankles, and, with serious, angry looks, raising the stink-vat on the yoke, carried it out of the cell. The women went into the corridor, to the faucets, to wash themselves. At the water-basin the red-haired woman started a quarrel with a woman who had come out from another, a neighbouring cell. Again curses, shouts, complaints — " Do you want the career? " cried the warden, strik- ing the red-haired woman on her fat bare back in such a manner that the blow reechoed through the corridor. " Don't let me hear your voice again! " " I declare, the old fehow is a little wild to-day," said the red-haired woman, looking upon that treatment of her as a special favour. " Lively there! Get ready for the mass! " Maslova had not had a chance to comb her hair when the superintendent arrived with his suite. " Roll-call! " cried the warden. From the other cells came other prisoners, and they all stationed themselves in two rows along the corridor, the women in the rear placing their hands on the shoulders of those in the front row. They were all counted. After the roll-call the matron came and led the pris- oners to church. Maslova and Fedosya were in the middle of the column, which consisted of more than one hundred women from all the cells. They all wore white kerchiefs, bodices, and skirts, but now and then there was a woman in coloured garments. Those were women with their children, who were following their husbands. The whole staircase was taken up l)y that procession. There was heard the soft tread of the feet in the prison shoes, and conversation, and at times laughter. At the turning, Maslova caught sight of the angry face of her 196 RESURRECTION enemy, Bochkova, who was walking in front, and she pointed her out to Fedosya. On arriving down-stairs, the women grew silent and, making the sign of the cross, and bowing, walked through the open door into the empty church, sparkling with its gold. Their places were on the right, and they, crowding and pressing each other, took up their positions. Soon after the women, entered the men in gray cloaks; they were transport con- victs, or those who were serving time in the prison, or who were transported by the decree of Communes; they cleared their throats, and placed themselves in compact masses on the left and in the middle of the church. Above, in the choir, stood the prisoners who had been brought there before; on one side, with half their heads shaven, the hard-labour convicts, who betrayed their presence by the clanking of their chains; and on the other, unshaven and without fetters, those who were confined pending trial. The prison church had been newly erected and fur- nished by a rich merchant, who had spent for this purpose several tens of thousands of roubles, and it was all agleam with bright colours and gold. For some time silence reigned in the church, and one could hear only the clearing of noses and throats, the cries of infants, and occasionally the clanking of the chains. But now the prisoners who stood in the middle began to move and, pressing against each other, left a path along which the superintendent walked up to the front, where he stationed himself in the middle. XXXIX. The divine service began. The divine service consisted in this: the priest, having donned a peculiar, strange, and very inconvenient cloth garment, cut small pieces of bread, which he placed in a vessel, and then into a bowl of wine, all the while pro- nouncing various names and prayers. In the meantime the sexton, without interruption, first read and then sang, in rotation with the choir of the prisoners, all kinds of Church-Slavic songs, which were unintelligible in them- selves, but could be grasped even less on account of the rapidity with which they were read and sung. The con- tents of the prayers consisted mainly in wishing prosperity to the Emperor and his family. The prayers which referred to this were repeated several times, in conjunction with other prayers, or alone, while kneeling. In addition, the sexton read several verses from the Acts of the Apostles in such a strange and tense voice that it was not possible to comprehend a thing; then the priest read very distinctly the passage from the Gospel of St. Mark, where it says how Christ, upon being raised from the dead, and before flying to heaven in order to be seated on the right hand of His Father, appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils, and then to his eleven disciples; and how he enjoined them to preach the Gospel to all creatures, pro- claiming at the same time that he who would not believe should be damned, but that he who would believe and would be baptized should be saved, and, besides, should cast out devils, heal the sick by the laying on of hands, 197 198 RESURRECTION speak with new tongues, take up serpents, and not die, but remain alive, if they should drink deadly things. The essence of the divine service consisted in the supposition that the pieces cut up by the priest and placed by him in the wine, with certain manipulations and prayers, were changed into the body and blood of God. These manipulations consisted in the priest's evenly raising his hands, although the cloth bag, which he had on, very much interfered with this motion, then holding them in this attitude, kneeling down, and kissing the table and that which was on the table. But the chief action was when the priest picked up a napkin with both his hands and evenly and gently swayed it over the dish and golden bowl. The supposition was that simulta- neously with this the bread and wine were changed into the body and blood; consequently this part of the divine service was surrounded with special solemnity. " Praise the most holy, most pure, and most blessed Mother of God," thereupon loudly proclaimed the priest behind the partition, and the choir sang out solemnly that it was very good to glorify Her who had borae Christ without impairing Her virginity, — the Virgin Mary, who, on that account, deserves greater honour than all the cherubim, and greater glory than all the seraphim. After that the transformation was thought to be complete, and the priest, taking off the napkin from the dish, cut the middle piece into four parts, and placed it first in the wine and then in his mouth. The idea was that he had eaten a piece of God's body and had drunk a swallow of His blood. After that the priest drew aside the curtain, opened the middle doors, and, taking the gilt bowl into his hands, went with it through the middle door and invited those who wished also to partake of the body and blood of God, which was contained in the bowl. There were several children who wished to do so. First asldng the children their names, the priest care- RESURKECTION 199 fully drew oat the bread from the bowl with a small spoon, then stuck deep down the mouth of each child a piece of wine-sopped bread; after which the sexton wiped the children's mouths and in a merry voice sang a song about the children's eating God's body and drinking His blood. Then the priest carried the bowl behind the partition, and, drinking all the blood left in the bowl and eating all the pieces of God's body, carefully hcking his moustache, and drying his mouth and the bowl, with brisk steps marched out from beliind the partition, in the happiest frame of mind and creaking with the thin heels of his calfskin boots. This ended the main part of the Cliristian service. But the priest, wishing to console the unfortunate prison- ers, added a special service to what had preceded. This special service consisted in the priest's taking up a position before the black-faced and black-handed, brass and gilt supposed representation of that very God whom he had been eating, a representation illuminated by a dozen or so of wax tapers, and beginning in a strange and false voice to chant the following words: " Sweetest Jesus, glory of the apostles, Jesus, the mart}Ts' praise, almighty ruler, save me, Jesus my Saviour, Jesus mine, most beautiful, me taking refuge in Thee, Saviour Jesus, have mercy on me, on those who have borne Thee with prayers, on all, Jesus, on Thy saints, and on all Thy prophets, my Saviour Jesus, and give us the joys of heaven, Jesus, lover of men! " Thereupon he stopped, drew his breath, crossed himself, and made a low obeisance, and all did the same. Obei- sances were made by the superintendent, the wardens, the prisoners, and in the balcony the chains clanked very frequently. " Creator of the angels and Lord of hosts," he continued, " Jesus most marvellous, the angels' wonder, Jesus most strong, the ancestors' redemption, Jesus most sweet, the patriarchs' majesty, Jesus most glorious, the 200 RESURRECTION kings' support, Jesus most blessed, the prophets' fulfil- ment, Jesus most wonderful, the martyrs' strength, Jesus most gentle, the monks' joy, Jesus most merciful, the presbyters' sweetness, Jesus most pitiful, the fasters' restraint, Jesus most suave, the dehght of the sainted, Jesus most pure, the virgins' chastity, Jesus from eternity, the sinners' salvation, Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me," he finally reached a stop, repeating the word Jesus in an ever shriller voice; he held his silk-lined vestment with his hand, and, letting himself down on one knee, bowed to the ground, whereupon the choir sang the last words, " Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me," and the prisoners fell down and rose again, tossing the hair that was left on the unshaven half, and clattering with the fetters which chafed their lean legs. Thus it lasted for a long time. First came the praises, which ended with the words, " Have mercy on me! " and then came new praises, which ended with the word " Hal- lelujah." And the prisoners crossed themselves and bowed at every stop; then they began to bow only every second time and even less, and all were happy when the praises were ended, and the priest, heaving a sigh of relief, closed his little book and went back of the partition. There was but one final action left: the priest took a gilt cross with enamelled medalhons at its ends, which was lying on the large table, and walked with it into the middle of the church. First the superintendent came up and kissed the cross, then the wardens, then, pressing against each other and cursing in whispers, the prisoners came up to it. The priest, talking all the while with the superintend- ent, was sticking the cross and his hand into the mouths, and sometimes even into the noses, of the prisoners who were coming up, while the prisoners were anxious to kiss both the cross and the priest's hand. Thus ended the Christian divine service, which was held for the consolation and edification of the erring fellow men. XL. It did not occur to one of those present, beginning with the priest and the superintendent and ending with Maslova, that the same Jesus, whose name the priest had repeated an endless number of times in a shrill voice, praising Him with all kinds of outlandish words, had forbidden all that which was done there; that He had forbidden not only such a meaningless wordiness and blasphemous mystification of the priestly teachers over the bread and wine, but that He had also in a most emphatic manner forbidden one class of people to call another their teachers; that He had forbidden prayers in temples, and had commanded each to pray in solitude; that He had forbidden the temples themselves, saying that He came to destroy them, and that one should pray not in temples, but in the spirit and in truth; and, above everything else, that He had forbidden not only judging people and holding them under restraint, torturing, disgracing, punishing them, as was done here, but even doing any violence to people, saying that He came to set the captives at liberty. It never occurred to any one present that that which was going on there was the greatest blasphemy and mockery upon that very Christ in the name of whom all this was done. It did not occur to any one that the gilt cross, with the enamelled medallions at the ends, which the priest brought out and gave the people to kiss, was nothing else but the representation of the gibbet on which Christ had been hung for prohibiting those very things which were done here in His name. It did not occur to any one that the priests, who imagined that in the form 201 202 RESUERECTION of the bread and wine they were eating the body of Christ and drinking His blood, actually were eating His body and drinking His blood, but not in the pieces of bread and in the wine, but by misleading those " little ones " with whom Christ has identified Himself, and by depriving them of their greatest good, and subjecting them to the severest torments, by concealing from them the very Gospel of salvation which He had brought to them. The priest did with the calmest conscience all that he did, because he had been brought up from childhood to believe that this was the one true faith which had been believed in by all the holy men of former days, and now was believed in by the spiritual and temporal authorities. He did not believe that the bread was changed into the body, that it was good for the soul to pronounce many words, or that he had really devoured a piece of God, — it is impossible to believe in such things, — but he believed in the necessity of believing in this belief. The main thing that confirmed him in his faith was the fact that for exer- cising all the functions of his faith he had for eighteen years been receiving an income, with which he supported his family, kept his son at a gymnasium, and his daughter in a religious school. The sexton believed even more firmly than the priest, because he had entirely forgotten the essence of the dogmas of this faith, and only knew that for the sacra- mental water, for the mass for the dead, for the Hours, for a simple supplication, and for a supplication with songs, — for everything there was a stated price, which good Christians gladly paid; and therefore he called out his " Have mercy, have mercy," and sang and read the established prayers with the same calm confidence in its necessity with which people sell wood, flour, and potatoes. The chief of the prison and the wardens, who had never known and had never tried to find out what the dogmas RESURKECTION 203 of the faith consisted in, and what all this meant which was going on in the church, beheved that one must be- lieve in this faith because the higher authorities and the Tsar himself believed in it. Besides, they dimly felt, though they would not have been able to explain why, that this faith justified their cruel duties. If it were not for tliis faith, it not only would have been harder for them, but even impossible to employ all their powers in order to torment people, as they were now doing with an entirely clear conscience. The superintendent was such a good- hearted man that he would never have been able to live that way if he had not found a support in his faith. It was for this reason that he stood motionless and straight, zealously made his obeisances and the signs of the cross, and tried to feel contrite as they sang " The Cherubim; " and as they began to give the communion to the children, he stepped forward, and with his own hands lifted a boy who was receiving the communion, and held him up that way. The majority of the prisoners, — with the exception of a few who saw through the deception practised on the people of this faith, and who in their hearts laughed at it, • — the majority beheved that in these gilt images, candles, bowls, vestments, crosses, and repetitions of incompre- hensible words, " Jesus most sweet," " Have mercy," lay a mysterious power, by means of which one could obtain great comforts in this life and in the one to come. Al- though the majority of them had made several efforts to obtain the comforts of life by means of prayers, suppli- cations, and tapers, without getting them, — their prayers had remained unfulfilled, — yet each of them was firmly convinced that this was only an accidental failure, and that this institution, approved by learned men and by metropolitans, was important and necessary for the life to come, if not for this. Maslova believed the same way. Like the rest, she 204 RESURRECTION experienced during the divine service a mixed feeling of awe and tedium. She was standing in the middle of the throng before the bar, and could not see any one but her companions; when the communicants moved forward, she advanced with Fedosya and saw the superintendent, and behind the superintendent and between the wardens she spied a peasant with a white beard and blond hair, — Fedosya's husband, — who was looking at his wife with motionless eyes. All during the singing Maslova was busy watching him and whispering to Fedosya; she crossed herself and made the obeisances only when the rest did so. XLI. Nekhlyudov left the house early. A peasant was still driving in a side street, and crying in a strange voice: " Milk, milk, milk! " The day before there had fallen the first warm spring rain. Wherever there was no pavement the grass had suddenly sprouted, the birches in the gardens were cov- ered with a green down, and the bird-cherries and poplars were spreading out their long, fragrant leaves; and in the houses and shops the doul^le windows were being removed and cleaned. In the second-hand market, past which Nekhlyudov had to ride, a dense throng of people was swarming near the booths, which were built in a row, and tattered people were moving about with boots under their arms and smoothly ironed pantaloons and waistcoats thrown over their shoulders. Near the inns there were crowds of people who were now free from their factory work: men in clean sleeve- less coats and shining boots, and women in brightly coloured silk kerchiefs over their heads and in overcoats with huge glass beads. Policemen, with the yellow cords of their pistols, stood on their beats, watching for some disorder to dispel the ennui which was oppressing them. Along the paths of the boulevard and over the fresh green sod children and dogs were romping, while the gay nurses were talking to each other, sitting on the benches. In the streets, they were still cool and damp on the left hand, in the shade, but dry in the middle, the heavy freight wagons constantly rumbled over the pavement, and hght vehicles clattered, and tramways tinkled. On 206 RESURRECTION all sides the air was shaken by the various sounds and the dins of the bells calling the people to attend services similar to the one that was taking place in their prison. The dressed-up people were all going to their parish churches. The cabman took Nekhlyudov not to the jail itself, but to the turn that led to it. A number of men and women, mostly with bundles, were standing there, at the turn, about one hundred paces from the prison. On the right were low wooden build- ings, and on the left a two-story house, with some kind of a sign. The immense stone structure of the jail was ahead, but the visitors were not admitted there. A sentry with his gun was walking up and down, calling out angrily at those who tried to pass beyond him. At the gate of the wooden buildings, on the right-hand side, opposite the sentry, a warden, in a uniform with galloons, was sitting on a bench, with a note-book in his hand. Nekhlyudov also went up to him and gave the name of Katerina Maslova. The warden with the gal- loons wrote down the name. " Why don't they admit yet? " asked Nekhlyudov. " They are holding divine service now. As soon as it is over, you will be admitted." Nekhlj'udov went up to the throng of the persons waiting. A man in a tattered garment and crushed cap, with torn shoes on his bare feet, and with red stripes all over his face, pushed himself forward and started toward the jail. " Where are you going? " the soldier with the gun shouted to him. " Don't yell so! " answered the ragged fellow, not in the least intimidated by the sentry's call. He went back. " If you won't let me, I can wait. But don't yell as though you were a general! " There was an approving laugh in the crowd. The vis- RESURRECTION 207 itors were mostly poorly clad people, some of them simply in tatters, but there were also, to all appearances, decent people, both men and women. Next to Nekhlyiidov stood a well-dressed, clean-shaven, plump, ruddy man, with a bundle, apparent!}^ of underwear, in his hand. Nekhlyudov asked him whether he was there for the first time. The man with the Ijundle answered that he came every Sunday, and they started a conversation. He was a porter in a bank; he came to see his brother, who was to be tried for forgery. The good-natured man told Nekhlyudov his whole history, and was on the point of asking him for his, when their attention was distracted by a student and a veiled lady, in a light rubber-tired vehicle, drawn by a large, thoroughbred black horse. The student was carrj'ing a large bundle in his hands. He went up to Nekhlyudov and asked liim whether it was permitted to distribute alms, — bread-rolls which he had brought with him, — and how he was to do it. "I am doing it at the request of my fiancee. This is my fiancee. Her parents advised us to take it down to the convicts." " I am here for the first time, and I do not know, but I think you ought to ask that man," said Nekhlyudov, pointing to the warden with the galloons, who was sit- ting with his note-book on the right. Just as Nekhlyudov was conversing with the student, the heavy iron door, with a small window in the middle, was opened, and there emerged from it a uniformed offi- cer with a warden, and the warden with the note-book announced that the visitors would now be admitted. The sentry stepped aside, and all the visitors, as though fearing to be late, started with rapid steps toward the door; some of them even rushed forward on a run. At the door stood a warden, who kept counting the visitors as they passed him, sa3ang aloud, " Sixteen, seventeen," and so on. Another warden, inside the building, touched 208 RESURRECTION each with his hand and counted them as they passed through the next door, in order that upon leaving the number should tally, and no visitor be left in the prison, and no person confined be allowed to escape. This teller slapped Nekhlyudov's shoulder, without looking to see who it was that passed by, and this touch of the warden's hand at first offended Nekhlyudov, but he recalled at once what had brought him here, and he felt ashamed of his feeling of dissatisfaction and affront. The first apartment they reached beyond the door was a large room with a vaulted ceiling and iron gratings in tiny windows. In this room, called the assembly-room, Nekhlyudov quite unexpectedly saw a large representation of the crucifixion in a niche. " What is this for? " he thought, involuntarily connect- ing in his imagination the representation of Christ with liberated and not with confined people. Nekhlyudov walked slowly, letting the hurrying visitors pass by him, experiencing mixed feeUngs of terror before the evil-doers who were locked up here, of compassion for those innocent people who, like the boy of yesterday and hke Katyusha, must be confined in it, and of timidity and contrition before the meeting which awaited him. Upon leaving this first room, the warden at the other end was saying something; but Nekhlyudov was lost in thought and did not pay any attention to what he was saying; he continued to go in the direction where most visitors were going, that is, to the men's department, and not to the women's, whither he was bound. He allowed those who were in a hurry to walk ahead of him, and was the last to enter the hall which was used as the visiting-room. The first thing that struck him, when, upon opening the door, he entered the hall, was the deafening roar of hundreds of voices merging into one. Only when he came nearer to the people who, like flies upon sugar, were clinging to the screen that divided RESURRECTION 209 the room into two parts, he understood what the matter was. The room, with the windows in the back, was divided into two, not by one, but by two wire screens that ran from the ceiling down to the floor. Between the screens walked the wardens. Beyond the screens were the prisoners, and on this side, the visitors. Between the two parties were the two screens, and about eight feet of space, so that it was not only impossible to trans- mit any information, but even to recognize a face, espe- cially if one were near-sighted. It was even difiicult to speak, for one had to cry at the top of one's voice in order to be heard. On both sides the faces were closely pressed against the screens : here were wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, children, trying to see each other and to say what was necessary. But as each tried to speak in such a way as to be heard by his interlocutor, and the neighbours were trying to do the same, their voices inter- fered, and they had to shout so much the louder. It was this that caused the roar, interrupted by shouts, which had so struck Nekhlyiidov as he entered the room. There was not the slightest possibility of making out what was said. It was only possible by their faces to guess what they were talking about, and what their rela- tions to each other were. Next to Nekhlyudov was an old woman in a small shawl, who, pressing against the screen, with quivering chin cried something to a pale young man with half of his hair shaven off. The prisoner, raising his eyebrows and frowning, listened attentively to what she was saying. Next to the old woman was a young man in a sleeveless coat, who, with shaking head, was listening to what a prisoner, with an agonized face and grayish beard, who resembled him, was saying. Farther away stood a ragged fellow, who was moving his hands as he spoke, and laughing. Next to him a woman, in a good woollen kerchief, with a babe in her arms, was sit- ting on the floor, and weeping, evidently for the first time 210 RESURRECTION seeing that gray-haired man, who was on the other side, in a prison blouse, and with a shaven head and in fetters. Beyond this woman stood the porter, with whom Nekh- lyildov had spoken ; he was shouting at the top of his voice to a bald-headed prisoner, with sparkling eyes, on the other side. When Neklyiidov understood that he would have to speak under these conditions, there arose within him a feeling of indignation against the people who could have arranged and maintained such a thing. He won- dered how it was that such a terrible state of affairs, such a contempt for all human feelings had not offended any- body. The soldiers, the superintendent, the visitors, and the prisoners acted as though they admitted that it could not be otherwise. Nekhlyudov remained about five minutes in that room, experiencing a terrible feeling of melancholy, of power- lessness, and of being out with the whole world. A moral sensation of nausea, resembling seasickness, took posses- sion of him. XLII. " Still I must do that for which I have come," he said, urging himself on. " What must I do now ? " He began to look for somebody in authority, and, upon noticing a short, lean man with a moustache, in officer's stripes, who was walking back of the crowd, he turned to him. " Can you not, dear sir, tell me," he said, with exceed- ingly strained civility, " where the women are kept, and where one may talk to them ? " " Do you want the women's department ? " " Yes ; I should like to see one of the prisoners," Nekhlyudov replied, with the same strained civility. " You ought to have said so when you were in the assembly-room. Whom do you want to see ? " " I want to see Katerina Maslova." " Is she a political prisoner ? " asked the assistant super- intendent. " No, she is simply — " " Has she been sentenced ? " " Yes, two days ago she was sentenced," humbly replied Nekhlyudov, fearing lest he spoil the disposition of the superintendent, who apparently had taken interest in him. " If you wish to go to the women's department, please, this way," said the superintendent, having manifestly concluded from Nekhlyudov's appearance that he deserved consideration. " Sidorov," he addressed a mustachioed under-officer with medals, " take this gentleman to the women's department." " Yes, sir." 211 212 RESURRECTION Just then heartrending sobs were heard at the screen. Everything seemed strange to Nekhlyiidov, but strangest of all was it that he should be thankful and under obliga- tions to the superintendent and chief warden, to people who were doing all the cruel things which were com- mitted in that house. The warden led Nekhlyvidov out of the men's visiting- room into the corridor, and through the opposite door took him into the women's visitors' hall. This room, like that of the men, was divided into three parts by the two screens, but it was considerably smaller, and there were fewer visitors and prisoners in it ; the noise and din was the same as in the male department. The officer here also walked around between the screens. The officer was the matron, in a uniform witli galloons on her sleeves and with blue binding, and a similar belt. Just as in the men's room, the faces on both sides clung closely to tlie screens : on this side, city people in all kinds of attires, and on the other, the prisoners, — some in white, others in their own garments. The whole screen was occupied by people. Some rose on tiptoe, in order to be heard above the heads of the others ; others sat on the floor, conversing. Most noticeable of all the prisoners, both by her striking voice and appearance, was a tattered, haggard gipsy, with the kerchief falling down from her curly hair, who was standing in the middle of the room on the other side of the screen, near a post, and with rapid gestures shouting to a gipsy in a blue coat with a tight, low belt. Next to the gipsy, a soldier was sitting on the ground, and talk- ing to a prisoner ; then stood, clinging to the screen, a young peasant with a light-coloured beard, in bast shoes, with flushed face, evidently with difficulty restraining his tears. He was talking to a sweet-faced blond prisoner, who was gazing at him with her bright, blue eyes. This was Fedosya and her husband. Near them stood a RESURRECTION 213 tattered fellow, who was talking to a slatternly, broad- faced woman ; then two women, a man, again a woman, — and opposite each a prisoner. Maslova was not among them. But back of the prisoners, on the other side, stood another woman, and Nekhlyudov at once knew that it was she, and he felt his heart beating more strongly and his breath stopping. The decisive minute was ap- proacliing. He went up to the screen, and recognized her. She was standing back of blue-eyed Fedosya, and, smiling, was listening to what she was saying. She was not in her cloak, as two days ago, but in a white bodice, tightly girded with a belt, and with high swelling bosom. From under the kerchief, just as in the court-room, peeped her flowing black hair. " It will be decided at once," he thought. " How am I to call her ? Or will she come up herself ? " But she did not come up. She was waiting for Klara and did not suspect that this man came to see her. " Whom do you want ? " the matron who was walking between the screens, asked, coming up to Nekhlyudov. " Kateriua Maslova," Nekhlyudov said, wdth difficulty. " Maslova, you are wanted ! " cried the matron. Maslova looked about her, and, raising her head and thrusting forward her bosom, with her expression of readi- ness, so familiar to Nekhlyudov, went up to the screen, pusliing her way between two prisoners, and with a ques- tioning glance of surprise gazed at Nekhlyudov, without recognizing him. But, seeing by his attire that he was a rich man, she smiled. " Do you want me ? " she said, putting her smiling face, with its squinting eyes, to the screen. "I wanted to see — " Nekhlyudov did not know whether to say " thee " or " you," and decided to say " you." He was not speaking louder than usual. " I wanted to see you — I — " 214 KESURRECTION " Don't pull the wool over my eyes," cried the tattered fellow near him. " Did you take it or not ? " " I tell you he is dying, — what more ? " somebody shouted from the other side. Maslova could not make out what Nekhlyiidov was say- ing, but the expression of his face, as he was talking, sud- denly reminded her of him. But she did not believe her eyes. Still, the smile disappeared from her face, and her brow began to be furrowed in an agonizing way, " I did not hear what you said," she cried, blinking, and frowning more than before. " I came — " " Yes, I am doing what I or.f^ht to do, and am repent- ing of my sin," thought Nekhlyiidov. The moment he thought that, the tears stood in his eyes and choked him ; he held on to the screen with his fingers, and grew silent, making an effort to keep from sobbing. " I say : keep away from where you have no busi- ness — " somebody cried on one side. " Believe me for God's sake, for I tell you I do not know," cried a prisoner on the other side. Upon noticing his agitation, Maslova recognized him. " You have changed, but I recognize you," she cried, without looking at him, and her flushed face suddenly looked gloomier still. " I have come to ask forgiveness of you," he cried in a loud voice, without intonations, like a lesson learned by rote. Having called out these words, he felt ashamed, and looked around. But immediately it occurred to him that if he was ashamed, so much the better, because he must bear shame. And he continued in a loud voice. " Forgive me ; I am terribly guilty toward you — " he shouted again. She stood motionless, and did not take her squinting eyes away from him. RESURRECTION 215 He was unable to proceed, and went away from the screen, trying to check the sobs which were agitating his breast. The superintendent, the one who had directed ISTekhlyu- dov to the women's department, apparently interested in him, came in and, seeing Nekhlyildov standing away from the screen, asked him why he did not speak with the one he had asked for. Nekhlyildov cleared his nose and, straightening himself and trying to assume an uncon- cerned look, said : " I can't speak through the screen, — I can't hear a word." The superintendent thought for awhile. " Well, we shall have her brought out for a short time." " Marya Karlovna," he turned to the matron. " Bring Maslova out here ! " XLIIL A MINUTE later Maslova came out of the side door. Walking up with her soft tread close to Nekhlyudov, she stopped and looked at him with an upward glance. Her black hair, just as two days before, stood out in curling ringlets ; her unhealthy, swollen, and white face was sweet and very calm ; only the sparkling, black, squinting eyes gleamed with unusual brilliancy from out her swollen lids. " You may speak here to her," said the superintendent, stepping aside. Kekhlyiidov moved up to the bench which stood against the wall. Maslova cast a questioning glance at the assistant super- intendent, and then, as though shrugging her shoulders in surprise, followed Nekhlyudov up to the bench and sat down at his side, adjusting her skirt. " I know it is hard for you to forgive me," began Nekh- lyudov, but again stopped, feeling that his tears impeded him, " but if it is not possible to correct the past, I wish now to do all I can. Say — " " How did you find me ? " she asked, without replying to his question, and hardly glancing at him with her squinting eyes. " O Lord, aid me ! Teach me what to do ! " Nekhlyu- dov kept saying to himself, looking at her changed, bad face. "Two days ago I was a juror," he said, " when you were tried. Did you not recognize me ? " " No, I did not. I had no time to recognize people. And I did not look, either," she said. 216 RESURRECTION 217 " Was there not a child ? " he asked, and felt his face being flushed. " Thank the Lord, it died at once," she answered curtly and angrily, turning her eyes away. " Why so ? Wliat did it die of ? " " I was ill myself, and almost died," she said, without raising her eyes. " How is it my aunts let you go ? " " Who would want to keep a chambermaid with a baby ? When they noticed what the matter was, they sent me away. What is the use of mentioning it, — I do not remember anything, — I have forgotten it. That is all ended." " No, not ended. I cannot leave it so. I now want to expiate my sin." "There is nothing to expiate. What has been, is a thing of the past," she said, and — a thing he had not expected — she suddenly looked at him and gave him a disagreeable, insinuating, and pitiable smile. Maslova had not expected to see him, especially then and there, and therefore his appearance at first startled her and made her think of what she had never thought before. In the first moment she dimly recalled that new charming world of feelings and thoughts which had been revealed to her by that attractive young man who loved her and who was loved by her, and then of his incom- prehensible cruelty and of the whole series of humiliations and suffering which followed that magic happiness and which was its direct consequence. And she was pained. But not having the strength to analyze it all, she acted as she always did : she dispelled those recollections and tried to shroud them with the special mist of her dis- solute life. In the first moment she connected the man who was sitting at her side with the young man whom she had once loved, but upon observing that that caused her pain, she stopped connecting him with that youth. 218 RESURRECTION Now this neatly dressed, well-fed gentleman, with the perfumed beard, was for her not that Nekhlyudov, whom she had loved, but only one of those men who, when they needed it, made use of such creatures as she was, and whom a creature like her had to make use of for her greatest advantage. It was for this reason that she gave him that insinuating smile. She was silent, reflecting in what manner to use him. " That is all ended," she said. " Now I am sentenced to hard labour." And her lips quivered as she pronounced that terrible word. "I knew, I was convinced that you were not guilty," said Nekhlyudov, " Of course I am not. Am I a thief, a robber ? " " They say in our cell that everything depends on a lawyer," she continued. " They say that a petition has to be handed in. Only they ask a lot of money for it — " " Yes, by all means," said Nekhlyudov. " I have already talked to a lawyer." " You must not spare money, and get a good one," she said. " I will do everything in my power." A silence ensued. She again smiled in the same way. " I want to ask you — for some money, if you can let me have it. Not much — ten roubles. That is all I want," she suddenly said. " Yes, yes," Nekhlyudov said in confusion, and taking out his pocketbook. She threw a rapid glance at the superintendent, who was walking up and down the room. " Don't give it to me in his presence, or they will take it away from me." Nekhlyudov opened the pocketbook the moment the superintendent turned away, but before he succeeded in RESURRECTION 219 handing her the ten-rouble bill, the superintendent again turned his face to him. He crumpled it in his hand. " This is a dead woman," Nekhlyudov thought, looking at her once sweet, now defiled and swollen face, and at the sparkling, evil gleam of her black, squinting eyes, which were watching both the superintendent and his hand with the crumpled bill. A moment of hesitation came over him. Again the tempter who had been speaking to him in the night spoke up in Nekhlyudov's soul, as ever trying to lead him away from the question as to what he ought to do, to the question of what would result from his actions, questions of what was useful. " You won't be able to do anything with this woman," that voice said. " You are only hanging a rock around your neck, which will drown you and will keep you from being useful to others. Give her money, all you have ; bid her farewell, and make an end of it once and for all ! " he thought. But just then he felt that something exceedingly im- portant was going on in his soul, that his inner life was, as it were, placed on a swaying balance, which by the least effort could be drawn over in one or the other direc- tion. He made that effort, and acknowledged that God whom he had felt within Mm the day before ; and that God raised His voice in his soul. He decided to tell her everything at once. " Katyusha, I have come to ask thy forgiveness in everything, but thou hast not answered me whether thou hast forgiven me, or whether thou wilt ever forgive me," he said, suddenly passing over to " thou." She was not hstening to him, and only looked at his hand and at the superintendent. The moment the super- intendent turned away, she swiftly stretched her hand out to him, grasped the money, and stuck it behind her belt. 220 RESURRECTION " You are saying strange things," she said, smihng contemptuously, as he thought. Nekhlyudov felt that there was in her something directly hostile to him, which kept her in her present attitude, and which prevented his penetrating into her soul. Strange to say, this did not repel him, but attracted him to her with a greater, a special and new force. He felt that he must wake her spiritually, that this was terribly hard, — but this very difficulty attracted him. He now experienced a feeling toward her such as he had never before experienced toward her or toward anybody else. There was nothing personal in it : he did not wish anything of her for himself, but only that she should cease being what she was, that she awaken and become wliat she had been before. " Katyusha, what makes you talk that way ? I know you and remember you such as you were in Panov — " " What is the use recalling the past ? " she said, drily. " I recall it in order to smooth over and expiate my sin, Katyusha," he began, and was on the point of saying that he wanted to marry her, but he met her glance and read in it something so terrible, and coarse, and repulsive, that he could not finish his sentence. Just then the visitors were beginning to leave. The superintendent went up to ISTekhlyudov and told him that the time for the interview was up. Maslova arose, waiting submissively to be dismissed. " Good-bye ! I have to tell you many more things, but you see I cannot now," said Nekhlyildov, and stretched out his hand. " I shall come again — " " It seems you have said everything — " She gave him her hand, but did not press his. " No. I shall try to see you again where I may have a talk with you, and then I shall tell you something EESURRECTION 221 very important, which must be told to you," said Nekh- lyudov. " Very well, come, then," she said, smiling as she was iu the habit of smiling to men whom she wished to please. " You are nearer to me than a sister," said Nekhlyudov. " Strange," she repeated, and went behind the screen, shaking her head. XLIV. At his first meeting, Nekhlyudov expected that the moment Katyusha should see him and should hear of his intention of serving her and of his repentance, she would rejoice and be contrite, and would be Katyusha again ; to his terror he saw that there was no Katyusha, but only a Maslova. This surprised and horrified him. He was particularly surprised to find that Maslova not only was not ashamed of her situation, — not as a pris- oner, for of that she was ashamed, but as a prostitute, — but that she seemed to be satisfied with it, and even to pride herself on it. This could not have been otherwise. Every person, to act, must consider his or her activity to be important and good. Consequently, whatever the posi- tion of a man may be, he cannot help but form such a view of human life in general as will make his activity appear important and good. It is generally supposed that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, acknowledging his profession to be bad must be ashamed of it. But the very opposite takes place. People, who by fate and by their own sins — by error — are put in a certain condition, however irregu- lar it may be, form such a view of life in general that their position appears to them good and respectable. In order to support such a view, people instinctively cling to that circle in which the conception which they have formed of life, and of their place in it, is accepted. We are surprised to find this in the case of thieves bragging of their agility, prostitutes of their debauch, murderers of their cruelty. But we are surprised only because the 222 ■ RESURRECTION 223 circle, the atmosphere of these people, is limited, and, chiefly, because we live outside that circle ; but does not the same thing take place in the case of rich men brag- ging of their wealth, that is, of robbery, of generals brag- ging of their victories, that is, of murder, and of rulers bragging of their power, that is, of violence ? We do not see in these people a corrupted conception of life, of good and evil, in order to justify their position, because the circle of people with such corrupt conceptions is larger, and we ourselves belong to it. Just such a view of life and of her position in the world had been formed by Maslova. She was a prosti- tute who was condemned to enforced labour, and yet she had formed such a world conception that she was able to justify herself and even pride herself before people on her situation. This world conception consisted in the conviction that the chief good of men, of all without exception, — of old and young men, of gymuasiasts, generals, uneducated and educated men, — lay in sexual intercourse with attractive women, and for this reason all men, though they pre- tended to be busy with other affairs, in real:.*;y desired only this. She was an attractive woman, who could satisfy or not satisfy their desire, — consequently she was an important and necessary factor. All her past and present life had been a confirmation of the justice of this view. For ten years, she had everywhere seen, wherever she had been, beginning with Nekhlyudov and the old coun- try judge, and ending with the wardens of the prisons, that all men needed her ; she neither saw, nor noticed the men who did not need her. Consequently the whole world presented itself to her as a collection of people swayed by passion, who watched her on all sides, and who with all means, with deception, with violence, pur- chase, cunning, tried to get possession of her. 224 RESUKRECTION Thus Maslova understood life, and, with such a com- prehension of the world, she was not only not the least, but even an important, person. Maslova valued this con- ception of life more than anything else in the world ; nor could she help valuing it, because if she had changed this conception of life she would have lost the impor- tance which this conception gave her among men. And in order not to lose her significance in life, she instinc- tively clung to the circle of people who looked upon life just as she did. When she noticed that Nekhlyiidov wished to take her into another world, she set herself against this, for she foresaw that in the world into which he was enticing her she would have to lose that place in life which gave her confidence and self-respect. For this same reason she warded off every recollection of her first youth and of her first relations with. Nekhlyiidov. These recollections did not harmonize with her present world conception, and so they had been entirely obliterated from her memory, or, to be more correct, they lay some- where untouched in her memory, but they were shut up and immured as bees immure the nests of the worms which are likely to destroy their whole labour, so that there should be no getting to them. Therefore, the present Nekhlyiidov was for her not the man whom she had once loved with a pure love, but only a rich gentle- man who could and must be made use off, and with whom she could have the same relations as with all men. " No, I could not tell her the main thing," thought Nekhlyiidov, walking with the throng to the entrance. " I have not told her that I want to marry her. I have not yet told her, but I will," he thought. The wardens, standing at the doors, again counted the people twice, as they passed out, lest a superfluous person leave the prison or he left behind. He not only was not offended by the slap on his shoulder, but did not even notice it, XLV. Nekhlyudov wanted to change his external life : to give up his large quarters, send away the servants, and move to a hotel. But Agraf^na Petrovna proved to him that there was no sense in making any change in his manner of life before winter ; no one would hire his quar- ters in the summer, and in the meantime one had to live and keep the furniture and things somewhere. Thus, all efforts of Nekhlyudov to change his external life (he wanted to arrange things simply, in student fashion) came to naught. Not only was everything left as of old, but in the house began an intensified activity of airing the rooms, of hanging out and beating all kinds of woollen and fur things, in which the janitor and his assistant, and the cook, and even Korn^y himself took part. First they brought out and hung up on ropes all kinds of uniforms and strange fur things, which were never used by any- body ; then they carried out the rugs and furniture, and the janitor and his assistant, rolling up their sleeves over their muscular arms, began to beat these in even measure, and an odour of naphthalene was spread through all the rooms. Walking through the yard and looking out of the window", Nekhlyudov marvelled at the mass of all these things, and how most of them were unquestionably use- less. The only use and purpose of these things, so Nekhlyudov thought, was to give a chance for physical exercise to Agrafena Petrovna, Korn^y, the janitor, and his assistant. " It is not worth while to change the form of life now, 225 226 RESUKKECTION while Maslova's case has not yet been passed upon," thuiight Nekhlyudov. " Besides, that would be too diffi- cult a mattei". Everything will change of itself, when she is released, or transported, in which case I wiU follow her." On the day appointed by lawyer Fanarin, Nekhlyudov drove to his house. Upon entering the magnificent apartments of the lawyer's own house, with immense plants and wonderful curtains in the windows, and, in general, with those expensive furnishings which testify to money earned without labour, such as is found only with people who have suddenly grown rich, Nekhlyudov met in the waiting-room a number of clients who, as in a physician's office, were waiting for their turns, sitting gloomily around tables with their illustrated magazines, which were to help them while away their time. The lawyer's assistant, who was sitting there too, at a high desk, upon recognizing Nekhlyudov, came up to him, greeted him, and told him that he would at once announce him to his chief. But he had barely walked up to the door of the office, when it was opened, and there could be heard the loud, animated conversation of a middle- aged, stocky man, with a red face and thick moustache, in an entirely new attire, and of Fanarin himself. On the faces of both was an expression such as one sees in the countenances of people who have transacted a very profitable, but not very clean business. " It is your own fault, my friend," said Fanarin, smil- ing. " T should like to find my way into paradise, but my sins won't let me git there." " Very well, very well, I know." And both laughed an unnatural laugh. " Ah, prince, please come in," said Fanarin, upon notic- ing Nekhlyudov, and, nodding once more to the departing merchant, he led Nekhlyudov into his office, which was RESURRECTION 227 furnished in severe style. "Please, have a cigarette," said the lawyer, seating himself opposite Nekhlyudov and repressing a smile provoked by the success of his previous affair. " Thank you, I have come to find out about Maslova." " Yes, yes, in a minute. Oh, what rascals these fat- purses are ! " he said. " You have seen the fellow ? He has twelve milhons, — and yet he says ' git.' But if he can pull a twenty-five-rouble bill out of you, he will pull it out with his teeth." " He says, ' git,' and you say, ' twenty-five-rouble bill,'" Nekhlyudov thought in the meantime, feehng an uncontrollable disgust for this glib man, who by his tone wished to show him that he was of the same camp with Nekhlyudov, but entirely apart from the rest of the clients who were waiting for him, and from all other people. " He has tired me out dreadfully, — he is a worthless chap. I wanted to have a breathing spell," said the lawyer, as though to justify himself for not talking busi- ness. " Well, your affair — I have read it carefully and 'have not approved of its contents,' as Turg^nev says; that is, he was a miserable lawyer, — he has omitted all the causes for annulment." " So what is your decision ? " " In a minute. Tell him," he turned to the assistant, who had just entered, " that it will be as I told him. If he can, it is all right ; if not, he does not have to." " But he does not agree to it." " He does not have to," said the lawyer, and his gay and gracious face suddenly became gloomy and mean. " And they say that lawyers take money for nothing," he said, the previous suavity overspreading his face. " I saved a bankrupt debtor from an entirely irregular accu- sation, and now they all crawl to me. But every such case means an immense amount of labour. As some 228 ,, RESURRECTION author has said, we leave a piece of our flesh in the ink- stand. "Well, as I said, your case, or the case in which* you are interested," he continued, " has been miserably con- ducted ; there are no good causes for annulment ; still we shall try, and here is what I have written." He took a sheet of paper covered with writing, and, rapidly swallowing some formal words and pronouncing others with particular emphasis, began to read : " To the Criminal Department of Cassation, etc., such and such a one, etc., complaining. By the decree of the verdict, etc., of etc., a certain Maslova was declared guilty of having deprived Merchant Smyelkov of his life by means of poison, and by force of art. 1,454 of the Code she has been sentenced to, etc., enforced labour, etc." He stopped. In spite of being accustomed to it, he evidently listened with pleasure to his own production. " This sentence is the result of so many important judi- cial mistakes and errors," he continued, with emphasis, "that it is subject to reversal. In the first place, the reading of the report of the investigation of Smyelkov's internal organs was, in the very beginning of the trial, interrupted by the presiding judge, — that is one." " But the prosecuting attorney asked for the reading of it," Nekhlyiidov said, in surprise. " Makes no difference. The defence might have had cause to ask for it." " But there was no earthly use in it." " Still, this is a cause. Further : In the second place, Maslova's counsel," he continued to read, " was interrupted during his speech by the presiding judge, just as he, de- siring to characterize Maslova's personality, was touching on the internal causes of her fall, on the ground that the counsel's words were not relevant to the case, whereas in criminal cases, as has repeatedly been passed upon by the Senate, the elucidation of the defendant's character and KESURRECTION 229 of his moral traits in general are of prime importance, if for nothing else tlian the correct determination of the question of imputation, — that is two," he said, glancing at Nekhlyudov. " But he spoke so wretchedly that it was impossible to understand him," said Nekhlyudov, even more astonished than before. "The fellow is stupid, and, of course, could not say anything sensible," Fanarin said, laughing, " but still it is a cause. Well, next : In the third place, in his final charge, the presiding judge, contrary to the categorical demand of par. 1, art. 801 of the Code of Crim. Jur., did not explain to the jury of what juridical elements the concept of culpability is composed, and did not tell them that they had the right, in assuming as proven the fact that Maslova had administered the poison to Smyel- kov, not to ascribe to her any guilt in the act, if intent of murder was absent, and thus to find her guilty, not of the criminal intent, but of the act, as the result of care- lessness, from the consequences of which, contrary to Maslova's intent, ensued the merchant's death. This is the main thing." " But we ought to have understood that ourselves. It was our error." "And, finally, in the fourth place," continued the lawyer, "the question of Maslova's guilt was given to the jury in a form which contained a palpable contradic- tion. Maslova was accused of premeditated murder of Smyelkov for purely selfish purposes, which appeared as the only motive for the murder ; whereas the jury in their answer rejected the purpose of robbery and Maslova's participation in the theft of the valuables, — from which it is manifest that it was their intention to refute the defendant's premeditation in the murder, and only by misunderstanding, caused by the incomplete wording in the charge of the presiding judge, did they not express 230 EESUREECTION it in proper form in their answer, and therefore such an answer of the jury unconditionally required the applica- tion of arts. 816 and 808 of the Code of Crim. Jur., that is, the explanation by the presiding judge of the error which had been committed, and their return for a new consultation in regard to the question of defendant's guilt," read Fanariu. " Why, then, did the presiding judge not do so ? " " I should myself like to know why," said Fanarin, laughing. " Then, you think, the Senate will rectify the error ? " " That depends upon who will be in the chair at the given moment. So here it is. Further I say : Such a verdict did not give the court any right," he continued, in a rapid tone, " to subject Maslova to criminal punish- ment, and the application in her case of par. 3, art. 771 of the Code of Crim. Jur. forms a distinct and important violation of the fundamental principles of our criminal procedure. On the basis of the facts herein described I have the honour of asking, etc., to set aside, in accordance with arts. 909, 910, par. 2 of 912, and 928 of the Code of Crim. Jur. etc., and to transfer the case into another division of the same court for retrial. — So, you see, every- thing has been done that can be done. But I shall be frank with you, — there is little probability of any success. However, everything depends on the composition of the Department of the Senate. If you have any influence, make a personal appeal." " I know some people there." " Do it at once, for Ihey will soon leave to cure their piles, and then you will have to wait three months. In case of a failure, there is still left an appeal to his Majesty. This also depends on wire-pulling. In that case I am ready to serve you, that is, not in the wire- pulling, but in composing the petition." " 1 thank you. And your fee — " RESURRECTION 231 " My assistant will give you a clean copy of the appeal, and he will tell you." " I wanted to ask you another thing. The prosecuting attorney has given me a permit to see that person in prison ; but there I was told that I should need a special permission from the governor, if I wished to see her at any other than the regular time and place. Is that necessary ? " " Yes, I think so. But now the governor is not here, and the vice-governor is performing his duties. He is such an all-around fool that you will scarcely get any- thing out of him." " Is it Maslennikov ? " « Yes." " I know him," said Nekhlyiidov, rising, in order to leave. Just then there glided into the room, with a swift motion, a fearfully homely, snub-nosed, bony, sallow woman, — the lawyer's wife, who apparently was not in the least abashed by her ugliness. She was clad in a most original manner, — she was rigged up in something velvety, and silky, and bright yellow, and green, and her thin hair was all puffed up ; she victoriously sailed into the waiting- room, accompanied by a lank, smiling man with an earthen hue on his face, in a coat with silk lapels, and a white tie. It was an author, whom Nekhlyiidov knew by sight. " Anatol," she proclaimed, opening the door. " Come to my apartment. Sem^n Ivanovich has promised to read his poem, and you must by all means read about Garshin." "Please, prince, — I know you and consider an intro- duction superfluous, — come to our literary matinee ! It will be very interesting. Anatol reads beautifully." "You see how many different things I have to do," said Anatol, waving his hands, smiling, and pointing to his wife, meaning to say that it was impossible to with- stand such an enchantress. 232 RESURRECTION Nekhlyiidov thanked the lawyer's wife, with a sad and stern expression and with the greatest civihty, for the honour of the invitation, but excused himself for lack of time, and went into the waiting-room. " How finical," the lawyer's wife said of him, when he left. In the waiting-room, the assistant handed Nekhlyiidov the prepared petition, and, to the question about the fee, he said that Anatoli Petrovich had put it at one thousand roubles, adding that Anatoli Petrovich did not generally take such cases, but he had done so to accommodate him. " Who must sign the petition ? " asked Nekhlyiidov. " The defendant herself may ; but if her signature is difficult to get, Anatoli Petrovich will do so, after getting her power of attorney." " I will go down myself and get her signature," said Nekhlyiidov, happy to have a chance of seeing her before the appointed day. XLVL At the usual time the whistles of the wardens were sounded along the corridors ; clanking the iron, the doors of the corridors and cells were opened ; there was a plash- ing of bare feet and of the heels of the prison shoes ; the privy-cleaners passed along the corridors, filling the air with a nauseating stench ; the prisoners washed and dressed themselves, and came out into the corridors for the roll-call, after which they went for the boiling water to make tea with. During the tea, animated conversations were held in all the cells of the prison in regard to the two prisoners who on that day were to be flogged with switches. One of these was an intelligent young man, clerk Vasilev, who had killed his sweetheart in a fit of jealousy. The fellow prisoners of liis cell liked him for his jollity, generosity, and firmness in respect to the authorities. He knew the laws and demanded their execution. For this the prison officials did not like him. Three weeks before, a warden had struck a privy-cleaner for having spilled the liquid, on his new uniform. Vasilev took the privy-cleaner's part, saying that there was no law which permitted him to strike a prisoner. " I will show you a law," said the warden, and called Vasilev names. Vasilev paid him back in the same coin. The warden wanted to strike him, but Vasilev caught hold of his hands, holding them thus for about three minutes, when he turned him around and kicked him out. The warden entered a complaint, and the superintendent ordered VasOev to be placed in a career. The careers were a series of dark store-rooms, which 233 234 KESURRECTION were locked from the outside by iron bars. In the dark, cokl career there was neither a bed, nor table, nor chair, so that the person confined there had to sit or lie on the dirty floor, where he was overrun by rats, of which there were a large number, which were so bold that it was impossible in the darkness to save the bread. They ate it out of the hands of the prisoners, and even attacked them, the moment they ceased to stir. Vasilev said that he would not go to the career, because he was not guilty of anything. He was taken there by force. He offered resistance, and two prisoners helped him to get away from the wardens. The wardens came together, and among them Petrov, famous for his strength. The pris- oners were subdued and placed in the careers. A report was immediately made to the governor that something like a riot had taken place. A reply was received, in which it was decreed that the two instigators, Vasilev and vagabond Neponmyashchi, should get thirty blows with switches. The castigation was to be administered in the women's visiting-room. All the inmates of the prison had known of this since the previous evening, and the impending castigation formed the subject of animated discussions. Korabl(5va, Beauty, Fedosya, and Maslova were sitting in their corner, and all of them, red in their faces and agitated, having drunk brandy, which now was continu- ally imbibed by Maslova, and to which she liberally treated her companions, were drinking tea and discussing the same matter. " He has not been riotous," said Korabldva of Vasilev, biting off tiny pieces of sugar with all her sound teeth. " He only took his comrade's part, because it is against the law now to strike a person." " They say he is a good fellow," added Fedosya, with her long braids uncovered, who was sitting on a piece of wood near the bench on which the teapot was standing. RESUltKECTION 235 " You ought to tell him, Mikhaylovna," the flagwoman addressed Maslova, meauiug Nekhlyudov by " him." " I will tell him. He will do anything for me," replied Maslova, smiling and tossing her head. " But it will be a while before he comes, and they say they have just gone for them," said Eedosya. " It is terrible," she added, with a sigh. " I once saw them flogging a peasant in the office of the township. Father-in-law had sent me to the village elder^ when I arrived there, behold — " and the flag- woman began a long story. The flagwoman's story was interrupted by the sound of voices and steps in the upper corridor. The women grew quiet and listened. " They have dragged him away, the devils," said Beauty. " They will give him a terrible flogging, for the wardens are dreadfully angry at him ; he gives them no rest." Everything quieted down up-stairs, and the flagwoman ended her story, how she had been frightened in the town- ship office, as they were flogging a peasant in the barn, and how all her entrails had felt like leaping out. Beauty then told how Shcheglov had been flogged with whips, and how he had not uttered a sound. Then Fedosya took the tea away, and KorabMva and the flagwoman began to sew, while Maslova sat up on the bench, embracing her knees, and pining away from ennui. She was on the point of lying down to take a nap, when the matron called her to the oflice to see a visitor. "Do tell him about us," said old woman Menshov to her, while Maslova was arranging her kerchief before the mirror, of which half the quicksilver was worn off. " We did not commit the arson, but he himself, the scoundrel, and the labourer saw it ; he would not kill a soul. Tell him to call out Mitri. Mitri will make it as plain to him as if it were in the palm of his hand. Here we are locked up, whereas we know nothing about it, while he, the scoun- 236 KESUKRECTION drel, is disporting with another man's wife, and staying all the time in an inn." " This is against the law," Korabl^va confirmed her. " I will tell him, I certainly will," replied Maslova. " Let me have a drink to brace me up," she added, wink- ing with one eye. Korabl^va filled half a cup for her. Maslova drained it, wiped her hps, and in the happiest frame of mind, repeating the words, " To brace me up," shaking her head, and smiling, followed the matron into the corridor. • XLVII. Nekiilyijdov had long been waiting for her in the vestibule. Upon arriving at the prison, he rang the bell at the entrance door, and handed the warden of the day the prosecuting attorney's permit. " Whom do you want to see ? " " Prisoner Maslova." " You can't now ; the superintendent is busy." " Is he in the office ? " asked Nekhlyiidov. " No, here in the visitors' room," the warden replied with embarrassment, as Nekhlyiidov thought. " Is to-day reception-day ? " " No, there is some special business," he said. " How, then, can I see him ? " " "When he comes out, you may speak to him. Wait awhile." Just then a sergeant, in sparkling galloons and with a beaming, shining face and a moustache saturated with tobacco smoke, came in through a side door and sternly addressed the warden. " Why did you let him in here ? To the office — " " I was told that the superintendent was here," Nekh- lyiidov said, wondering at the unrest which was percepti- ble in the sergeant, too. Just then the inner door was opened, and perspiring, excited Petrdv came in. " He will remember this," he said, turning to the ser- geant. The sergeant indicated Nekhlyiidov by a glance, and Petrov grew silent, frowned, and passed out through the back door. 237 238 RESURRECTION " Who will remember ? Why are they all so embar- rassed? Why did the sergeant make such a sign to him ? " thought Nekhlyiidov. " You cannot wait here. Please, come to the office," the sergeant again addressed Nekhlyudov, and Nekhlyudov was about to go, when the superintendent entered through the back door, even more embarrassed than his subordi- nates. He was sighing all the time. Upon noticing Nekhlyudov, he turned to the warden. " Feddtov, bring Maslova from the fifth of the women to the office," he said. " Please, follow me," he said to Nekhlyudov. They weut over a steep staircase to a small room with one window, with a writing-desk, and a few chairs. The superintendent sat down. " Hard, hard duties," he said, turning to Nekhlyudov, and taking out a fat ciga- rette. " You are evidently tired," said Nekhlyudov. " I am tired of this whole service, — the duties are very hard. You try to alleviate their lot, and it turns out worse. All I am thinking of is how to get away. Hard, hard duties." Nekhlyudov did not know what that difficulty of the superintendent's was, but on that day he noticed in him a peculiar, gloomy, and hopeless mood, which evoked his sympathy. " Yes, I suppose it is very hard," he said. " But why do you execute this duty ? " " I have no other means, and I have a family." " But if it is hard for you — " " Still, I must tell you, I am doing some good, so far as in my power lies ; I alleviate wherever I can. Many a man would do differently in my place. It is not an easy matter to take care of two thousand people, and such people ! One must know how to treat them. I feel like pitying them. And yet I dare not be too indulgent." IIESUIIKECTION 1^39 The superintendent told of a recent brawl between the prisoners, which had ended in murder. His story was interrupted by the arrival of Maslova, preceded by a warden. Nekhlyudov saw her in the door, before she noticed the superintendent. Her face was red. She walked briskly back of the warden, and kept smiling and shaking her head. Upon observing the superintendent, she glanced at him with a frightened expression, but immediately regained her composure, and boldly and cheerfully addressed Nekhlyvidov. " Good morning," she said, in a singsong voice, and smiling ; she shook his hand firmly, not as at the previous meeting. " I have brought you a petition to sign," said Nekh- lyudov, somewhat surprised at the bolder manner with which she now met him. " The lawyer has written this petition, and now you have to sign it before it is sent to St. Petersburg." " Very well, I shall sign it. One may do anything," she said, blinking with one eye, and smiling. Nekhlyudov drew the folded sheet out of his pocket and went up to the table. " May she sign it here ? " Nekhlyudov asked the super- intendent. " Come here and sit down," said the superintendent. " Here is a pen. Can you write ? " " I once knew how," she said, and, smihng and adjust- ing her skirt and the sleeve of her bodice, sat down at the table, awkwardly took up the pen with her small, energetic hand, and, laughing, glanced at Nekhlyudov. He showed her where and what to write. Carefully dipping and shaking off the pen, she signed her name. " Is this all ? ". she asked, glancing now at Nekhlyudov, now at the superintendent, and placing the pen now on the inkstand and now on some papers. 240 EESURRECTION " I have something to tell you," said Nekhlyudov, taking the pen out of her hand. " Very well, tell it," she said, suddenly becoming se- rious, as though meditating about something, or wanting to fall asleep. The superintendent arose and went out, and Nekh- lyudov was left alone with her. XLVIIL The warden who had brought Maslova sat down on the window-sill, at a distance from the table. For Nekh- lyiidov the decisive moment had arrived. He was continually reproaching himself for not having told her the main thing at their first meeting, namely, that he wished to marry her, and so he decided to tell her now. She was sitting at one side of the table, and Nekhlyudov sat down opposite her, on the other side. The room was light, and Nekhlyudov for the first time clearly saw her face, close to him ; h^ saw the wrinkles near her eyes and lips and swollen eyelids, and he felt even more pity for her than before. Leaning over the table, so as not to be heard by the warden, a man of Jewish type, with grayish side-whiskers, who was sitting at the window, — the only one in the room, — he said : " If the petition does not bear fruit, we shall appeal to his Majesty. We shall do all that can be done." " The main thing would be to have a good lawyer — " she interrupted him. " My counsel was an all-around fool. He did notliing but make me compliments," she said, smiling. " If they had known then that I was acquainted with you, things would have gone differently. But as things are, everybody thinks that I am a thief." " How strange she is to-day," thought Nekhlyudov, and was on the point of saying something when she began to speak again. " This is what I have to say. There is an old woman confined with us, and all, you know, are marvelling at 241 242 KESURRECTION her. Such a fine old woman, and yet she is imprisoned for nothing, and so is her son, and all know that they are not guilty ; they are accused of incendiarism. She heard, you know, that I am acquainted with you," said Maslova, turning her head and looking at him, " so she said, ' Tell him about it, that he may call out my son, who will tell him the fact.' Menshov is their name. Well, will you do it ? You know, she is such a charming old woman : anybody can see that she is innocent. My dear, do some- thing for tliem," she said, glancing at him, lowering her eyes, and smiling. " Very well, I shall find out and do what I can," said Nekhlyudov, wondering ever more at her ease. " But I want to speak to you about my affair. Do you re- member what I told you the last time ? " he said. " You said many things. What did you say then ? " she said, smiling all the time, and burning her head now to one side and now to anotlier. " I said that I came to ask your forgiveness," he said. "What is the use all the time asking to be forgiven? What good will that do ? You had better — " " That I want to atone for my guilt," continued Nekh- lyudov, " and to atone not in words, but in deeds. I have decided to marry you — " Her face suddenly expressed affright. Her squinting eyes stood motionless and gazed at him. " What do you want that for ? " she said, with a scowl. " I feel that I ou"ht to do so before God." " What God have you found there ? You are not talk- ing the right thing. God ? What God ? You ought to have thought of God then — " she said, and, opening her mouth, stopped. Nekhlyudov only now smelled her strong breath of liquor, and understood the cause of her agitation. " Calm yourself," he said. " There is nothing to calm myself about ; you think KESURRECTION 24 o that I am druuk. So I am, but I know what I am say- ing ! " she spoke rapidly, with a purple blush. " I am a convict, a whore, but you are a gentleman, a prince, and you have no business soiling yourself with me. Go to your princesses ; my price is a red bank-note." " However cruelly you may speak, you cannot say all that I feel," Nekhlyiidov said, softly, all in a tremble. " You cannot imagine to what extent I feel my guilt toward vou ! " " Feel my guilt — " she mocked him, with malice. " Then you did not feel, but stuck one hundred roubles in my bosom. That is your price — " " I know, I know, but what is to be done now ? " said Nekhlyiidov. " I have made up my mind that I will not leave you. I will do what I have told you I would." " And I say you will not do so," she cried, laughing out loud. " Katyusha ! " he began, touching her hand. " Go away from me. I am a convict, and you are a prince, and you have no business here," she exclaimed, all transformed by her anger, and pulling her hand away from him. " You want to save yourself through me," she continued, hastening to utter everything that was rising in her soul. " You have enjoyed me in this world, and you want to get your salvation through me in the world to come ! I loathe you, and your glasses, and your fat, accursed mug. Go away, go away ! " she cried, springing to her feet with an energetic motion. The warden walked up to them. " Don't make such a scandal. It will not do — " " Leave her alone, if you please," said Nekhlyvldov. " I just wanted her not to forget herself," said the warden. " No, just wait awhile, if you please," said Nekhlyudov. The warden walked back to the window. 244 EESURRECTION Maslova sat down again, lowering her eyes and tightly clasping her small hands with their fingers crossed. Nekhlyildov was standing over her, not knowing what to do. " You do not believe me," he said. " That you will marry me ? That will never happen. I will hang myself rather than marry you ! So there you have it." " Still I will serve you." "That is your affair. Only I do not need anything from you. I am telling you the truth," she said. " Why did I not die then ? " she added, bursting out into pitiful tears. Nekhlyudov could not speak, for her tears were com- municated to him. She raised her head, looked at him, as though in sur- prise, and began with her kerchief to dry the tears that were coursing down her cheeks. The warden now came up and reminded them that the time had expired. Maslova got up. " You are excited now. If I can, I shall be here to- morrow. In the meantime think it over," said Nekhlyu- dov. She did not reply, and, without looking at him, went out with the warden. " Well, girl, you will have a fine time now," Karabl^va said to Maslova, when she returned to the cell. " He is evidently dreadfully stuck on you. Be on the lookout while he comes to see you. He will release you. Eich people can do everything." " That's so," said the flagwoman, in her singsong voice. " Let a poor man marry, and the night is too short ; but a rich man, — let him make up his mind for anything, and everything will happen as he wishes. My darling, we once had such a respectable gentleman who — " RESURKECTION 245 " Well, did you speak to him about my affair ? " the old woman asked. Maslova did not reply to her companions, but lay down on the bench and, fixing her squinting eyes upon the corner, lay thus until evening. An agonizing work was going on within her. That which Nekhlyudov had told her brought her back to the world, in which she had suf- fered, and which she had left, without understanding it, and hating it. She now lost the oblivion in which she had been living, and yet it was too painful to live with a clear memory of what had happened. XLIX. " So this it is, this it is," thought Nekhlyiidov, upon coming away from the jail, and now for the first time grasping his whole guilt. If he had not tried to atone, to expiate his deed, he would never have felt the extent of his crime ; moreover, she would not have become con- scious of the whole wrong which was done her. Only now everything had come to the surface, in all its terror. He now saw for the first time what it was he had done with the soul of that woman, and she saw and compre- hended what had been done to her. Before this, Nekhlyu- dov had been playing with his sentiment of self-adulation and of repentance, and now he simply felt terribly. To cast her off, that, he felt, he never could do, and yet he could not imagine what would come of his relations with her. At the entrance, Nekhlyildov was approached by a warden, with crosses and decorations, who, with a disa- greeable and insinuating face and in a mysterious manner, handed him a note. " Here is a note to your Serenity from a person — " he said, giving Nekhlyudov an envelope. " What person ? " " Eead it, and you will see. A poHtical prisoner. I am a warden of that division, — so she asked me to give it to you. Although this is not permitted, yet human- ity — " the warden said, in an unnatural voice. Nekhlyudov was amazed to see a warden of the polit- ical division handing him a note, in the prison itself, almost in view of everybody. He did not yet know that this war- 246 RESURRECTION 247 den was also a spy, but he took the note and read it as he came out of the jail. The note was written with a pencil, in a bold hand, in reformed orthography, and ran as follows : " Having learned that you are visiting the prison in interest of a criminal prisoner, I wanted to meet you. Ask for an interview with me. You will get the permission, and I will tell you many important things, both for your protegee and for our group. Ever grateful " Vyeea Bogodukhovski." Vy^ra Bogodukhovski had been a teacher in the wilder- nesses of the Government of Novgorod, whither Nekhlyii- dov had gone to hunt with some comrades of his. This teacher had turned to him with the request to give her money with which to attend the higher courses. Nekblyu- dov had given her the money and had forgotten all about it. iSTow it turned out that this lady was a political crim- inal, and in prison, where, no doubt, she had heard of his affair, and now proposed her services to him. How easy and simple everything had been then. And how hard and complicated everything was now. Nekh- lyiidov vividly and with pleasure thought of that time and of his acquaintance with Vy^ra Bogodukhovski. That happened before the Butter- week, in the wilderness, about sixty versts from the nearest railroad. The chase had been successful ; they had killed two bears, and were at dinner, before their departure, when the proprietor of the cabin in which they were stopping came in and announced that the deacon's daughter had come to see Prince Nekhlyudov. " Is she pretty ? " somebody asked. " Please, don't," said Nekhlyudov, looking serious ; he rose from table, wiped liis mouth, and wondering what the deacon's daughter could wish of him, went into the landlord's room. 248 RESURRECTION The girl was there. She wore a felt hat and a fur coat ; she was venous, and had a thin, homely face, but her eyes, with the brows arching upwards, were beautiful. " Vy^ra Efr^movna, speak with him," said the old hostess ; " this is the prince. I shall go out." " What can I do for you ? " said Nekhlyudov. "I — I — You see, you are rich, you squander money on trifles, on the chase, I know," began the girl, dread- fully embarrassed, " and I want only one thing, — I want to be useful to people, and I can't because I know nothing." Her eyes were sincere and kindly, and the whole ex- pression, both of her determination and timidity, was so pathetic that Nekhlyudov, as sometimes happened with him, at once put himself in her place, and he understood and pitied her. " What can I do for you ? " " I am a teacher, but should like to attend the higher courses. They won't let me. Not exactly they won't let me, but they have no means. Give me the necessary money, and I will pay you back when I am through with my studies. I have been thinking that rich people bait bears and give peasants to drink, — and that all that is bad. Why could they not do some good, too ? All I need is eighty roubles. And if you do not wish to do me the favour, well and good," she said, angrily. " On the contrary, I am very much obliged to you for giving me this opportunity — I shaU bring it to you in a minute," said Nekhlyudov. He went into the vestibule, and there met his compan- ion, who had heard the whole conversation. Without replying to the jokes of his comrades, he took the money out of his pouch, and brought it out to her. " Please, please, don't thank me for it. It is I who must be thankful." It now gave Nekhlyudov pleasure to think of aU that ; KESURRECTION 249 it gave him pleasure to think how he came very near quarrelling with an officer who wanted to make a bad joke about it; and how another comrade defended him; and how, on account of that, he became a close friend of his ; and how the whole chase had been successful and happy ; and how good he felt as they were returning in the night to the railroad station. The procession of two- horse sleighs moved in single file, noiselessly trotting along the narrow road through the forest, with its tall trees here and its bushes there, and its firs shrouded in thick layers of snow. Somebody, flashing a ^red fire in the darkness, lighted a fragrant cigarette. Osip, the bear driver, ran from sleigh to sleigh, knee-deep in the snow, straightening things out, and telling about the elks that now walked over the deep snow, gnawing at the aspen bark, and about the bears that now lay in their hidden lairs, exhaling their warm breath through the air-holes. Nekhlyudov thought of all that, and, above all else, of the blissful consciousness of his health and strength and a life free from cares. His lungs, expand- ing against the fur coat, inhaled the frosty air ; upon his face dropped the snowflakes from the branches which were touched by the horses' arches ; and on his soul there were no cares, no regrets, no fear, no desires. How good it all was ! And now ? Lord, how painful and oppressive ! Obviously Vydra Efr^movna was a revolutionist, and now confined in prison for revolutionist affairs. He ought to see her, especially since she promised to advise him how to improve Maslova's situation. L. Upon awakening the next morning, Nekhlyudov re- called everything that had happened the day before, and he was horrified. Still, notwithstanding his terror, he decided, more firmly than ever before, to continue the work which he had begun. With this feeling of the consciousness of his duty, he left the house, and rode to Masl^nnikov, to ask for the permission to visit in the jail, not only Maslova, but also the old woman Menshdv and her son, for whom Maslova had interceded. He aLso wished to be permitted to see Vy^ra Bogodiikhovski, who might be useful to Maslova. Nekhlyudov used to know Masl^unikov in the army. Maslennikov was then the regiment's treasurer. He was a very good-hearted, most obedient officer, who knew nothing and wanted to know nothing but the regiment and the imperial family. Now Nekhlyudov found him as an administrator, who had exchanged the regiment for a Government and its office. He was married to a rich and vivacious woman, who compelled him to leave his military service for a civil appointment. She made fun of him and petted him like a docile animal. Nekhlyudov had once been at their house the winter before, but he found the couple so uninteresting that he never called again. Maslennikov beamed with joy when he saw Nekhlyu- dov. He had the same fat, red face, and the same cor- pulence, and the same gorgeous attire that distinguished him in the army. There it had been an ever clean uni- 250 KESURRECTION 251 form, which fitted over his shoulders and breast accord- ing to the latest demands of fashion, or a fatigue coat. Here it was a civil officer's dress, of the latest fashion, which fitted just as snugly over his well-fed body and displayed a broad chest. He was clad in his vice-uniform. Notwithstanding the disparity of their years (Masl(5nni- kov was about forty), they spoke " thou " to each other. " Well, I am glad you have come. Let us go to my wife. I have just ten minutes free before the meeting. My chief is away, and so I rule the Government," he said with a pleasure which he could not conceal. " I have come on business to you." « What is it ? " Masl«^unikov said, as though on his guard, in a frightened and somewhat severe tone. " In the jail there is a person in whom I am very much interested " (at the word " jail " Maslennikov's face looked sterner still), " and 1 should like to meet that person, not in the general reception-room, but in the office, and not only on stated days, but oftener. I was told that this depended on you." " Of course, mon cher, I am ready to do anything I can for you," said Masl^nnikov, touchmg his knees with both hands, as though to mollify his majesty. " I can do that, but, you see, I am caliph only for an hour." " So you will give me a permit to see her ? " " It is a woman ? " "Yes." « What is she there for ? " ** For poisoning. But she is irregularly condemned." " So there you have a just court ; Us n'cn font point d'autres" he said, for some reason in French. " I know you do not agree with me, but what is to be done ? e'est mon opinion bien arretee," he added, expressing an opinion wliich he had for a year been reading in various forms in the retrograde conservative papers. " I know you are a liberaL" 252 RESURRECTION " I do not know whether I am a liberal or anything else," Nekhlyiidov said, smiling ; he was always surprised to find that he was supposed to belong to some party and to be called a liberal because, in judging a man, he used to say that all are equal before the law, that people ought not to be tortured and flogged, especially if they had not been tried. " I do not know whether I am a liberal or not, but I am sure that the courts we now have, whatever their faults may be, are better than those we used to have." " Who is your lawyer ? " " I have applied to Fanarin." " Ah, Fanarin ! " said Masl(5unikov, frowning, recall- ing how, the year before, that Fanarin had examined him as a witness at court, and how for half an hour he had with the greatest politeness subjected him to ridicule. " I should advise you not to have anything to do with him. Fanarin est un homme tare." " I have also another request to make of you," Nekh- lyiidov said, without answering him. " I used to know a girl, a school-teacher, — she is a very pitiable creature, and she also is now in jail and wants to see me. Can you give me a permit to see her, too ? " MasMnnikov bent his head a little sidewise and fell to musing. " Is she a political ? " " So I was told." " You see, interviews with political prisoners are allowed only to relatives, but I will give you a general permit. Je sais que vous n'ahuserez pas — " What is her name ? Your prot^g^e — Bogodukhov- ski ? Bile est jolie ? " " Hideuse." Masl^nnikov shook liis head in disapproval, went up to the table, and upon a sheet of paper with a printed heading wrote in a bold hand : " The bearer of this. Prince RESURRECTION 253 Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov, is herewith permitted to see in the prison office the inmate of the castle Burgess Maslova, and also Assistant Surgeon Bogodilkhovski," he added, and finished with a sweeping flourish. " You will see what order they keep there. It is very difficult to keep order there, because everything is crowded, especially with transport convicts ; but I watch the whole business carefully, and I love it. You will find them all in good condition, and they are satisfied. One must know how to treat them. The other day there was an unpleas- ant affair, — a case of disobedience. Anybody else would have at once declared it to be a conspiracy, and would have made it hard for many. But with us everything passed quite well. One must show, on the one hand, great care, and on the other, a firm hand," he said, com- pressing his white, plump hand, which stuck out from the white, stiff shirt-r:leeve with its gold cuff-button, and displaying a turquoise ring, " care and a firm hand." " I don't know about that,'-' said Nekhlyudov. " I was there twice, and I felt dreadfully oppressed." " Do you know what ? You ought to meet Countess Passek," continued talkative Masl^unikov ; " she has devoted herself entirely to this matter. Elk fait heau- coup de hien. Thanks to her, and, perhaps, to me, I may say so without false modesty, it was possible to change everything, and to change it in 'such a way that the terrible things that were there before have been removed, and. that the pri: oners are quite comfortable there. You will see for yourself. But here is Fanarin, I do not know him personally, and in my public position our paths diverge, — he is positively a bad man, and he takes the liberty of saying such things in court, such things — " " I thank you," said Nekhlyiidov, taking the paper ; without listening to the end of what he had to say, he bade his former comrade good-bye. " Won't you go to see my wife ? " 254 RESURRECTION " No, you must pardon me, but I am busy now." " How is that ? She will not forgive me," said Masl^n- nikov, accompanying his former companion as far as the first lauding of the staircase, just as he did with people not of the first, but of the second importance, such as he considered Nekhlyiidov to be. " Do go in for a minute ! " But Nekhlyiidov remained firm, and just as the lackey and porter rushed up to Nekhlyiidov and, handing him his overcoat and cane, opened for him the door, in front of which stood a policeman, he said that he could not under any circumstances just now. " Well, then, come on Thursday, if you please. That is her reception-day. I shall tell her you are coming," Masl^nnikov cried down the stairs to him. LI. Having on that day gone from MasMnnikov straight to the prison, Nekhlyiidov directed his steps to the familiar apartments of the superintendent. Again, as be- fore, the sounds of the miserable piano were heard ; now it was not the rhapsody that was being played, but dementi's Etudes, again with unusual power, distinctness, and rapid- ity. The chambermaid with the bandaged eye, who opened the door, said that the captain was at home, and led Nekhlyildov into a small drawing-room, with a divan, a table, and a large lamp with a rose-coloured paper shade burnt on one side, which was standing on a woollen embroidered napkin. The superintendent, with a care- worn, gloomy face, entered the room. " What is it, if you please ? " he said, buttoning the middle button of his uniform. " I saw the vice-governor, and here is the permit," said Nekhlyiidov, handing him the paper. " I should hke to see Maslova." " Markova ? " asked the superintendent, not being able to hear well through the sounds of the music. " Maslova." " Oh, yes ! Oh, yes ! " The superintendent arose and walked up to the door, from which were heard dementi's roulades. " Marusya, stop for just a minute," he said, in a voice which showed that the music was the cross of his life, " for I can't hear a word." The piano was silenced ; dissatisfied steps were heard, and somebody peeped through the door. 255 256 KESUKIiECTION The superintendent seemed to feel a relief from the cessation of that music : he lighted a cigarette of weak tobacco, and offered one to Nekhlyiidov, who declined it. " So, as I said, I should like to see Maslova." " That you may," said the superintendent. " What are you doing there ? " he addressed a little girl of five or six years of age, who had entered the room and was walkiug toward her father, turning all the time in such a way as not to take her eyes off Nekhlyiidov. " If you don't look out, you will fall," said the superintend- ent, smiling as he saw the child, who was not looking ahead of her, catch her foot in the rug, and run to him. " If I may, I should like to go there." " It is not convenient to see Maslova to-day," said the superintendent. " Why ? " " It is your own fault," said the superintendent, with a slight smile. " Prince, don't give her any money. If you wish, give it to me for her. Everything will belong to her. But you, no doubt, gave her money yesterday, and she got liquor, — it is impossible to root out this evil, — and she has been so drunk to-day that she is in a riotous mood." " Is it possible ? " " Truly. I had even to use severe measures, and to transfer her to another cell. She is otherwise a peaceful woman, but don't give her any money. They are such a lot — " Nekhlyiidov vividly recalled yesterday's scene, and he again felt terrible. " And may I see Vy(5ra Bogodukhovski, a political prisoner?" asked Nekhlyiidov, after a moment's silence. " Yes, you may," said the superintendent, embracing the little girl, who was all the time watching Nekhlyii- dov ; he rose, and, gently pushing the girl aside, went into the antechamber. RESURRECTION 257 The superintendent had not yet succeeded in putting on his overcoat, which was handed to him by the servant with the bandaged eye, and getting out of the door, when dementi's clear-cut roulades began to ripple once more. " She was in the conservatory, but there were dis- orders there. She has great talent," said the superin- tendent, descending the staircase. " She wants to appear in concerts." The superintendent and Nekhlyiidov walked over to the jail. The gate immediately opened at the approach of the superintendent. The wardens, saluting him by putting their hands to their visors, followed him with their eyes. Four men, with heads half-shaven, and carry- ing some vats with something or other, met them in the anteroom, and they all pressed against the wall when they saw him. One especially crouched and scowled, his black eyes sparkling. " Of course the talent has to be developed and must not be buried ; but in a small house it is pretty hard," the superintendent continued the conversation, not paying the slightest attention to the prisoners ; dragging along his weary legs, he passed, accompanied by Nekhlyiidov, into the assembly-room. " Who is it you wish to see ? " " Vy^ra Bogodiikhovski." " Is she in the tower ? You will have to wait a little," he turned to Nekhlyudov. " And can I not in the meantime see the prisoners Menshov, — mother and son, accused of arson ? " " That is from cell twenty-one. Very well, I shall have them come out." " May I not see Menshov in his cell ? " " You will be more comfortable in the assembly-room." " No, it would interest me more there." " What interest can you find there ? " 258 RESURRECTION Just then the dandyish assistant came out of the side door. " Please, take the prince to Menshov's cell. Cell twenty- one," the superintendent said to his assistant, " and then I shall have her out in the office ; I shall have her out. What is her name ? " " Vy^ra Bogodiikhovski," said Nekhlyiidov. The assistant superintendent was a blond young officer, with blackened moustache, who was spreading around him an atmosphere of eau de Cologne. " Please, follow me," he turned to Nekhlyiidov with a pleasant smile. " Are you interested in our establish- ment ? " " Yes ; and I am also interested in that man, who, so I was told, is quite innocent." The assistant shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, such things happen," he answered calmly, po- litely letting the visitor pass before him into the stinking corridor. " Often they lie. If you please ! " The doors of some cells were open, and a few prisoners were in the corridor. Barely nodding to the wardens and looking askance at the prisoners, who hugged the wall and went into their cells, or stopped at the door and, holding their arms down their legs, in soldier fashion followed the officer with their eyes, the assistant took Nekhlyiidov through one corridor, then to another on the left, which was barred by an iron door. This corridor was darker and more malodorous than the first. Padlocked doors shut off this corridor at both ends. In these doors there were httle loopholes, called " eyelets," about an inch in diameter. There was no one in the corridor but an old warden with a sad, wrinkled face. " Where is Menshov ? " the assistant asked the warden. " The eighth on the left." " And are these occupied ? " asked Nekhlyiidov. " They are all occupied but one." LII. " May I look in ? " asked Xekhlyiidov. " If you please," the assistant said, with a pleasant smile, and turned to the warden to ask him something. Nekhlyiidov looked into one loophole : a tall young man, with a small black beard, wearing nothing but his underclothes, was rapidly walking up and down ; upon hearing a rustling sound at the door, he looked up, frowned, and proceeded to walk. Nekhlyudov peeped into another loophole. His eye met .another large frightened eye, which was looking through the hole, and he hurriedly stepped aside. Upon looking through a third loophole, he saw a man of dimin- utive size, with his head covered by a cloak, all rolled up in a heap and asleep. In a fourth cell sat a broad-faced, pale man, with his head drooping low, and his elbows resting upon his knees. When he heard the steps, he raised his head and looked toward the door. In his whole countenance, but especially in liis large eyes, was an expression of hopeless pining. Evidently it did not interest him to know who it was that was peeping into his cell. Whoever it may have been, he did not expect anything good from him. Nekhlyudov felt terribly ill at ease ; he ceased looking in, and went up to cell twenty- one, where Menshdv was confined. The warden turned the key and opened the door. A young, venous fellow, with a long neck, with kindly round eyes and a small beard, was standing near his cot ; he hurriedly put on his cloak and, with a frightened face, looked at those who had entered. Nekhlyudov was particularly struck by hig 259 260 RESURRECTION kindly round eyes, that glided with an interrogative and frightened glance from him to the warden, to the assistant, and hack again. " This gentleman wants to ask you about your case." " I thank you most humbly." " I have been told about your case," said Nekhlyiidov, walking to the back of the cell and stopping near the dirty, latticed window, " and should hke to hear about it from you." Menshov also walked up to the window and began at once to talk, at first looking timidly at the assistant, but then with ever increasing boldness. When the assistant superintendent left the cell for the corridor, to give some orders there, he regained his courage altogether. To judge from the language and manner, it was the story of a most simple-minded and honest peasant lad, and it seemed especially out of place to Nekhlyiidov to hear it from the mouth of a prisoner in prison garb and in jail. Nekhlyiidov listened to him, and at the same time looked at the low cot with its straw mattress, at the window with the strong iron grating, at the dirty, moist, and daubed walls, at the pitiable face and form of the unfortunate, disgraced peasant in prison shoes and cloak, and he grew sadder and sadder ; he tried to make him- self believe that what the good-hearted man was telling him was not true, — so terrible it seemed to him to think that a man could be seized for being insulted, and clad in prison garb, and be put in such a horrible place. And still more terrible it was to think that this truthful story, and the peasant's kindly face, should be a deception and a lie. According to the story, the village dram-shop- keeper soon after the peasant's marriage had alienated his wife's affections. He invoked the law. But the dram-shopkeeper bribed the authorities, and he was everywhere acquitted. He took his wife back by force, but she ran away the following day. Then he came and RESURRECTION 261 demanded his wife. The dram-shopkeeper said that she was not there (he had, however, seen her as he came iu), and told him to leave at once. He did not go. The dram-shopkeeper and his labourer beat him until blood flowed, and on the following day the dram-shopkeeper's house and outbuildings were consumed by fire. He and his mother were accused of incendiarism, whereas he was then at the house of a friend. " And you have really not committed the arson ? " " I did not as much as think of it, sir. He, the scoun- drel, must have done it himself. They said that he had but lately insured his property. He said that I and mother had threatened him. It is true, I did call him names, for my heart gave way, but I did not set fire to the house. I was not near it when the fire started. He purposely did it on the day after I and mother had been there. He set fire to it for the sake of the insurance, and then he accused us of it." " Is it possible ? " " I am telling you the truth, before God, sir. Be in place of my own father ! " he wanted to bow to the ground, and Nekhlyudov with difficulty kept him from doing so. " Get my release, for I am being ruined for no cause whatsoever," he continued. Suddenly his cheeks began to twitch, and he burst into tears ; he rolled up the sleeve of his cloak and began to dry his eyes with the sleeve of his dirty shirt. " Are you through ? " asked the assistant superintend- ent. "Yes. Don't lose courage. I shall do what I can," said Nekhlyudov, and went out. Menshov was standing in the door, so that the warden pushed it against him, as he closed it. While the warden was locking the door, he kept looking through the peep- hole. LIII. Walking back through the broad corridor (it was dinner-time and all the cells were open), through crowds of men dressed in light yellow cloaks, short, wide trousers, and prison shoes, who were watching him with curiosity, Nekhlyudov experienced strange feelings of compassion for the people who were confined, and of terror and dis- may before those who had placed them there and held them in restraint, and of a certain degree of shame at himself for looking so calmly at them. In one corridor somebody rushed up to a cell and there struck the door with his shoes, and its inmates rushed out and barred Nekhlyudov's way, bowing to him. " Your Honour, I do not know what to name you, please, try and get a decision in our case." " I am not an officer, I know nothing." " It makes no difference. Tell somebody, — the author- ities," said he, with provocation. " We have committed no crime, and here we have been nearly two months." " How is that ? Why ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " We have simply been locked up. This is the second month we have been in jail, and we do not know why." " That is so," said the assistant superintendent. " These people were arrested for not having any passports. They were to be sent to their Government ; but the prison there was burnt, so the Governmental office asked us not to send them. We have despatched all the others to their respective Governments, but these we are keeping." " Only for this ? " said Nekhlyudov, stopping at the door. 262 KESURRECTION 263 A throng of some forty men, all of them in prison cloaks, surrounded Nekhlyildov and the assistant. Sev- eral voices began to speak at once. The assistant stopped them : " Let one of you speak." From the crowd stood out a tall, respectable-looking peasant, of about fifty years of age. He explained to Nekhlyildov that they had all been taken up and con- fined in prison for having no passports, that is, they had passports, but they were about two weeks overdue. Such oversight happened every year, and they usually were left unmolested ; but this year they had been arrested, and this was the second month they had been kept as criminals. " We are aU stone-masons, — all of us of the same art^l.^ They say that the Governmental prison has burnt down, but what have we to do with it ? Do us the favour in the name of God ! " Nekhlyildov listened, but he hardly understood what the respectable old man was telhng him, because all his attention was arrested by a large, dark gray, many-legged louse that was creeping through the hair down the cheek of the respectable stone-mason. "Is it possible? Only for this?" said Nekhlyildov, addressing the assistant. " Yes, they ought to be sent away and restored to their places of residence," said the assistant. The assistant had just finished his sentence, when a small man, also in a prison cloak, pushed himself forward through the crowd and, strangely contorting his mouth, began to say tliat they were tortured here for nothing. " Worse than dogs — "he began. "Well, you had better not say anything superfluous. Keep quiet, or, you know — " " What have I to know ? " retorted the small man, in desperation. " We are not guilty of anything." * A partnership of working men. 264 RESURRECTION " Shut up ! " cried the superior officer, and the small man grew silent. " What is this, indeed ? " Nekhlyiidov said to himself, as he left the cells, accompanied by the hundreds of eyes of those who were looking out of the doors, and of the prisoners in the corridor, as though he were driven through two lines of castigating men. " Is it possible entirely innocent people are kept here ? " said Nekhlyiidov, upon coming out of the corridor. " What is to be done ? But, of course, they lie a great deal. Hearing them, one might think that they were all innocent," said the assistant superintendent. " But these are not guilty of anything." "I shall admit that these are not. But they are all a pretty bad lot. It is impossible to get along with them, without severity. There are such desperate people amoug them, that it wiU not do to put a finger into their mouths. Thus, for example, we were compelled yesterday to pun- ish two of them." " How to punish ? " asked Nekhlyiidov. "They were flogged with switches, according to in- struction — " " But corporal punishment has been abolished." "Not for those who are deprived of their rights. They are subject to it." Nekhlyiidov recalled everything he had seen the day be- fore, and he understood that the punishment had been in- flicted just at the time that he had been waiting, and he was overcome with unusual force by that mixed feeling of curi- osity, pining, dismay, and moral nausea, which was pass- ing into a physical state, and by which he had been overcome on previous occasions, but never so powerfully as now. Without listening to the assistant superintendent or looking around him, he hastened to leave the corridors and to go to the ofhce. The superintendent was in the RESURRECTION 265 corridor, and, being busy with something else, had for- gotten to call Vy^ra Bogodukhovski. He did not think of it until Nekhlyiidov entered the office. " I shall send for her at once, while you, please, be seated," he said. LIV. The office consisted of two rooms. In the first, which had a large, protruding, dilapidated stove and two dirty- windows, stood in one corner a black apparatus for the measurement of the prisoners' height, and in the other hung the customary appurtenance of a place of torture, — a large image of Christ. In this first room stood several wardens. In the other room, some twenty men and women were sitting along the walls and in groups, and talking in an undertone. Near the window stood a writing-desk. The superintendent sat down at the desk and offered Nekhlyiidov a chair which was standing near it. Nekh- lyudov sat down and began to watch the people in the room. First of all his attention was attracted by a young man in a short jacket, with a pleasant face, who, standing before a middle-aged woman with black eyebrows, was speaking to her excitedly and gesturing with his hands. Near by sat an old man in blue spectacles and listened motionless to what a young woman in prison garb was telling him, while he held her hand. A boy, a student of the Real-Gymnasium, with an arrested and frightened expression on his face, looked at the old man, without taking his eyes off. Not far from them, in the corner, sat two lovers : she wore short hair and had an energetic face, — a blond, sweet-faced, very young girl in a fashion- able dress ; he, with delicate features and wavy hair, was a beautiful youth in a rubber blouse. They were seated in the corner, whispering and evidently melting in love. 266 RESURRECTION 267 Nearest to the table sat a gray-haired woman, in a black (iress, — apparently a mother : she had her eyes riveted on a consumptive-looking young man in the same kind of a blouse, and wanted to say something to him, but could not speak a word for tears : she began and stopped again. The young man held a piece of paper in his hand, and, evidently not knowing what to do, with an angry face now bent and now crumpled it. Near them sat a plump, ruddy, beautiful girl, with very bulging eyes, in a gray dress and pelerine. She was seated next to the weeping mother and tenderly stroked her shoulder. Everything about that girl was beautiful : her large, white hands, her wavy, short-cut hair, her strong nose and lips ; but the chief charm lay in her kindly, truthful, sheep-like, hazel eyes. Her beautiful eyes were deflected from her mother's face just as Nekhlyiidov entered, and met his glance. But she immediately turned them away, and began to tell her mother something. Not far from the loving pair sat a swarthy, shaggy man with a gloomy face, who was in an angry voice saying something to a beardless visitor, resembling a Castrate Sectarian. Nekhlyiidov sat down near the superintendent and looked around him with tense curiosity. His attention was distracted by a close-cropped little boy, who came up to him and in a thin voice asked him : " Whom are you waiting for ? " Nekhlyiidov was surprised at the question, but upon looking at the child and seeing his serious, thoughtful face, with his attentive, lively eyes, seriously rephed to him that he was waiting for a lady he knew. " Is she your sister ? " asked the boy. " No, not my sister," Nekhlyiidov answered, surprised. " But with whom are you here ? " he questioned the boy. " I am with mamma. She is a political prisoner," said the boy. " Mariya Pavlovna, take Kolya," said the superintend- 268 RESUKRECTION eut, apparently finding Nekblyiidov's conversation with the boy to be illegal. Mai'iya Pavlovna, that same beautiful girl with the sheep-like eyes, who had attracted Nekblyiidov's atten- tion, arose to her full, tall stature, and with a strong, broad, almost manly gait, walked over to Nekblyiidov and the child. " Has he been asking you who you are ? " she asked Neklilyiidov, slightly smiling and trustfully looking iuto his eyes in such a simple manner as though there could be no doubt but that she always had been, now was, and always ought to be in the simplest and kindliest fraternal relations with everybody. " He wants to know everytliing," she said, smihng in the boy's face with such a kind, sweet smile that both the boy and Nekblyiidov smiled at her smile. " Yes, he asked me whom I came to see." " Mariya Pavlovna, it is not allowed to speak with strangers. You know that," said the superintendent. " All right, all right," she said, and, with her large white hand taking hold of Kolya's tiny hand, while he did not take his eyes off her face, returned to the mother of the consumptive man. " Whose boy is this ? " Nekhlyudov asked the super- intendent. " The son of a political prisoner. He was born here in the prison," said the superintendent, with a certain satisfaction, as though displaying a rarity of his institu- tion. " Is it possible ? " " Now he and his mother are leaving for Siberia." " And this girl ? " " I can't answer you," said the superintendent, shrug- ging his shoulders. " Here is Vy^ra Bogodiikhovski," LV. Theough the back door, with a nervous gait, entered short-haired, haggard, sallow little Vyera Efr^movna, with her immense, kindly eyes. " Thank you for coming," she said, pressing Nekhlyu- dov's hand. " Did you remember me ? Let us sit down." " I did not expect to find you thus." " Oh, I feel so happy, so happy, that I do not even wish for anything better," said Vy^ra Efr^movua, as always, looking with her immense, kindly, round eyes at Nekhlyiidov, and turning her yellow, dreadfully tliin, and venous neck, which stuck out from the miserable- looking, crumpled, and dirty collar of her bodice. Nekhlyiidov asked her how she had gotten into such a plight. She told him with great animation about her case. Her speech was interlarded with foreign words about the propaganda, about disorganization, about groups and sections and sub-sections, of which she was appar- ently quite sure everybody knew, whereas Nekhlyiidov had never heard of them before. She spoke to him, evidently fully convinced that it was very interesting and agreeable for him to hear all the secrets of the popular cause. But Nekhlyiidov looked at her miserable neck and at her scanty dishevelled hair, and wondered why she was doing all that and telling him about it. He pitied her, but in an entirely differ- ent manner from that in which he pitied peasant Men- shov, who was locked up in a stinking prison for no cause whatsoever. He pitied her more especially on account of 269 270 RESURRECTION the evident confusion which existed in her mind. She obviously considered herself a heroine, ready to sacrifice her hfe for the success of her cause, and yet she would have found it hard to explain what her cause consisted in, and what its success would be. The affair of which Vy^ra Efr^movna wished to speak to Nekhlyiidov was this : her companion, Shustova, who did not even belong to her sub-group, as she expressed herself, had been arrested five mouths before at the same time with her, and had been confined in the Petropavlovsk fortress because at her room books and papers which had been given into her safe-keeping had been found. Vyera Efr^movna considered herself in part guilty of Shustova's incarceration, and so she begged Nekhlyiidov, who had influence, to do everything in his power to obtain her release. The other thing for which she asked him was that he should obtain a permission for Gur^vich, who was confined in the Petropavlovsk fortress, to see his parents and provide himself with scientific books, which he needed for his learned labours. Nekhlyiidov promised he would endeavour to do all in his power, as soon as he should be in St. Petersburg, Vy^ra Efr^movna told her story as follows : upon fin- ishing a course in midwifery, she had fallen in with the party of the " Popular Will," and worked with them. At first everything went well : they wrote proclamations and made propaganda at factories ; later, a prominent mem- ber was seized ; documents were discovered, and they began to arrest everybody. " I was taken, too, and now we are being deported — " she finished her story. " P>ut that is notliing. I feel in excellent spirits, — in Olympic transport," she said, smil- ing a pitiable smile. Nekhlyiidov asked about the girl with the sheep-hke eyes. Vy^ra Efrs^movna told him that she was the daughter of a general, that she had long been a member RESURRECTION 271 of the revolutionary party, and that she was arrested for claiming to have shot a gendarme. She had been hving in conspirators' • quarters, where there was a typographic machine. When they were searched at night, the inmates of the quarters decided to defend themselves, whereupon they put out the lights and began to destroy the compromising matter. The police forced an entrance, when one of the conspirators shot and mortally wounded a gendarme. At the inquest she said that she had fired the shot, notwithstanding the fact that she had never held a pistol in her hand and would not have killed a spider. And thus it remained. Now she was being deported to hard labour. " An altruistic, a good soul," Vy^ra Efr^movna said, approvingly. The third thing that Vy^ra Efr^movna wanted to talk about was concerning Maslova. She knew, as everybody else in the prison knew, Maslova's history and Nekhlyu- dov's relations with her, and advised him to try to obtain her transfer to the pohtical prisoners, or to a position, at least, as attendant in the hospital, where now a large number of sick people were confined and workers were needed. Nekhlyiidov thanked her for her advice and told her that he would try and make use of it. LVI. Their conversation was interrupted by the superin- tendent, who arose and announced that the time for the interviews was up, and that people had to leave. Nekh- lyiidov got up, bade Vy^ra Efrt^movna good-bye, and walked over to the door, where he stopped to see what was going on before him. " Gentlemen, it is time," said the superintendent, now rising, and now sitting down again. The superintendent's demand only evoked a greater animation in all those who were in the room, both pris- oners and visitors, but nobody even thought of leaving. Some remained sitting and conversing. Others began to say farewell and to weep. The leave-taking of the mother from her consumptive son was especially touching. The young man kept twisting a piece of paper, and his face grew ever more stern, so great was the effort which he was making not to be infected by his mother's feeling. But the mother, hearing that it was time to leave, lay on his shoulder and sobbed, snuffling with her nose. The girl with the sheep-like eyes — Nekhlyudov involuntarily followed her — stood before the weeping mother and was telling her some consoling words. The old man in the blue spectacles was standing and holding his daughter's hand, nodding his head to what she was saying. The young lovers arose and, holding hands, were long looking into each others' eyes. " These alone are happy," pointing to the lovers, said the young man in the short jacket, who was standing near 272 RESURRECTION 273 Nekhlyudov and like him watching those who were taking leave. Being conscious of the looks of Nekhlyudov and of the young man, the lovers, — the young man in the rubber blouse and the blond sweet-faced girl, — extended their linked hands, bent back, and began to circle around, while laughing. " They will be married this evening, here in the jail, and then she will go with him to Siberia," said the young man. " Who is he ? " " A hard labour convict. Though they are making merry now, it is too painful to hsten," added the young man in the jacket, hearing the sobs of the consumptive man's mother. " Gentlemen ! Please, please. Do not compel me to take severe measures," said the superintendent, repeating one and the same thing several times. " Please, please now," he said, in a feeble and undecided voice. " How is this ? Time has long been up. This won't do. I am telling you for the last time," he repeated, reluctantly, now puffing, and now putting out his Maryland cigarette. It was evident that, however artful and old and habitual the proofs were which permitted people to do wrong to others, without feeling themselves responsible for it, the superintendent could not help noticing that he was one of the causes of that sorrow which was manifested in this room ; and this obviously weighed heavily upon him. Finally the prisoners and visitors began to depart : some through the inner, others through the outer door. The men in the rubber blouses, and the consumptive man, and the swarthy and • shaggy man passed out ; and then Mariya Pavlovna, with the boy who had been born in the prison. The visitors, too, began to leave. With heavy tread the 274 RESURKECTION old man in the blue spectacles went out, and Nekhlyiidov followed him. "Yes, those are marvellous conditions," said the talka- tive young man, as though continuing the interrupted conversation, while he descended the staircase with Nekh- lyiidov. " Luckily, the captaiu is a good man, and does not stick to rules. At least they get a chance to talk to each other and ease their souls." When Nekhlyudov, conversing with Medyntsev, — so the talkative young man introduced himself to him, — reached the vestibule, the superintendent, with a wearied face, accosted him. " If you wish to see Maslova, please come to-morrow," he said, apparently wishing to be kind to Nekhlyudov. " Very well," said Nekhlyudov, hastening to get out. Terrible, it was evident, was the innocent suffering of Meushdv, and not so much the physical suffering as the dismay, the distrust of goodness and of God, which he must experience, seeing the cruelty of men who tor- mented him without cause ; terrible were the disgrace and torments imposed upon the hundreds of people, innocent of crime, simply because their papers were not properly written ; terrible were these befogged wardens, who were occupied with torturing their fellow men and were convinced that they were doing a good and important work. But more terrible yet was that aging and enfeebled, kind superintendent, who had to separate mother from son, father from daughter, — people who were just like him and his children. " What is this for ? " Nekhlyudov asked himself, ex- periencing more than ever that sensation of moral nausea, passing into a physical feeling, which overcame him in prison, and finding no answer. LVIL On the following day Nekhlyiidov went to the lawyer, to whom he communicated Menshov's affair, asking him to take the defence. The lawyer listened to him and said that he would look into the case, and if everythiug was as Nekhlyiidov told him, which was very probable, he would take the defence without any remuneratiou. Nekhlyudov also told him of the 130 men who were held there by misunderstanding, and asked him on whom the matter depended, and who was to blame for it. The lawyer was silent for a moment, evidently wishing to give an exact answer. " Who is to blame ? Nobody," he said, with deter- mination. " Ask the prosecuting attorney, and he will tell you that the governor is to blame ; ask the governor, and he will tell you that it is the prosecuting attorney. Nobody is to blame." " I will go at once to Masl^nnikov and tell him." " Well, that is useless," the lawyer retorted, smihng. " He is such a — - he is not a relative or friend of yours ? — such a, with your permission, such a stick and, at the same time, such a cunning beast." Eecalling what Masl^nnikov had said about the lawyer, he did not reply ; bidding him good-bye, he drove to Mas- l^nnikov's house. Nekhlvudov had to ask Masl^nnikov for two thinss : for Maslova's transfer to the hospital, and for the 130 passportless people who were innocently confined in jail. No matter how hard it was for him to ask from a man 276 276 RESURRECTION whom he did not respect, it was the only means of reach- ing his aim, and he had to employ it. As he drove up to Maslt^nnikov's house, he saw several carriages at the entrance : there were buggies, calashes and barouches, and he recalled that this was the reception- day of Masldnnikov's wife, to which Masl6nnikov had asked him to come. As Nekhlyiidov approached the house, he saw a barouche at the entrance, and a lackey, in a hat with a cockade and in a pelerine, helping a lady from the threshold of the porch into it, while she caught the train of her dress in her arm and displayed her black thin ankles in low shoes. Among the other carriages which were standing there, he recognized the covered landau of the Korchagins. The gray-haired, ruddy-faced coachman respectfully and politely took off his hat, as to a well-known gentleman. Nekhlyudov had not yet finished asking the porter where Mikhail Ivanovich (Mas- lennikov) was, when he appeared on the carpeted staircase, seeing off a very distinguished guest, such as he accom- panied not only to the landing, but way down. The very distinguished military guest was, in descending, telling in French about the lottery and ball for the benefit of the asylums, which was being planned in the city, expressing his opinion that this was a good occupation for women : " They are happy, and money is collected ! " Qitelles s'amusent ct que le hon .Dieu les henisse. Ah, Nekhlyudov, good day. What makes you so scarce ? " he greeted Nekhlyudov. " Allez pi^esenter vous devoirs h ma- daifne. The Korchagins are here. Et Nadine Buhsliev- den. Toutes les jolies femmes de la ville," he said, placing and slightly raising his military shoulders under the over- coat with the superb golden galloons, which was handed him by the lackey. " Au revoir, mon cher." He pressed Masl^nnikov's hand. " Come up-stairs. How glad I am," Masl(?nnikov spoke excitedly, linking his hand in Nekhlyudov's arm and, in KESURRECTION 277 spite of his corpulence, rapidly drawing him up-stairs. Masl^nuikov was in an extremely joyful agitation, the cause of which was the attention which had been bestowed upon him by the distinguished person. Every such atten- tion caused Maslennikov the same rapture that is produced in a docile little dog, whenever its master strokes, pats, and scratches it behind its ears. It wags its tail, crouches, winds about, lays down its ears, and insanely runs about in circles. Maslennikov was ready to do the same. He did not notice Nekhlyiidov's serious countenance, did not listen to him, and kept dragging him to the drawing-room, so that there was no possibility of refusing, and Nekhlyii- dov went with him. " Business afterward ; I shall do anything you please," said Maslennikov, crossing the parlour with Nekhlyiidov. "Announce to Mrs. General MasMnnikov that Prince Nekhlyiidov is here," he said to a lackey, during his walk. The lackey moved forward at an amble and passed beyond them. " Votis n'avez qu'd, ordonner. But you must by all means see my wife. I caught it last time for not bringing you to her." The lackey had announced them, when they entered, and Anna Ignatevna, the vice-governor's wife, Mrs. Gen- eral, as she called herself, turned to Nekhlyiidov, with a beaming smile, from amidst the bonnets and heads of those who surrounded her at the divan. At the other end of the drawing-room, at a table with tea, ladies were sitting, and men, in military and civil attire, were stand- ing, and from there was heard the uninterrupted chatter of masculine and feminine voices. " Enfiii ! Have you given us up ? Have we offended you in any way ? " With such words, that presupposed an intimacy be- tween her and Nekhlyiidov, although it had never existed between them, Anna Ignatevna met the newcomer. " Are you acquainted ? Are you ? Madame Byelav- ski, Mikhail Ivanovich Chernov. Sit down near me- 278 EESUKRECTIOIS" " Missj^, venez done h tiotre table. On vous apportera votre the — And you — " she addressed an officer who was talking to Missy, apparently having forgotten his name, "please, come here. Will you have some tea, prince ? " " I shall not admit it for a minute, not for a minute, — she simply did not love him," said a feminine voice. " But she did love cakes." " Eternally those stupid jokes," laughingly interposed another lady, shining in her silk, gold, and precious stones. " G'est excellent, — these waflSes, and so light. Let me have some more ! " " How soon shall you leave ? *' " To-day is my last day. It is for this reason that I have come." " The spring is so charming, and it is so nice now in the country ! " Missy, in a hat and in a dark striped dress, which clasped her slender waist without any folds, as though she had been born in it, was very pretty. She blushed when she saw Nekhlyudov. " I thought that you had left," she said to him. " Almost," said Nekhlyudov. " I have been kept back by business. I have even come here on business." " Come to see mamma. She is very anxious to see you," she said, and, being conscious of telling an untruth, and of his knowing it, she blushed even more. " I shall hardly have the time," gloomily replied Nekh- lyiidov, trying to appear as though he had not noticed her blush. Missy frowned angrily, shrugged her shoulder, and turned to the elegant officer, who seized the empty cup out of her hand, and, catching with his sword in the chairs, gallantly carried it to another table. " You must contribute something for the home." RESURRECTION 279 "T do not refuse, but want to keep all my liberality until the lottery. There I will show up in all my strength." " Look out," was heard a voice, accompanied by a manifestly feigned laughter. The reception-day was brilliant, and Anna Ignatevna was in raptures. " Mika has told me that you are busy about the prisons. I understand that," she said to Nekhlyudov. " Mika " (that was her stout husband, Masl^nnikov) " may have other faults, but you know how good he is. All these unfortunate prisoners are his children. He does not look at them in any other light. II est d'une hontS — " She stopped, being unable to find words which would have expressed the bo7ite of that husband of hers, by whose order men were flogged ; she immediately turned, smiling, to a wrinkled old woman in lilac ribbons, who had just entered. Having conversed as much as was necessary, and as insipidly as was necessary, in order not to violate the proprieties.. Nekhlyudov arose and walked over to Mas- l^nnikov. " Can you listen to me now ? " " Oh, yes ! What is it ? Come this way ! " They went into a small Japanese cabinet, and sat down by the window. LVIII. " Well, je suis tt vous. Do you want to smoke ? Only wait, — we must make no dirt Iiere," he said, bringing the ash-tray. " Well ? " " I have two things to talk about." " Indeed ? " Masleuuikov's face became gloomy and sad. All the traces of the excitement of the little dog, whom its mas- ter has scratched behind its ear, suddenly disappeared. From the drawing-room were borne voices. A woman's voice said : " Jamais, jamais je ne croirai," and another, from the other end, a man's voice, was telling something, repeating all the time : " La Comtesse Voronzoff, " and " Victor Apraksine." From a third side was heard only the rumble of voices and laughter. Masl^nnikov hstened to what was going on in the drawing-room, and at the same time to what Nekhlyudov was saying. " I have come again in behalf of that woman," said Nekhlyiidov. " Yes, the one who is sentenced, but innocent. I know, I know." " I should like to ask y ou to have her transferred as a servant to the hospital. I was told that that could be done." Masl^nnikov compressed his lips and meditated. "Hardly," he said. "Still, I shall take it under ad- visement, and shall wire you to-morrow al)out it." " I was told that there were many sick people there, and that help is needed." 280 RESURKECTION 281 "All right, all right. I shall let you know in any case." " If you please," said Nekhlyiidov. In the drawing-room was heard a general, and even natural, laugh. "Victor is doing that," said Masl^nnikov. "He is remarkably clever when he is in his proper mood." "Another thing," said Nekhlyiidov. "There are 130 people in the jail ; they have been kept there for more than a month for nothing else but because their pass- ports are overdue." He told what the cause of their detention was. " How did you find out about that ? " asked MasMnni- kov, and his face suddenly expressed unrest and dissatis- faction. " I was on my way to one who is awaiting trial, when I was surrounded in the corridor by these men, who asked me — " " To whom that is awaiting trial did you go ? " " To a peasant who is innocently accused, and for whom I have employed counsel. But that is another matter. Is it possible that these men are kept in prison for no other reason than that then passports are overdue and — " " That is the prosecuting attorney's affair," Masl^unikov angrily interrupted Nekhlyudov. "You say that trials are speedy and just ! It is the duty of the prosecuting attorney's assistant to visit the jaU and to find out whether the prisoners are detained there lawfully. But they do nothing but play vint." " So you can't do anything ? " gloomily said Nekhlyudov, thinking of what the lawyer had said about the govern- or's throwing it on the prosecuting attorney's shoulders. " Yes, I will do it. I will institute an investigation at once." " So much the worse for her. (Test un sonffre douleur" was heard the voice of a woman in the drawing-room, 282 RESURRECTION who, apparently, was quite indifferent to what she was saying. " So much the better, I will take this one," was heard from the other side the playful voice of a man and the playful laughter of a woman, who was refusing something. " No, no, for nothing in the world," said a feminine voice. " I will do it all," repeated Maslennikov, putting out his cigarette with his white hand with the turquoise ring. " And now let us go to the ladies." "Another thing," said Nekhlyiidov, without entering the drawing-room, but stopping at the door, " I was told that some men had received corporal punishment in jail yesterday. Is that true ? " Masl(^nuikov grew red in his face. " Ah, that, too ? No, mon cJier, you must positively not be admitted ; you meddle with everything. Come, come, Annette is calling us," he said, taking him under his arm, and expressing the same kind of excitement as after the attention of the distinguished person, but this time it was not an excitement of joy, but of trepidation. Nekhlyildov tore his arm away from him, and, without bidding any one good-bye or saying a word, with a melan- choly expression in his face, crossed the drawing-room and the parlour, and went past the officious lackeys, through the antechamber, and out iuto the street. " What is the matter with him ? What have you done to him ? " Annette asked her husband. " This is h la franfaise" somebody remarked. " Not at all (i la frangaisc ; it is it la zoulou" " Yes, he has always been like that." Somebody arose ; somebody arrived ; and the twittering went on as before : the company used the incident with Nekhlyudov as a convenient subject for conversation on the present jou7^ fixe. On the day following his visit to Masl^nnikov's house. Hesukrection 283 Nekhlyudov received from him, on heavy, smooth paper, with a coat of arms and seals, a letter in a magnificent, firm handwriting, informing liim that he had written to the hospital physician about Maslova's transfer, and that, in all likehhood, his wish would be fulfilled. It con- cluded with " Your loving elder comrade," and below the signature, " MasMnnikov," was made a wonderfully artistic, large, and firm flourish. " Fool ! " Nekhlyudov could not restrain himself from saying, especially because in the word " comrade " he felt that Maslennikov condescended to him ; that is, he saw that, notwithstanding the fact that he was executing a morally exceedingly dirty and disgraceful function, he considered himself a very important man, and thought, if not to flatter, at least to show that he was not overproud of his majesty, iu that he called himself his comrade. LIX. It is one of the most deep-rooted and wide-spread superstitions that every man has his well-defined proper- ties, that a man is good or bad, clever or stupid, energetic or apathetic, and so forth. People are not such. We may say of a man that he is oftener good than bad, oftener clever than stupid, ofteuer energetic than apathetic, and vice versa ; but it would be wrong to say of one man that he is good or clever, and of another, that he is bad or stupid. Yet we always classify people in this manner. This is wrong. Men are like rivers : the water is the same in all ; but every river is either narrow, or swift, or broad, or still, or clean, or cold, or turbid, or warm. Even thus men are. Each man carries within him the germs of all human qualities, and now manifests some of these, and now others, and frequently becomes unlike himself, and yet remains one and the same. With some people these changes are extremely sudden. To this category Nekhlyii- dov belonged. Changes took place within him both from physical and spiritual causes. Just such a change had occurred in him now. That sensation of solemnity and joy of renovation, which he had experienced after the trial, and after the first interview with Katyusha, had completely disappeared, and had after the last meeting given way to terror, even disgust for her. He had decided not to leave her, not to change his determination of marrying her, if only she would wish it, liut the thought of it was hard and painful to him. 284 RESURRECTION 285 On the day after his visit to Maslt^nnikov's house, he again drove to the prison, in order to see her. The superintendent granted him an interview, but not in the office, and not in the lawyer's room, but in the women's visiting-hall. Notwithstanding his kind-heart- edness, the superintendent was more reserved than before with Nekhlyiidov ; obviously his talks with Maslennikov had resulted in an instruction to use greater precaution with that visitor. " You may see her," he said, " only in regard to the money, please, do as I have asked you. As to the transfer to the hospital, as his Excellency had written, — that was possible, and the physician was wilHug. Only she herself does not want to go. She says : ' I have no desire to carry out the vessels of those nasty fellows.' Prince, they are a dreadful lot," he added. Nekhlyiidov did not reply, and asked for the interview. The superintendent sent a warden after her, and Nekh- lyiidov went with him to the empty visiting-hall of the women. Maslova was already there. She came out from behind the screen, quiet and timid. She went up close to Nekhlyii- dov, and, glancing beyond him, said : " Forgive me, Dmitri Ivanovich ! I said many bad things the other day." " It is not for me to forgive you — " Nekhlyiidov began. " But still, I beg you, leave me alone," she added, and in the dreadfully squinting eyes with which she looked at him Nekhlyiidov again read a strained and evil ex- pression. " Why should I leave you ? " " Just do ! " " Why so ? " She again cast the same malicious glance at him, as he thought. 286 RESURRECTION " It is like this," she said. " You leave me, — I tell you the truth. I can't. Leave me altogether," she said, with quivering lips, growing silent. " I am telhng you the truth. I shall prefer hanging myself." Nekhlyildov felt that in that refusal of hers there was hatred for him, and unforgiven offence, but at the same time something else, — something good and significant. This confirmation of her former refusal, made while in a calm state, at once destroyed all doubts in Nekhlyiidov's soul, and brought him back to his former serious solem- nity and contrite condition in relation to Katyusha, " Katyusha, as I have told you before, so I tell you now," he said, with especial seriousness. " I ask you to marry me. But if you do not wish to do so, and as long as you do not wish, I shall, as before, be in the place where you are, and I will travel to the place to which you will be deported." " That is your affair, and I sha'n't say anything more about this," she said, and again her Hps began to tremble. He, too, was silent, feehng that he had not the strength to speak. " I am now going to the country, and then to St. Peters- burg," he said, regaining at last his composure. " I shall there look after your — after our affair, and if God grants it, the sentence shall be reversed." " If they do not reverse it, it will be all the same. I deserve it for something else, if not for this," she said, and he saw what a great effort she was making to restrain her tears. " Well, did you see Menshov ? " she suddenly asked him, in order to conceal her agitation. " Is it not so, they are not guilty ? " " Yes, I think so." " What a charming old woman," she said. He told her everything he had found out from Men- RESURKECTION 287 shov, and asked her whether she did not need anything, to which she replied that she did not want anything. They were again silent. " Well, in reference to the hospital," she suddenly said, looking at him with her squinting eyes, " if you wish, I will go there, and I will stop drinking — " Nekhlyudov looked her silently in the eyes. Her eyes were smiling. " That is very good," was all he could say, and he bade her good-bye. " Yes, yes, she is an entirely different person ! " thought ISTekhlyiidov, experiencing, after his previous misgivings, an altogether new, never before experienced feeling of confidence in the invincibleness of love. Upon returning after this meeting to her malodorous cell, Maslova took off her cloak and sat down in her place on the benches, dropping her hands on her knees. In the cell were only consumptive Vladimirskaya with her suckling babe, old woman Menshov, and the flag- woman with the two children. The sexton's daughter had been declared mentally deranged the day before, and taken to the hospital. All the other women were wash- ing clothes. The old woman was lying on the bench and sleeping; the children were in the corridor, the door to which was open. Vladimirskaya with the babe in her arms and the flag- woman with a stocking went up to Maslova. " Well, did you see him ? " they asked. Maslova sat on the high bench, without saying a word, and dangling her feet, which did not reach down to the floor. " Don't mope ! " said the flagwoman. " Above every- thing else, don't lose your courage, Katyusha. Well?" she said, rapidly moving her fingers. Maslova made no reply. 288 EESUKRECTION " Our women have gone to wash the clothes. They said that to-day there would be great almsgiving. They have brought a lot, they say," said Vladimirskaya. " Finashka ! " the flagwoman cried through the door. " Where are you, you little urchin ? " She took out one knitting-needle, and, sticking it into the ball of thread and the stocking, she went into the corridor. Just then was heard the noise of steps and of women's conversation in the corridor, and the inmates of the cell, with their shoes over their bare feet, entered, each of them carrying a roll, and some of them even two. Fedosya at once went up to Maslova. " What is it ? Is something wrong ? " asked Feddsya, looking lovingly at Maslova with her clear blue eyes. " Here is something with our tea," and she put away the rolls on the shelf. " Has he given up the idea of marrying you ? " said Korabl^va. " No, he has not, but I do not want to," said Maslova. " You are a silly girl ! " Korabl(^va said, in her bass. " If you are not to live together, what good would it do you to get married ? " said Feddsya. " But your husband is going along with you," said the flagwoman. " Yes, we are lawfully married," said Feddsya. " But what use is there for him to bind himself lawfully, if he is not to live with you ? " " What a silly woman ! What for ? If he should marry her, he would cover her with gold." " He told me that he would follow me, wherever I might be sent," said Maslova. " If he will go, he will ; and if not, I sha'n't beg him." " Now he is going to St. Petersburg to look after my case. All the ministers there are his relatives," she con- tinued, " only I have no use for them." RESUKRECTION 289 " Of course ! " Korabl^va suddenly interposed, opening up her bag, and evidently thinking of something else. " Shall we have some liquor ? " " I sha'n't drink any," answered Maslova. " Drink yourselves." FART THE SECOND In two weeks the case would probably come up in the Senate, and by that time Nekhlyildov intended to be in St. Petersburg, in order, in case of a failure in the Senate, to petition his Majesty, as the lawyer, who had written the appeal, had advised him to do. Should the appeals remain fruitless, for which, in the lawyer's opinion, he ought to be prepared, as the causes for annulment vv^ere rather weak, the party of the convicts to be deported, of wliich number Maslova was one, might leave in the first days of June ; therefore, in order to be ready to follow Maslova to Siberia, which was Nekhlyiidov's firm inten- tion, he had to go down to his villages, to arrange his affairs there. First Nekhlyildov went to Kuzminskoe, his nearest, large black-earth estate, from which he derived his chief income. He had lived on this estate during his child- hood and youth ; then, when he was a grown man, he had been there twice, and once, at his mother's request, he had taken a German superintendent there, with whom he had examined the whole property ; consequently he had long Ijeen acquainted with the condition of the estate and with the relations the peasants bore to the office, that is, to the landed proprietor. They were such that the peasants were in complete dependence on the office. Nekhlyudov had known all this since his student days, when he had professed and preached Henry George's 291 292 EESUKRECTION doctrine and, on account of this doctrine, had distributed his land among the peasants. It is true, after his military service, when he became accustomed to spending twenty thousand a year, all this knowledge ceased being obligatory in his life and was forgotten. He did not question himself whence the money came which his mother gave him, and tried not to think of it. But his mother's death, the inheritance, and the necessity of managing his estate, that is, the land, again roused in him the question of the ownership of land. A mouth before, Nekhlyudov would have said to himself that he was not able to change the existing order of things, that it was not he who managed the estate, — and would have more or less acquiesced, since he was living far away from his property, from which he received the money. But now he decided that, although he was confronted with a journey to Siberia and with complicated and difficult relations with the world of pris- ons, for which money would be needed, he could not leave affairs in their previous condition, but that he ought to change them, even though he suffer from that. He determined not to work the land himself, but to give it to the peasants at a low rental, which would ensure their independence from the landed proprietor in general. Frequently, upon comparing the condition of the landed proprietor with the owner of serfs, Nekhlyudov considered the transfer of the land to the peasants as against the working of it by means of liired labour as being a parallel case to the action of the serf-owners, when they allowed the peasants to substitute a yearly tax for the manorial labour. It was not a solution of the question, but a step iu that direction : it was a transition from a coarser to a less coarse form of violence. It was this that he intended to do. Nekhlyudov arrived at Kuzminskoe about midnight. Simplifying his life as much as possible, he had not tele- RESURRECTION 293 graphed about his arrival, but took at the station a two- horse tarautas. The driver was a young fellow in a nankeen sleeveless coat, which was girded along the folds beneath the long waist ; he sat in driver's fashion, sidewise, on the box, and was only too glad to talk to the gentleman, since, while they were talking, it gave the foundered, limping, white shaft-horse and the lame, weak- kneed off horse a chance to go at a pace which pleased them very much. "A superb German," said the driver, who had lived in the city and read novels. He was sitting half-turned toward the passenger, and was playing with the whip- handle, which he caught now from above, and now from below ; he was evidently making a display of his culture. " He has provided himself with a cream-coloured three- span, and when he drives out with his lady, it makes you feel small," he continued. " In winter, at Christmas, there was a Christmas tree in the large house, — I then took some guests there; it was lighted with an electric spark. You could not find the like of it in the whole Government ! He has stolen a lot of money ! And why not ? Everything is in his power. They say he has bought himself a fine estate." Nekhlyiidov had thought that he was quite indifferent to the way the German was managing and using his estate. But the story of the driver with the long waist was disagreeable to him. He enjoyed the beautiful day, the dense, darkling clouds, which now and then shrouded the sun ; and the field of spring grain, over which the peasants were walking behind their ploughs, in order to plough down the oats ; and the thickly sprouting verdure, over which the skylarks hovered ; and the forests, which now, with the exception of the late oaks, were cov- ered with fresh foliage ; and the meadows, on which the various-coloured herds of cattle and horses could be seen ; and the fields, upon which he saw the ploughmen, — but 294 RESURRECTIOK no, no, he thought of something unpleasant, and when he asked himself what it was, he recalled the story of the driver about how the German had been managing his Kuzminskoe estate. Upon arriving at Kuzminskoe and beginning to work, Nekhlyudov forgot that feeliug. The examination of the office books and the conversa- tion of the clerk, who naively pointed out the advantages of the small peasant plots, surrounded by the manorial lands, only confirmed Nekhlyudov in his desire to give up the estate, and transfer all the land to the peasants. From these office books and from his talk with the clerk he discovered that, as before, two-thirds of the best cul- tivable land were worked by hired labour and improved machinery, while the remaining third was cultivated by the peasants at the rate of five roubles the desyatina ; that is, for five roubles a peasant was obliged three times to plough up, three times to harrow, and to sow in the desyatina, that is, to perform labour which at the cheapest hired rate would cost ten roubles. Similarly the peas- ants paid for everything they needed out of the office at the highest rate in labour. They worked for the mead- ows, for the timber, for the potato greens, and nearly all of them were in debt to the office. Thus they paid for the outlying fields, which were let to the peasants, four times as much a desyatina as it possibly could bring by figuring at five per cent, interest. Nekhlyudov had known all that before ; but he now learned it as something new, and he only marvelled how it was that he and all other people in similar conditions could have helped seeing the abnormality of such rela- tions. The proofs which the superintendent adduced that, if he let the peasants have the land, the whole inventory would be ruined, that it would not be possible to sell it at one-fourth its value, after the peasants had exhausted the land, that, in general, Nekhlyudov would lose a great deal RESURRECTION 295 through this transfer, — only confirmed him in his behef that he was doing a good act by giving the peasants the land and depriving himself of a great part of his income. He decided to settle the matter at once, during his present stay. The superintendent was to harvest and sell the growing grain, and to sell all the chattels and unneces- sary buildings. For the present, he asked the superin- tendent to call together for the next day the peasants of the three villages, which were surrounded by the estate of Kuzminskoe, in order to announce to them his inten- tion and to come to an agreement in regard to the land which he was to give them. With a pleasant consciousness of his firmness in the face of the superintendent's proofs and of his readiness to sacrifice in favour of the peasants, Nekhlyvidov left the office. Eeflecting on the business which was before him, he walked around the house, along the flower-beds which now were neglected (there was a well-kept flower- bed opposite the superintendent's house), over the lawn- tennis ground, now overgi-own with chicory, and over the avenue of lindens, where he used to go out to smoke his cigar, and where three years before pretty Miss Kirimov, who had been visiting them, had coquetted with him. Having thought out the points of the speech which he intended to make to the peasants on the following day, Nekhlyiidov went over to the superintendent's, and, having considered with him at tea how to liquidate the whole estate, quite calm and satisfied with the good deed which he was about to do to the peasants, he entered the room of the large house, which was always used for the reception of guests, and which now w^as prepared for him. In tills small apartment, with its pictures representing various views of Venice, and a mirror between two win- dows, was placed a clean spring bed and a table with a decanter of water, with matches, and a light-extinguisher. On a large table near the mirror lay his open portmanteau, 296 RESUKRECTION in which could be seen his toilet-case and a few books which he had taken along : one of these, in Eussian, was an essay on the investigation of the laws of criminality ; there were also one German and one English book on the same subject. He wanted to read them during his free moments, while travelling from village to village ; but it was too late now, and he was getting ready to go to sleep, in order to prepare himself early in the morning for the explanation with the peasants. In the room there stood in the corner an antique chair of red wood, with incrustations, and the sight of this chair, which he remembered having seen in his mother's sleeping-room, suddenly evoked an unexpected feeling in Nekhlyiidov. He suddenly grew sorry for the house, which would now go to ruin, and for the garden, which would become a waste, and for the forests, which would be cut down, and for all those stables, barns, implement sheds, machines, horses, cows ; though they had not been got by him, he knew with what labour they had been got together and maintained. Before, it had appeared to him easy to renounce it all, but now he was sorry not only for all this, but also to lose the land and half the income, which might be so useful to him. And at once he was assailed by the reflections that it was not wise or proper to give the land to the peasants, and to destroy his estate. " I must not own land. But if I do not own land, I cannot maintain all this estate. Besides, I am now bound for Siberia, and therefore neither the house nor the estate would be of any use to me," said one voice. " That is so," said another voice, "but in the first place, you are not going to pass all your life in Siberia ; and if you marry, there may be children. And you have received the estate in good order, and ought to transmit it in the same condi- tion. There are certain duties to the land. It is very easy to give it up and ruin it, but very difficult to start it anew. But, above everything else, you must well RESURRECTION 297 consider what it is you intend to do with your life, and you must take your measures in regard to your property in accordance with this decision. And is your determina- tion firm ? Then again, are you acting sincerely in con- formity with your conscience, or do you do so for the sake of people, in order to boast before them ? " Nekhlyiidov asked himself, and could not help confessing that the opinions of people had an influence upon his decision. The longer he thought, the more did questions arise before him, and the more insolvable they became. In order to free himself from these thoughts, he lay down on his fresh bed and wanted to fall asleep, in order to solve on the morrow, when his head would be clear, all those questions in which he had become entangled now. But he could not sleep for a long time. Through the open windows poured in, together with the fresh air and moonlight, the croaking of frogs, which was inter- rupted by the singing and whistling of the nightmgales far away in the park, and of one near by, under the win- dow, in a spreading lilac bush. Listening to the sounds of the frogs and nightingales, Nekhlyudov thought of the music of the superintendent's daughter ; he also recalled the superintendent of the prison, and Maslova, whose lips had quivered like the croaking of the frogs, when she said, " Leave me altogether." Then the German superintendent of the estate was going down to the frogs. It was necessary to hold him back, but he not only slipped down, but even became Maslova herself, and began to reproach, " I am a convict, and you are a prince." " No, I will not sulimit," thought Nekhlyudov, awakening, and he asked himself : " Well, am I doing right or wrong ? I do not know, and it does not make any difference to me. It makes no difference. But I must sleep." And he himself began to slip down where the superintendent and Maslova had gone, and there everything was ended. IL On the following day Nekhlyitdov awoke at nine o'clock. The young office clerk, who was attending him, upon hearing him stir, brought him his shoes which shone as never before, and clear, cold spring water, and an- nounced to him that the peasants had assembled. Nekh- lyildov jumped up from bed and shook off his sleep. There was not even a trace left of his last day's feeling of regret at giving up his land and estate. He now thought of it with surprise. He now was rejoicing in his act, and involuntarily proud of it. Through the window of his room he could see the lawn-tennis ground, overgrown with chicory, where the peasants, at the superintendent's request, had gathered. The frogs had not been croaking in vain. The weather was gloomy ; a still, windless, warm rain had been driz- zling since morning, and it hung in drops on the leaves, branches, and grass. Through the window burst not only the odour of the verdure, but also the odour of the earth crying for moisture. While dressing, Nekhlyudov several times looked out of the window and watched the peasants coming together in the open space. They walked up one after another, took off their caps, and stood in a circle, leaning over their sticks. The superintendent, a plump, muscular, strong young man, in a short frock coat, with a green standing collar and immense buttons, came to tell Nekhlyitdov that all had come, but that they would wait, while Nekhlyudov had better drink some tea or coffee, for both were ready. " No, I prefer to go down to them at once," said Nekh- 298 KESURRECTION 290 lyiidov, experiencing, quite unexpectedly to himself, a feeling of timidity and shame at the thought of the conversation which he was to have now with the peasants. He was about to fulfil that wish of the peasants, of which they did not even . dare to dream, — to give them land at a low price, — that is, he was going to do them a kindness, and yet he felt ashamed of something. When Nekhlyudov approached the peasants gathered there, and the blond, curly, bald, and gray heads were bared, he became so embarrassed that he chd not know what to say. The rain continued to drizzle and to settle on the hair, the beards, and the nap of the peasant caftans. The peasants looked at the master and waited for him to say something, while he was so embarrassed that he could not utter a word. This embarrassing silence was broken by the calm, self-confident German superintendent, who regarded himself as a connoisseur of the Eussian peasant, and who spoke Eussian beautifully and correctly. This strong, overfed man, just like Nekhlyudov, presented a striking contrast to the lean, wrinkled faces and the thin shoulder-blades of the peasants, which protruded under- neath their caftans. " The prince wants to do you a favour, and to give you land, — only you do not deserve it," said the superin- tendent. " Why do we not deserve it, Vasili Karlych ? Have we not worked for you ? We are much satisfied with the defunct lady, — the kingdom of heaven be hers, — and the young prince is not going to abandon us," began a red-haired orator. " I have called you together in order to give you land, if you so wish it," said Nekhlyudov. The peasants were silent, as though not comprehend- ing, or not believing. " In what sense do you mean to give the land ? " said a middle-aged peasant in a sleeveless coat. 300 KESURRECTION " To let it to you at a low rental, for your own use." " That is very fine," said an old man, " If only the price will be within our reach," said an- other. " Why should we not take the land ? " " This is our business, — to make a living off the land." " It will be easier for you. All you will have to do is to receive the money, and no trouble ! " were heard some voices. " It is you who are causing the trouble," said the Ger- man. " If you only worked and kept order." " It is impossible for us, Vasili Karlych," interposed a sharp-nosed, lean old man. " You say, ' Why did you let your horse into the grain,' but who has let him ? I work day in, day out, with the scythe, and maybe fall asleep at night, and he is in your oats, and then you flay me alive." " If you only kept things in order." " It is easy for you to talk al)out order, but that is above our strength," retorted a tall, black-haired, bearded, not very old man. " I have told you to put up fences." " Well, give us the timber for it," protested an insignif- icant, small peasant at the rear. " I wanted to fence in last summer, when you stuck me into jail for three months to feed the lice. That's the way I have fenced in." " What is he talking about ? " Nekhlyiidov asked his superintendent. " Der erste Diet im Dorfe" tlie superintendent said in German. " He has been caught every year in the woods. Learn to respect other people's property," said the super- intendent. " Do we not respect you ? " said an old man. " We cannot help respecting you, because we are in your power, and you twist us into ropes." EESUKIiECTION oOl " Well, my friend, you are not the people to be worsted ; it is you who are doing the worsting." " Of course, we do the worsting ! Last year you slapped my face, and so it was left. Apparently it does no good to try to get justice out of a rich man." " Do as the law tells you to." Manifestly this was an oratorical bout, in which the participants did not exactly see what they were talking about and to what purpose. On the one side, one could perceive anger restrained by fear, and on the other, the consciousness of superiority and power. Nekhlyiidov was pained by what he heard, and tried to return to the mat- ter in hand, — to establish prices and determine the periods of payments. " How is it then about the land ? Do you want it ? And what price will you set upon it, if it is all given to you?" " It is your article, so you set a price." Nekhlyudov mentioned a price. Although it was much lower than what was paid in the neighbourhood, the peas- ants, as is always the case, began to haggle and to find the price too high. Nekhlyudov had expected that his proposition would be accepted with joy, but there was no apparent expression of pleasure. Nekhlyiidov could see that this proposition was advantageous to them, because when the question arose who was going to take the land, wliether the whole Commune, or by partnership, there be- gan bitter contentions between those peasants who wanted to exclude the feeble and the poor payers from participa- tion in the land, and those who were to be excluded. Finally, thanks to the superintendent, a price and periods of payment were agreed upon, and the peasants, convers- ing loudly, went down-hill, toward the village, while Nekhlyudov went to the office to sketch the conditions with the superintendent. Everything was arranged as Nekhlyudov had wished 302 RESURRECTION and expected : the peasants received their land at thirty per cent, less than was asked in the neighbourhood ; his income from the land was cut almost into two, but that was more than enough for Nekhlyiidov, especially in con- junction with the sum which he received for the timber which he had sold, and which he was to net from the sale of the chattels. Everything seemed to go well, and yet Nekhlyudov felt all the time ashamed of something. He saw that the peasants, notwithstanding the thanks which some had expressed to him, were dissatisfied and had expected something more. It turned out that he had lost a great deal, and the peasants did not receive what they had expected. On the following day the contract was signed, and, accompanied by the select old men, who had come to see him, Nekhlyudov, with the unpleasant feeling of something unfinished, seated himself in the superintend- ent's superb " three-span carriage," as the driver from the station had called it. Bidding the peasants good-bye, who shook their heads in surprise and dissatisfaction, he left for the station. The peasants were dissatisfied. Nekhlyudov was dissatisfied with himself. What it was he was dissatisfied with he did not know, but he for some reason felt all the time sad and ashamed. III. From Kuzmmskoe Nekhlyudov went to the estate which he had inherited from his aunts, the one where he had become acquainted with Katyusha. He intended to arrange matters with the land there just as at Kuzminskoe, and besides, to find out whatever he could about Katyusha and her child and his, whether it was true that it died, and how it died. He arrived at Panovo early in the morning. The first thing he was struck by, as he drove into the courtyard, was the sight of abandonment and decay that was on all the buildings, but especially on the house. The sheet-iron roof, which at one time had been green, not having been painted for a long time, was now red with rust, and several sheets were curled up, apparently by the wind ; the boards with which the house was lined had in spots been pulled off by people, wherever the boards came off easily by turning away the rusty nails. Both the front and back porches, especially the memorable one from the back, had rotted and were broken, and nothing but the cross-beams were left. Some windows were nailed up with boards, and the wing, in which the clerk lived, and the kitchen, and stable, — everything was gray and dilapidated. Only the garden did not look forlorn ; on the contrary, it had spread out and grown up and was now in full bloom ; beyond the fence could be seen, like white clouds, blooming cherry, apple, and plum trees. The clump of lilac bushes was flowering just as it had flowered twelve years before, when Nekhlyudov had played the " burning " catching game with sixteen-year-old Katyusha, and had 303 304 RESURRECTION fallen and stung himself in the nettles. The larch which had been planted by Sofya Ivauovna near the house, and which then had been not higher than a post, was now a large tree, of the size of building timber, and all clad in yellowish-green, fluffy needles. The river was within its banks and dinned at the mill in the sluices. In the meadow, beyond the river, was pasturing a mixed many- coloured herd of peasant cattle. The clerk, a seminarist who had not finished his course, met Nekhlyudov in the yard, continually smiling; he invited him to the office, and, again smiling, as though promising something special by that smile, went behind the partitiou. Here there was some whispering, and then all grew silent. The driver having received a gratuity drove out of the yard, with tinkhng bells, and then every- thing became completely still. Then a barefoot girl in an embroidered shirt, with fluff-riugs in her ears, ran past the window ; after the girl ran a peasant, clattering with the hobnails of his heavy boots over the hard path. Nekhlyudov sat down near the window, looking at the garden and listening. A fresh spring breeze, bearing the odour of the ploughed-up earth, came in through the small double-winged window, softly agitating the hair on his perspiring brow, and some notes lying on the window- sill, which was all cut up with a knife. On the river, " tra-pa-tap, tra-pa-tap," plashed, mterrupting each other, the washing-beetles of the women, and these sounds ran down the dam of the river, that shone in the sun ; and one could hear the even fall of the water at the mill; and past the ear flew a fly, buzzing in a frightened and melodious manner. And suddenly Nekhlyudov recalled that just in the same manner long ago, when he was young and innocent, he had heard here on the river these sounds of the wash- ing-beetles over the wet clothes, through the even din of the mill ; and just in the same manner the spring breeze KESURRECTION 305 had agitated the hair on his damp brow and the notes on the cut-up window-sill ; and just as frightened a fly had flown past his ear, — and he felt himself, not the eighteen- year-old youth, which he had been then, but possessed of the same freshness, purity, and a future full of great possibilities, and at the same time, as happens in dreams, he knew that that was no more, and he felt terribly sad. " When do you wish to eat ? " the clerk asked him, smiling. " Whenever you wish, — I am not hungry. I .shall walk down to the village." " Would you not hke to go into the house ? Every- thing is in good order inside. You will see that if on the outside — " " No, later. But tell me, if you please, is there here a woman by the name of Matrt^ua Kharina ? " (That was Katyusha's aunt.) " Certainly. She is in the village. I can't manage her. She keeps a dram-shop. I have upbraided and scolded her for it, but when it comes to writing an accu- sation, I am sorry for her : she is old, and has grand- children," said the clerk, with the same smile, which expressed both a desire to be pleasant to the master, and also a conviction that Nekhlyudov understood matters as well as he. " Where does she live ? I should like to go down to see her." " At the edge of the village, — the third hut from the other end. On the left hand there is a brick cabin, and next to the brick cabin is her hut. I had better take you down," said the clerk, with a smile of joy. " No, thank you. I shall find her. In the meantime, please, send word to the peasants to come together : I want to speak to them about the land," said Nekhlyildov, intending to arrange everything here as at Kuzminskoe, and, if possible, on that very day. IV. Upon emerging from the gate, Nekhlyiidov met on the hard-trodden path across the pasture, which was over- grown with plantain and wild rosemary, the peasant girl, with rapidly moving, stout, bare feet, in a motley apron, with fluff-rings in her ears. She was now returning. She swayed her left hand across her path, while with her right she clutched a red cock to her body. The cock, with his wavy red crest, seemed to be quiet, and only rolled his eyes, and now stretched and now drew in one of his black legs, catching with his claws in the girl's apron. As she was coming nearer to the master, she slowed down and changed her run to a walk ; when she came abreast of him, she stopped and, swaying her head back, bowed to him ; she moved on with the cock, when he had passed her. Coming down to a well, Nekh- lyudov met an old woman, who on her stooping shoulders, covered with her dirty, rough shirt, was carrying full, heavy buckets. The old woman carefully let them down and bowed to him with the same back swing of her head. Beyond the well began the village. It was a clear, warm day, and at ten o'clock it was already hot, while the gathering clouds now and then veiled the sun. Through the whole street was borne a sharp, pungent, and not disagreeable odour of dung, which was proceeding from the carts that were climbing up-hill along a shining, smooth road, but more especially from the dug-up manure piles of the yards, past the open gates of which Nekhlyii- dov was going. The peasants, who were walking up the hill 30G liESUKKECTlON 307 back of the wagons, were barefooted, and their trousers and shirts were daubed with the manure liquid ; they were looking back at the tall, stout gentleman, in a gray hat, which ghstened in the sun with its silk baud, as he was walking up the village, at every second step touching the ground with his shining knotty cane, with a sparkhng knob. The peasants, who were returning from the field, shaking on the seats of their empty carts, which came down at a gallop, took off their caps and with surprise watched the unusual man who was walking up their street, while the women walked out of the gates or upon the porches and pointed him out to each other, and followed him with their eyes. At the fourth gate, past which Nekhlyiidov happened to pass, he was stopped by a cart that was just coming out with a squeak from the gate ; it was packed high with manure, and had a mat on top to sit on, A six- year-old boy, excited at the ride which he was going to have, was following the wagon. A young peasant, in bast shoes, making long strides, was driving the horses out of the gate. A long-legged, bluish-gray colt leaped out of the gate, but, becoming frightened at Nekhlyiidov, pressed close to the cart and, hurting its legs against the wheels, jumped ahead of its distressed and slightly neighing mother, that was pulling the heavy wagon. The other horse was being led out by a lean, lively old man, who was also barefoot, in striped trousers and a long, dirty shirt, with protruding shoulder-blades. When the horses got out on the hard road, which was bestrewn with tufts of manure, gray, as though burnt, the old man turned back to the gate and bowed to Nekhlyudov. " Are you the nephew of our ladies ? " " Yes, yes." " I welcome you upon your arrival. Have you come to see us ? " said the talkative old man. 308 EESUREECTION " Yes, yes — Well, how are you getting along ? " said Nekblyiidov, not knowing what to say. " What kind of a life is it that we lead ? The very worst kind," the talkative old man said, in a singsong, drawling way, as though it gave him pleasure to tell it. " Why is it bad ? " said Nekhlyudov, walking into the gate. " What kind of a life is it ? The very worst kind," said the old man, going with Nekhlyudov to the penthouse, which was cleaned out to the ground. Nekhlyudov went after him under the penthouse. " There they are, twelve souls," continued the old man, pointing to two wemen, who, with receding kerchiefs, perspiring, their skirts tucked up, with bare calves soiled half-way up with the manure, were standing with pitch- forks on the platform which was not yet cleaned out from the dung. " I have to buy six puds every month, and where am I to get it ? " " Haven't you enough of your own ? " " Of my own ? " said the old man, with a contemptuous smile. " I have enough land for three souls, and this year I have only harvested eight ricks, so that there was not enough to last until Christmas." " What do you do, then ? " " We do hke this : I have hired out one as a labourer, and have borrowed money from you, gracious sir. I bor- rowed it before Shrovetide, and the taxes are not yet paid." " What are your taxes ? " "From my farm they are seventeen roubles for four months. God preserve us from such a life ! I do not know how to turn about." " May I go into your house ? " said Nekhlyudov, moving through the small yard, and passing from the cleaned-up place to the untouched, but forked-over, saffron-yellow, strong-smelling layers of manure. " Why not ? Step in," said the old man, and, with RESURRECTION 309 rapid strides of his bare feet, that pressed the liquid manure between their toes, running ahead of Nekhlyudov, he opened the door for him. The women adjusted the kerchiefs on their heads, let down their skirts, and with terrified curiosity looked at the clean master, with the gold cuff-buttons, who was walking into their house. From the hut rushed out two little girls in shirts. Bending and taking off his hat, Nekhlyudov entered the vestibule and the dirty and narrow room, which smelled of some sour food, and which was occupied by two looms. Near the oven stood an old woman with the sleeves of her lean, venous, sunburnt arms rolled up. " Here is our master, and he is visiting us," said the old man. " You are welcome," kindly said the old woman, rolling down her sleeves. " I wanted to see how you are getting along," said Nekhlyildov. " We live just as you see. The hut is ready to tumble down any time, and it will kill somebody yet. But the old man says that it is good. So we live, and rule over things," said the vivacious old woman, nervously jerking her head. " I am getting ready to dine. I have to feed the working people." " What are you going to have for dinner ? " " For dinner ? We have good food. First course — bread with kvas ; the second — kvas with bread," said the old woman, grinning with her half-worn-off teeth. " No, without jokes, show me what it is you are going to have for dinner to-day." " What we shall eat ? " said the old man, laughing. " Our food is not complicated. Show it to him, old woman." The old woman shook her head. " So you want to see our peasant food. You are a 310 EESUKRECTION curious gentleman, as I look at you. He wants to know everything. I told you, bread and kvas, and soup made of goutwort, which the women brought yesterday, — that's the soup, and then, potatoes." " And that is all ? " " What else is there to be ? We wash it down with milk," said the old woman, laughing, and looking at the door. The door was open, and the vestibule was full of people, boys, girls, women with their babes, watching the strange master who was examining the peasant food. The old woman was evidently proud of her ability to converse with the master. " Yes, sir, it is a bad, bad life we lead," said the old man. " Whither are you going ? " he shouted at those who were standing in the door. " Good-bye," said Nekhlyildov, experiencing uneasiness and shame, as to the cause of which he did not give him- self any account. " We thank you most humbly for having visited us," said the old man. In the vestibule, the people, pressing against each other, made way for him, and he went into the street and walked up the hill. He was followed by two barefoot boys from the vestibule : one of these, the elder, was in a dirty, once white shirt, and the other, in a worthless, faded, rose- coloured shirt. Nekhlyudov looked back at them. " Whither are you going now ? " asked the boy in the white shirt. "To Matr^na Kharina," he said. "Do you know her ? " The little fellow in the rose-coloured shirt laughed out for some reason, while the elder seriously asked : " What Matrena ? An old woman ? " " Yes, an old woman." " 0-oh," he drawled out. " That is Semen's wife, at the KESUREECTION 311 edge of the village. We shall take you there. Come, F^dya, let us take him there ! " " And the horses ? " " Maybe it won't hurt." F^dya agreed with him, and they went all three up the street. V. Nekhlyudov was more at ease with the boys than with the grown people, and he talked to them on the way up. The little boy in the rose-coloured shirt stopped laughing, and spoke as cleverly and clearly as the elder child. " Who is poorest of all here ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " Wlio is poor ? Mikhayla is poor, Sem^n Makarov, and then Marfa is mighty poor." " And Anisya, — she is poorer still. Anisya has not even a cow, and she has to go a-begging," said little F^dya. " She has no cow, but there are only three of them, while there are five of them at Marfa's house," insisted the elder boy. " But she is a widow," the rose-coloured boy defended Anisya. " You say Anisya is a widow, but Marfa is as good as a widow," continued the elder boy. " It is all the same as though she did not have a husband." " Where is her husband ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " In jail, feeding Uce," said the elder boy, using the customary expression. " Last summer he cut down two little birches in the manorial forest, so he was locked up," hastened to say the little rose-coloured boy. " He has been there these six months, and the woman has to beg, for herself, three children, and a poor old woman," he explained at great length. " Where does she live ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " In this very house," said the boy, pointing at the hut, 312 RESURRECTION 313 in front of which a white-haired little child, who was barely holding himself on his crooked legs with its turned-out knees, was standing, with a swinging motion, on the path over which Nekhlyiidov was walking. " Vaska, where are you running, you Httle urchin ? " cried a woman in a dirty gray shirt, which looked as though it were covered with ashes, as she came running out of the hut. She rushed with a frightened face in front of Nekhlyudov, picked up the child, and carried him into the house. It looked as though she were afraid lest Nekhlyudov should do him some harm. That was the woman whose husband was locked up in jail for having taken the birches out of Nekhlyiidov's forest. " Well, and Matrena, is she poor ? " asked Nekhlyudov, as they were coming close to Matr^na's hut. " Not at all poor : she traffics in liquor," the slim rose- coloured boy answered resolutely. Upon reaching Matr^na's hut, Nekhlyudov dismissed the boys, and entered the vestibule, and then the house. Old Matr^na's cabin was about fifteen feet square, so that on the bed, which was back of the oven, it was not pos- sible for a tall man to stretch himself. " On this very bed," he thought, " Katyusha bore the child and then lay ill." Nearly the whole room was occupied by a loom, which the old woman was putting away with her elder granddaughter's assistance, just as Nekhlyudov, having struck his head against the low door, entered. Two other grandchildren rushed headlong after the master, and stopped in the door, taking hold of the crosspiece with their hands. , " Whom do you want ? " angrily asked the old woman, who was in bad humour on account of the loom that was giving her trouble. Besides, as she secretly sold liquor, she was afraid of all strangers. 314 RESURRECTION " I am the proprietor. I should Hke to talk with you." The old woman was silent and looked fixedly at him ; then she suddenly became transformed. " Ah, you, dear sir, and I, foolish woman, did not rec- ognize you. I thought it was some transient," she said, in a feignedly kind voice. "Ah, you, my clear-eyed falcon." " I should like to talk to you without witnesses," said Nekhlyildov, looking at the open door, where the children stood, and beyond which was a haggard woman, with a lean, sickly, pale, continually smiling baby, in a skull-cap made of rags. " What is it you have not seen ? I will show you ! Just let me have my crutch," cried the old woman at those who were standing in the door. " Please close the door ! " The children went away, and the woman with the babe closed the door. " I was wondering who it is has come. And behold, it is the master. My golden one, my precious beauty," said the old woman. " And so you have deigned to come to see me. you precious one ! Sit down here, your Serenity, right here on the bench," she said, wiping off the bench with her apron. " I was wondering what devil it was that was coming here, and behold, it was your Serenity, the good master, the benefactor, our protector." Nekhlyildov sat down ; the old woman stood in front of him, supported her cheek with her right hand, with her left hand caught hold of the elbow of her right arm, and began to speak in a singsong voice : " You have grown old, your Serenity ; you used to be like a pretty^ flower, and now ? Evidently you, too, have known. sorrow !" " I came to ask you whether you remember Katyusha Maslova ? " " Katerina ! How could I forget her — she is my RESURRECTIOK 3l5 niece. Of course I remember her ; I have wept so many tears for her. I know all. Who, my dear, is not sinful before God, and not guilty toward the Tsar ? A young thing, — she drank tea and coffee, — well, the unclean one tempted her, for he is strong, and the sin was com- mitted. What is to be done ? If you had abandoned her, but no, you gave her a good reward, a whole hun- dred roubles. And what did she do ? She could not comprehend it. If she had listened to me, she might have lived well. Though she is my niece, I must say, she is not a sensible girl. I had found such a fine place for her, but she would not submit, and cursed the master. It is not right for us to curse masters. Well, she was dismissed. Then, she might have lived at the house of the forester, but she did not want to." " I wanted to ask about the child. She bore him in your house, I think. Where is the child ? " " I had, dear sir, well provided for the child. She was very ill, and thought she would not get up. I had the child baptized, as is proper, and sent him to a foundling house. KeaUy, what was the use of tormenting an angelic little soul, when the mother was dying. Others leave the child without feeding, and it dies ; but I thought that it was not right, and so I took the trouble, and sent him to the foundling house. There was some money, and so he was taken there." " Did he have a number ? " "He did, only he died. She said that he died the moment she came there." " Who is she ? " " That woman who used to live at Skorodnoe. That was her business. Malanya was her name, — she is dead now. She was a clever woman — and that's the way she did it. If a child was brought to her, she kept it in her house, and fed it. And she fed it until the time for taking it away. When there were three or four, she took 316 RESUKRECTION them away. She did it very cleverly : she had a large cradle, in the shape of a double bed, so that the children could be placed either way. And there was a handle attached to it. So she would place four of them with their heads apart, so that they should not hurt each other, and with their feet together, and thus she took the four away. She stuck sucking rags into their mouths, so the dear little things were content." « Well, and then ? " " Well, so she took Katerina's child and kept him for about two weeks. He began to ail in her house." " Was he a nice child ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " So nice that he ought to have had better care, but that was not possible. He was just like you," added the old woman, blinking with her old eye. " What weakened him so ? I suppose he did not get the right food." " What feeding could it be ? Consider that it was not her child. All she cared for was to get him there alive. She said that he died the moment she reached Moscow with him. She brought a certificate about it, all in proper shape. She was a clever woman." That was all Nekhlyudov was able to find out about his child. VI. Having again struck his head against the doors of the house and of the vestibule, Nekhlyudov emerged in the street. The dirty white and the rose-coloured boy were waiting for him. A few more had joined them. There were also waiting a few women with their suckling babes, and among them was the woman who lightly held in her arms the anaemic child with the skull-cap made of rags. This child did not cease smiling strangely with its whole old-looking face and twirling strainedly its large fiugers. Nekhlyiidov knew that this was a smile of suffering. He asked who this woman was. " This is that very Anisya of whom I have told you," said the elder bo v. Nekhlyiidov turned to Anisya. " How are you getting along ? " he asked. " What do you live on ? " " How do I live ? I beg," said Anisya, and burst out weeping. The old-looking child melted into a smile, twisting its worm-like httle feet. Nekhlyiidov drew out his pocketbook, and gave the woman ten roubles. He had not made two steps when he was overtaken by another woman with a child, then by an old woman, and again by another. They all spoke of their poverty, and asked to be helped. Nekhlyii- dov distributed the sixty roubles in small bills which he had in his pocketbook, and, with "a terrible gnawing in his heart, returned home, that is, to the wing of the clerk. 317 318 RESURRECTION The clerk, smiling, met Nekhlyiidov with the informa- tion that the peasants would gather in the evening. Nekhlyiidov thanked him, and, without entering the rooms, went to stroll through the garden over the over- grown paths, which were strewn with the white petals of the apple-blossoms, thinking over everything he had seen. At first everything near the wing was quiet, but later Nekhlyiidov heard two angry contending voices of women, through which now and then sounded the calm voice of the smiling clerk. Nekhlyiidov listened. "I can't make out why you are pulling the cross off my neck," said one furious feminine voice. " She just ran in," said another voice. " Give her back to me, I say. Don't torment the cow, and keep the milk away from the children." " Pay, or work it off," said the calm voice of the clerk. Nekhlyudov came out of the garden and went up to the porch, where two dishevelled women were standing, one of them apparently in the last stages of pregnancy. On the steps of the porch stood the clerk, with his hands in the pockets of his hnen ulster. Upon noticing the master, the women grew silent and began to fix the ker- chiefs which had slipped off their heads, and the clerk took his hands out of his pockets and smiled. The trouble was, as the clerk explained it, that the peasants purposely let the calves, and even the cows, out on the manorial meadows. Thus two cows belonging to these women had been caught in the meadow and had been driven in. Now the clerk demanded thirty kopeks a cow, or two days work from each of the women. But the women declared that, in the first place, the cows had just entered there ; that, in the second, they had no money ; and that, in. the third, for the promise to work off the fine, they demanded the immediate return of the cows that had been standing since morning in the hot sun without food, and lowing pitifully. KESUKRECTION 319 " How often I have asked them in all kindness," said the smiling clerk, looking at Nekhlyudov, as though appealing to him as to a witness, "to look after their cattle when they drive them out to pasture ! " " I just ran down to look at my baby, when they ran away," " Then don't go away, when you are supposed to watch the cattle ! " " And who will feed the baby ? You won't give them the breast." " If she had really cropped the meadow, her belly would not pain her now, but she had barely gone in," said the other. " They have pastured off all the meadows," the clerk addressed Nekhlyudov. " If they are not to be fined, there wiU be no hay at all." " Oh, don't sin," cried the woman with child. " Mine have never gone there before." " But they have now, aud so pay, or work it off." " I will work it off", ouly let the cows go, and don't starve them," she cried, angrily. " As it is, I have no rest, neither by day nor by night. My mother-in-law is sick. My husband is on a spree. I have to attend to every- thing, aud I have no strength. Choke yourself with your workiug off." Nekhlyiidov asked the clerk to release the cows, and himself went to the garden to finish his reflections, but there was nothing to think about. Everything was so clear to him that he could not help wondering how it was that people, and he himself in- cluded, had not seen long ago what was so manifestly clear. The people are dying by starvation, and are used to this process of starvation ; among them conditions of life, adapted to this starvation, have formed themselves : the dying off of the children, hard labour for the women which surpasses their strength, insufficiency of food for 320 KESUKKECTION all, especially for the older men. And thus the people slowly arrive at a state when they no longer see its whole terror, and do not complain of it. Therefore we regard this condition as natural, and think that it ought to be such. Now it was as clear as day to him that the chief cause of the people's suffering, as perceived and pointed out by the peasants themselves, consisted in the fact that the landed proprietors had taken away the land from which they could provide for their needs. At the same time, it was exceedingly clear that the children and old people died because they had no milk, and they had no milk because there was no land on which to pasture their cows and harvest their grain and hay ; it was exceedingly clear that all the suffering of the people, or at least the chief and nearest cause of that suffering, came from the fact that the land which fed them was not in their hands, but in the hands of men who, making use of the right to that land, hved by the labours of the people. And the land, which was so necessary to the peasants that they starved for the lack of it, was worked by these very people, who were reduced to extremity, in order that the grain might be sold abroad, and that the owners of the land might be able to buy themselves hats, canes, car- riages, bronzes, and so on. This was now as clear to him as that horses which are shut up in an enclosure where they have browsed off all the grass will be lean and starving, unless they be per- mitted to use' the land where they may find food for themselves. And that was terrible, and could not and ought not to be. And means ought to be found to do away with this, or at least he himself ought not to take part in it. " I shall certainly find a way," he thought, walking up and down, in the nearest avenue of birches. " In learned societies, governmental institutions, and newspapers we RESURRECTION 321 talk about the causes of the people's impoverishment, and about the means for their uplifting, except the one certain means, which the people will unquestionably suggest, and which is that the land which has been taken from them be returned to them." He vividly recalled the funda- mental doctrine of Henry George, and his former enthusi- asm for it, and he wondered how it was he had forgotten it all. " The land cannot be the object of private owner- ship ; it cannot be the object of purchase and sale, any more than water, air, and the sun are. Everybody has the same right to the land and to the privileges which it be- stows." And he understood nov/ why he felt so ashamed as he was arranging matters at Kuzminskoe. He had been deceiving himself. Though he knew that man had no right to the land, he assumed it in his own case, and pre- sented the peasants with a part of that which, in the depth of his soul, he knew he had no right to. He would not do that here, but would change his Kuz- minskoe procedure. He thought out a project, which was that he would give the land to the peasants at a stated rental, which rental was to be the peasants' property and to be used for the payment of taxes and for pubhc needs. This was not the Single-tax, but the nearest possible ap- proach to it under present conditions. The chief thing was that he renounced his right of private ownership of land. When he came back to the house, the clerk, smiling most joyfully, invited him to dine, at the same time ex- pressing his fear lest the food, which had been prepared by his wife with the help of the girl with the fluff-rings in her ears, should be cooked and broiled too much. The table was covered with a rough cloth ; an em-- broidered towel took the place of a napkin ; and on the table stood an old Saxon ware soup-bowl, with a broken handle, in which was potato soup with that cock which had been protruding now one black leg and now another, and which now was cut and even chopped into small 322 RESURRECTION pieces, in many places still covered with feathers. After the soup came the same cock with singed feathers, and cheese dumplings with a large quantity of butter and sugar. Although all that was not very palatable, Nekh- lyudov ate it, without knowing what he was eating, for he was so occupied with his thought, which had at once dispelled the gloom that he had brought with him from the village. The clerk's wife peeped through the door, while the frightened girl, with the fluff-rings in her ears, was carry- ing in a dish, and the clerk himself, proud of his wife's art, kept smiling ever more joyfully. After dinner, Nekhlyiidov with difficulty got the clerk to sit down, and in order to verify his plans to himself and to have somebody to whom to tell that which so in- terested him, he informed him of his project of giving the land to the peasants, and asked him for his opinion on the matter. The clerk smiled, trying to look as though he had thought so himself for a long time, and as though he were glad to hear it ; in reahty, he did not understand a word, apparently not because Nekhlyiidov did not ex- press himself clearly, but because from this project it appeared that Nekhlyiidov was renouncing his advantage for the advantage of others ; whereas the truth that every man cared only for his own advantage, to the disadvantage of other people, had taken such firm root in the con- sciousness of the clerk that he concluded that he had not understood Nekhlyiidov right when he told him that the whole income from the land was to form the common capital of the peasants. " I see. So you will get a certain per cent, from that capital," he said, beaming with intelligence. •' Not at all. Understand that I am giving all the land away." " But then you will have no income," said the clerk, no longer smiling. KESURRECTION 323 " No, I sha'n't. I renounce it." The clerk heaved a heavy sigh, and then once more began to smile. He saw that Nekhlyudov was not quite sane, and immediately set out to discover in the project of Nekhlyudov, who was giving up his land, a chance for his own personal advantage ; he tried to comprehend that project in the sense of being able himself to make use of the laud which was to be given away. But when he saw that that was not possible, he felt aggrieved, and ceased taking any interest in the plan, and continued to smile only to please his master. Seeing that tbe clerk did not understand him, Nekhlyudov dismissed him, and himself sat down at the cut-up and ink-stained table, in order to put his plan down on paper. The sun had just set behind the newly budded trees, and the gnats flew in swarms into the room and stung him. When be had ended his note and at the same time heard the bleating of the cattle in the village, the creaking of opened gates, and the conversation of the peasants col- lected for tbe meeting, Nekhlyudov told the clerk not to call the peasants to the office, but that he himself would go to the village and to the yard where the peasants might be gathered. Having swallowed a glass of tea offered him by the clerk, Nekhlyudov went to the village. VIL There was noisy talk near the yard of the elder, but the moment Nekhlyiidov approached, the conversation died down, and all the peasants, just as at Kuzminskoe, one after another took off their hats. The peasants of this locality looked more poverty-strickea than those at Kuzminskoe : just as the women and girls wore fluff-rings in their ears, so the men were nearly all of them in bast shoes and caftans. Some were barefoot, and in nothing but their shirts, just as they had come from their work. Nekhlyudov made an effort over himself and began his speech by saying that he intended to give them the land altogether. The peasants were silent and there was no change in the expression of their faces. " Because I consider," said Nekhlyildov, blushing, " that everybody has a right to make use of the land." " That is so. That is correct," were heard the voices of the peasants. Nekhlyildov continued to speak, telling them that the income from the land ought to be divided up among all, and therefore he proposed that they take the land and pay such rental as they themselves might determine on into the common capital, which was to be at their disposal. There were heard words of approval and agreement, but the serious faces of the peasants became ever more serious, and the eyes, which had been looking at the master, were cast down, as though not to shame him with the fact that his cunning had been understood by all, and that he would not deceive anyljody. 324 RESURRECTION 325 Nekhlyudov spoke quite clearly, and the peasants were sensible people, but he was not understood, nor could he ever be, for the same reason that the clerk was unable to comprehend him. They were fully convinced that it was proper for every man to look out for his advantage. But the landed proprietors, they knew by the experience of several generations, always watched their own interests to the disadvantage of the peasants. Consequently, if the proprietor called them together and offered them some- thing new, it was manifestly for the purpose of cheating them more cunningly still. " Well, what rental do you expect to put on the land ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " What is the use putting a price on it ? We cannot do that. The land is yours, and so is the power," was the answer from the crowd. " But you will be using that money for your own com- mon purposes." " We cannot do that. The common good is one thing, and this is another." " Understand," said the smiling clerk, who had come up after Nekhlyudov, wishing to explain the matter, " that the prince gives the land to you for money, and the money goes back to you as your own capital, for your common good." "We understand quite well," said an angry -looking, toothless peasant, without raising his eyes. " It is just like in a bank, only we shall have to pay at stated times. We do not wish that, because it is hard for us as it is, and that will ruin us completely." " It does us no good. Let us live as before," spoke dis- satisfied and even insulting voices. They began to refuse more resolutely when Nekhlyudov mentioned a contract which he would sign and they would have to sign, too. "What is the use of signing? As we have worked 326 RESURRECTION before, so we shall continue to work. But what good is this ? We are ignorant people." " We can't agree to it, because it is an unusual busi- ness. As it has been, so let it be. If only the seeds be changed," were heard some voices. To change the seeds meant that under present condi- tions the seeding was done from the peasant grain, whereas they wanted the master to furnish the grain to them. " So you decline it, and will not take the land ? " asked Nekhlyildov, turning to a middle-aged barefoot peasant, with a beaming countenance, in a torn caftan, who in his bent hand was holding his tattered cap just as soldiers hold theirs when they take them off by command. " Yes, sir," replied this soldier, who apparently had not yet been freed from the hypnotism of militarism. " Consequently you have enough land ? " said Nekh- lyiidov. " Not at all," said the ex-soldier, with an artificial, happy grin, carefully holding his tattered cap in front of him, as though offering it to anybody who might like to use it. " Still, you had better consider what I have told you," said Nekhlyildov, in surprise, and he repeated his propo- sition. " We have nothing to think over. As we have said, so it will be," angrily muttered the toothless old man. " I shall stay here all day to-morrow. If you have changed your minds, send word to me." The peasants made no reply. Nekhlyildov could not get anything out of them, and went back to the office. " Let me inform you, prince," said the clerk, upon re- turning home, " that you will come to no understanding with them : they are stubborn people. The moment they are at a meeting, they become stubborn, and there is no stirring them after that. They are afraid of everything. RESURRECTION 327 And yet, on other occasions these very peasants — take, for example, that gray-haired, or that swarthy man, who did not agree — are clever people. Whenever one of them comes to the office, and I ask him to sit down and drink a glass of tea," said the smiling clerk, " he talks quite freely, — and he is a minister as regards his mind, — he will judge everything correctly. But at the meet- ing he is an entirely different man, and he sticks to just one thing." " Can't you send for some of these more intelligent peasants," said ISTekhlyudov. " I should like to explain it to them in detail." " That can be done," said the smiling clerk. " Then, please, call them for to-morrow." " That can be done," said the clerk, smiling even more cheerfully. " I shall call them for to-morrow." " I declare, he is shrewd ! " said, swaying on his well- fed mare, the swarthy peasant, with his shaggy, never combed beard, to another old, lean peasant in a tattered caftan, who was riding near him and clanking with the iron hobbles. They were riding to put the horses to pas- ture for the night on the highway and secretly in the manorial forest. " The idea of his giving away the land if we put down our signatures ! They have been fooling us long enough. No, sir, you are joking ! Nowadays we understand a thing or two ourselves," he added, and began to call back the straying yearling colt. " Here, colt," he cried, stopping his horse and looking back, but the colt was not behind, but had gone into the meadow at one side. " That is where he has gone to, accursed one, into the manorial meadow," said the swarthy peasant with the shaggy beard, as he heard on the dew-covered meadow, fragrant with the swamp, the crashing of the dock, over which the straying colt was prancing and whinnying. 328 RESURRECTION " You hear, the meadows are getting full of weeds. On the holiday we shall have to send the women to weed out the meadows," said the slim peasant in the torn caf- tan. " Else we shall ruin our scythes." " Put down your signatures, he says," the shaggy peas- ant continued his judgment of the master's speech. " You sign your name, and he will swallow you alive." " That is right," answered the old man. And they did not say anything more. There was heard only the thud of the horses' feet on the rough road. VIII. Upon returning home, Nekhlyiidov found in the office, which had been prepared for him for the night, a high bed with a feather mattress, two pillows, and a crimson, silk, double, unbending coverlet, quilted with a small design, — evidently from the trousseau of the clerk's wife. The clerk offered Nekhlyiidov what was left of the dinner, but receiving a refusal, he excused himself for his slim enter- tainment and accommodation, and retired, leaving Nekh- lyiidov to himself. The peasants' refusal did not in the least embarrass Nekhlyiidov. On the contrary, he felt quite composed and happy, although there, at Kuzminskoe, his proposition had been accepted and he had received thanks, while here incredulity and even hostility were shown to him. The office was close and not clean. Nekhlyiidov went into the yard and wanted to go into the garden, but he recalled that night, the window in the maids' room, and the back porch, and it seemed unpleasant to him to stroll through places that were polluted by criminal recollections. He sat down on the porch, and, inhaling the strong odour of the young birch leaves, which was everywhere in the warm air, he for a long time looked at the darkling garden and listened to the mill, to the nightingales, and to some other kind of a bird, which was monotonously whistling in a bush near the porch. In the clerk's window the light was extinguished ; in the east, back of the barn, crimsoned the glow of the rising moon ; heat-lightnings ever more brightly illu- minated the blooming, wild-growing garden and the dilap- 329 330 RESURRECTION idated house ; a distant clap of thunder was heard, and one-third of the heaven was shrouded by a black cloud. The nightingales and the bird grew silent. Through the din of the water in the mill was heard the cackliug of geese, then the early cocks in the village and in the clerk's yard began to call to each other, as they always crow earlier on hot, stormy nights. There is a saying that cocks crow early on a cheerful night. This was more than a cheerful night for Nekhlyii- dov. It was a joyful, a happy night for him. His imagination reconstructed for him his impressions of that happy summer which he had passed here as an innocent youth, and he felt himself now to be such as he had been then and during all his better moments in life. He not only recalled, but even felt himself to be such as he had been when, being fourteen years old, he had prayed to God that He should show him the truth, when, as a child, he wept on his mother's knees, at parting, promising her always to be good and never to give her cause for grief ; he felt himself to be such as he was when he and Nikoleuka Irtenev had decided to support each other in a good life, and to try to make all people happy. He now recalled how at Kuzminskoe he was tempted to regret the house, the forest, the estate, the land, and he asked himself whether he regretted now. And it even appeared strange to him to have regretted. He recalled everything he had seen on that day : the woman with the children and without her husband, who had been locked up in jail for cutting down trees in his, Nekh- lyudov's, forest ; and terrible Matr^na, who thought, or, at least, said, that women of their condition ought to become gentlemen's paramours ; he recalled her relation to the children, the manner of their despatch to the foundhng house, and that unfortunate, smiling child in the skull-cap, that was slowly dying from lack of food ; he recalled that pregnant, feeble woman who was to KESURRECTION 331 work for him because, exhausted by work, she did not watch her cow that did uot have enough to eat ; and here, too, he recalled the prison, the shaven heads, tlie cells, the loathsome stench, the chains, and, side by side with it, the senseless luxury of his life and of that of every city gentleman. Everything was quite clear and indis- putable. The bright, almost full moon rose from behind the barn, and black shadows fell across the yard, and the sheet iron on the roof of the dilapidated house began to sparkle. And, as though not wishing to let the light come out, the silenced nightingale began to pipe and trill in the garden. Nekhlyudov recalled how he had begun at Kuzminskoe to reflect over his life, and to solve the questions as to what he should do and how he should do it ; and he recalled how he had become entangled in these questions, and could not solve them, because there were so many considerations connected with each of them. He now put these questions to himself, and was surprised to find how easy they were. They were easy now because he did not think what would become of him, nor did that interest him, but he thought what he ought to do. Strange to say, he was absolutely unable to decide what he himself needed, but knew beyond any doubt what was to be done for others. He knew unquestionably that the land must be given to the peasants, because it was wrong to retain it. He knew unquestionably that Katyu- sha must not be abandoned ; that he must aid her, and be ready for everything, in order to expiate his guilt before her. He knew unquestionably that he must study, examine, elucidate to himself, and comprehend all those cases of the courts and the punishments, in which he was conscious of seeing something which nobody else saw. He did not know what would come of it all, but he knew 332 RESURRECTION unquestionably that this and that had to be done. And this firm conviction gave him joy. The black cloud had veiled the whole heaven, and not only heat-lightning, but real lightning, which illuminated the whole yard and the dilapidated house with its torn- off porches, was seen, and thunder was heard overhead. All the birds grew silent, but the leaves began to rustle, and the wind reached the porch, on which he was sitting, and tossed his hair. One drop fell upon him, then an- other ; then the rain began to drum on the burdock and on the iron sheets of the roof, and the whole air was brilliantly lighted up : everything grew silent, and before Nekhlyiidov could count three, almost over his head there came a terrible clap of thunder, which then rolled along the sky. Nekhlyiidov went into the house. " Yes, yes," he thought, " the work done by our life, all the work, the whole meaning of that work, is incompre- hensible and must remain incomprehensible to me. Why were there aunts ? Why did Nikolenka Irtenev die ? and why am I alive ? Why was there Katyusha ? And my insanity ? Why was that war ? And all my consequent reckless hfe ? It is not in my power to understand aU that, all the work of the Master. But it is in my power to do His will as it is wTitten in my conscience, and this I know unquestionably. And when I do it, I am unquestionably calm." The rain now came down in sheets and ran off the roofs, rustling into the barrel ; the lightning less often lighted up the yard and house. Nekhlyiidov returned to the room, undressed himself, and lay down in the bed, not without some fear of bugs, the presence of which he suspected from the dirty and torn paper on the walls. " Yes, to feel yourself not as a master, but as a servant," he thought, and rejoiced at the thought. His fears came true. The moment he put out the RESURRECTION 333 light, the insects began to cling to him and to bite him. " To give up the land, to journey to Siberia, — fleas, bedbugs, dirt. What of it ? If I have to bear all that, I shall bear it." But, in spite of his determination, he could not bear it, and so he sat down near the open win- dow, watching the fleeting cloud, and the newly unveiled moon. Nekhlyudov fell asleep only toward the morning, and so he awoke late the next day. At noon seven chosen peasants, who had been invited by the clerk, came to the apple orchard, under an apple- tree, where the clerk had made a table and benches over posts driven into the ground. It took quite awhile to persuade the peasants to put on their caps and seat them- selves on the benches. The ex-soldier, now clad in clean leg-rags and bast shoes, most persistently held his torn cap in front of him, according to regulation, as at funerals. When one of them, a broad-chested old man of respect- able aspect, with ringlets of a half-gray beard, as in Michael Angelo's Moses, and with thick gray waving hair over his sunburnt and bared cinammon-coloured brow, put on his large cap, and, wrapping himself in his home-' made caftan, climbed over the bench and sat down upon it, all the others followed his example. When all had taken their seats, Nekhlyiidov sat down opposite them and, leaning with his elbows over a paper, which contained a brief of his project, began to expound it to them. Either because there was fewer peasants, or because he was occupied not with himself, but with work, Nekh- lyiidov this time felt no embarrassment. He involun- tarily turned preferably to the broad-chested old man with his beard of white ringlets, awaiting approval or retort from him. But the conception which Nekhlyudov had formed of him was wrong. Though the respectable old man kept approvingly nodding his handsome, patri- 334 RESURRECTION 335 archal head, or tossing it and frowning, whenever the others objected to something, it obviously was hard for him to understand what Nekhlyudov was saying, and that even when the other peasants had transmitted it to him in their own language. Nekhlyudov's words were understood much better by a little, almost beardless old man, who was sitting next to the patriarch ; he was blind iu one eye, and wore a patched, nankeen, sleeveless coat, and old boots, worn side wise ; he was an oven-builder, as Nekhlyudov later found out. This man kept moving his eyebrows, in his effort to hear all, and immediately retold in his own manner everything Nekhlyudov said. Of equally quick understanding was a short, stocky old man, with a white beard and gleaming, intelligent eyes, who used every opportunity to make jocular and ironical remarks on Nekhlyudov's words, and who appar- ently was proud of this ability of his. The ex-soldier, too, might have understoood, if he had not been made stupid by his military experience, and did not get entangled in the habitual, senseless talk of a soldier. Most serious of all in regard to the matter in hand was a tall man, with a long nose and a small beard, who was speaking in a bass voice ; he was clad in a clean, home-made garb and new bast shoes. This man compre- hended everything and spoke only when it was necessary. The other two old men — one of these, the toothless peasant who on the previous day had shouted a decided refusal to every proposition of Nekhlyudov at the meet- ing, and the other, a tall, white, lame old man, with a kind-hearted face, in haK-boots, and his lean legs tightly wrapped in leg-rags — were silent nearly all the time, though they listened attentively. Nekhlyudov first expounded to them his view of the ownership of the land. " The land," he said, " according to my opinion, ought not to be sold, nor bought, because if it be sold, those who 336 . RESURRECTION have money will buy it all up, and then they will take from those who have no land as much as they please; they will take money for the right to use that land." " That is correct," said the long-nosed peasant, in a heavy bass. " Yes, sir," said the ex-soldier. " The woman has picked a handful of grass for her cow, — they have caught her, — to jail with her," said the modest, kind-hearted old man. " There is some land five versts from here, but it is beyond us to rent it ; they have so raised the price that we can't make it pay," said the toothless, angry old man. "They are twisting us into ropes, according to their will ; it is worse than manorial labour," insisted the angry one. " I think so, too," said Nekhlyudov, " and I consider it a sin to own land. So I want to give it away." " That is a good thiug," said the old man with the Moses curls, apparently imagining that Nekhlyudov wanted to let the laud. " That is why I have come here. I do not want to own any land, and now we must consider how I am to get rid of it." " Give it to the peasants, that is all," said the toothless, angry old man. Nekhlyudov was for a moment embarrassed, for he under- stood these words as doubting the sincerity of his inten- tions. But he immediately regained his composure, and used this opportunity in order to express his thought. " I should gladly give it to you," he said, " but to whom shall I give it, and how ? To what peasants ? Why to you people, and not to the Deminskoe peasants ? " This was a neighbouring village with beggarly parcels of laud. All were silent. Only the ex-soldier said, " Yes, sir." RESURRECTION 337 " So, tell me," said Nekhlyudov, " what you would do, if you had to give the land to the peasants ? " " What we should do ? We should divide it all up by souls, — everybody to receive an equal part," said the oven-builder, rapidly raising and lowering liis eye- brows. " That is right. Divide it by souls," confirmed the lame peasant in the white leg-rags. They all agreed to this solution, regarding it as satis- factory. " Wliat do you mean by souls ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " Are the manorial servants to get some, too ? " " Not at all," said the ex-soldier, trying to express cheerfulness in his face. But the thoughtful tall peasant did not agree with him. " If it comes to dividing it up, all ought to get equal shares," he said, in his heavy bass, after a moment's thought. " That is impossible," said Nekhlyudov, having prepared his answer in advance. "If all are to get equal shares, those who do not themselves work, who do not plough, will take their shares and sell them to the rich people. And those who are on their parcels will have an increase in their family, and all the land will have been distributed. Again the rich men wiU get those into their hands who need the land." " Yes, sir," the soldier hastened to add. "There ought to be a prohibition against selling the land, and let those hold it who themselves wiU plough it," said the oven-builder, angrily interrupting the soldier. To this Nekhlyudov replied that it would not be possible to watch whether one was ploughing for himself or for some one else. Then the tall, thoughtful peasant proposed that they should plough it in partnership, and that it should be divided up, among those who did the ploughing. " And 338 KESUKRECTION those who did not plough should get nothing," he said, in his determined bass. Against this communistic project Nekhlyudov had ready arguments ; he retorted that for this all the ploughs and horses would have to be the same, and that none should fall behind the others, or tliat everything, the horses, the ploughs, the threshing-machines, and the whole farm, would have to be a common possession, and that such a thing should be possible, it would be necessary for all people to be of one accord. " You will never succeed in making our people agree," said the angry old man. " There will be nothing but brawls," said the old man with the white beard and smiling eyes.. " Then again, how is the land to be divided up accord- ing to its quality ? " asked Nekhlyildov. " Why should some get black loam, while others will have clay and sand?" " Divide it up by parcels, then all will get equal shares," said the oven-builder. To this Nekhlyildov replied that it was not only a question of the distribution of the land in one Commune, but in various Governments. If the land was to be given away to the peasants, some would have good lots and others bad ones. Everybody would wish to get the good land. " Yes, sir," said the soldier. The rest kept silent. " So, you see, it is not as simple as you imagine," said Nekhlyudov. " And not only we alone, but other peo- ple also are thinking about it. There is an American, George, who has reasoned it out like this, and I agree with him — " " You are the master, so you give it away if you wish. As you will it," said the angry old man. This interruption annoyed Nekhlyudov, but, to his BESTTRRECTION 339 delight, he noticed that the others were also dissatisfied with this interruption. "Wait, Uncle Semen, let him tell it," the thoughtful peasant said, in his impressive bass. This encouraged Nekhlyiidov, and he began to expound to them Henry George's theory of the Single-tax. " The land is nobody's, it is the Lord's," he began. " That is so. Yes, sir," several voices interposed. "All the land is a common possession. Everybody has an equal right to it. But there is better and worse land, and everybody wants to get the good land. What is to be done, in order to equalize tilings ? Let him who owns a good piece of land pay the price of it to those who have none," Nekhlyudov answered liis own question. " And as it is hard to determine who is to pay, and to whom he is to pay, and as money has to be collected for common purposes, it ought to be arranged in such a manner that he who owns a piece of land should pay the value of his land to the Commune for all public purposes. Then all will have equal chances. If you wish to own land, pay more for good land, and less for less good land. And if you do not wish to own any land, you pay noth- ing ; but the taxes for the common needs will be paid by those who own the land." " That is correct," said the oven-builder, moving his eye- brows. " He who has the better land ought to pay more." " George had a great head," said the representative old man with the curls. " If only the pay will be within our reach," said the tall man with the bass voice, evidently beginning to make out what it all tended to. " The pay ought to be neither too high nor too low. If it is too high, it will not pay, and there will be losses ; and if too low, all will begin to buy the land of each other and there will be speculation in land. I want to introduce these orders among you." 340 RESURRECTION " That is correct, that is right. That would be well," said the peasants. " He had a great head," repeated the broad-chested man with the curls, " that George. He has thought it out well." " How would it be if I wished to take a piece of land," the clerk said, smiling. " If there is a free lot, take it and work it," said Nekhlyildov. " You do not need it. You have enough to eat as it is," said the old man with the smiling eyes. This ended the consultation. Nekhlyiidov again repeated his proposition ; he did not ask for an immediate answer, but advised them to talk the matter over with the whole village, and then to come and give him an answer. The peasants promised they would do so, and, bidding him good-bye, went away in an agitated mood. On the road could long be heard their loud, receding conversation. Their voices dinned until late into the evening, and were borne along the river from the village. On the following day the peasants did not work, but considered the master's proposition. The village was divided into two parties : one found the master's propo- sition profitable and harmless ; the other saw in it some deception, the significance of which they could not com- prehend, and of which they consequently were especially afraid. Two days later they, however, agreed to accept the proposed conditions, and came to Nekhlyiidov to announce to him the decision of the Commune. This decision was greatly influenced by the opinion of an old woman, which the old men accepted as putting aside all fear of deception, and which consisted in explaining the master's act as arising from his meditating on his soul and desiring to save it. This explanation was also con- RESURRECTION 341 firmed by the considerable monetary alms which Nekh- lyiidov had distributed during his stay at Pauovo. His contributions of money were due to the fact that here he had for the first time found out the extreme degree of poverty and misery which the peasants had reached, and that, though he knew it to be unwise, he was so struck by that poverty that he could not help giving them money, of which he just then had a large sum, having received some for the forest at Kuzmiuskoe, sold a year ago, and also an earnest for the sale of the chattels. The moment they discovered that the master gave money to those who asked for it, crowds of people, espe- cially women, began to come to him from all the sur- rounding country, imploring aid. He was at a complete loss what to do with them, and by what to be guided in the solution of the question how much to give, and to whom. He felt that it was impossible for him not to give to those who asked him and obviously were poor, while he had a great deal of money ; at the same time there was no sense in giving at haphazard to those who begged him for it. During the last day of his stay at Panovo, Nekhlyudov went into the house, and began to examine the things that were left in there. Piummaging through them, he discovered many letters in the lower drawer of his aunts' old big-bellied red wood chifibuifere with bronze rings in lion heads, and among them was a photograph repre- senting a group, Sofya Ivanovna, Marya Ivanovna, him- self as a student, and Katyusha, clean, fresh, cheerful, and full of life. Of all things that were in the house Nekh- lyiidov took only the letters and this picture. Everything else he left for the miller, who, at the intercession of the smihng clerk, bought the house for removal and all the furniture of Panovo at one-tenth their real value. Eecalling his feeling of regret at the loss of his prop- erty, which he had experienced at Kuzminskoe, Nekhlyii- 342 RESURRECTION dov wondered how it was he could have had such a teeling ; now he experienced an unceasing joy of liberation and a sensation of novelty, such as a traveller must experience upon discovering new lands. X. The city impressed Nekhlyiidov in an extremely strange and novel way, as he now reached it. He drove in the evening, when the lamps were all lighted, from the sta- tion to his house. There was still an odour of naphthalene in all the rooms. Agraf^na Petrovua and Korn^y both felt worried and dissatisfied, and had even had a quarrel on account of thp cleaning up of things, the use of which seemed only to consist in being hung out, dried up, and put away again. Nekhlyiidov's room was not occupied, but not yet tidied ; it was hard to move about in it among the many boxes, and it was evident that Nekhlyudov's arrival interfered with their work, which was carried on in these apartments by a certain strange inertia. After the impressions of the dire want in the village, all this appeared to Nekhlyudov so disagreeable because of its apparent senselessness, of which he had once himself been guilty, that he decided the next day to move to a hotel, leaving Agraf(5na Petrovna to fix things according to her wishes until the arrival of his sister, who would make the final dispositions in regard to everything in the house. Nekhlyudov left the house early in the morning. In an establishment with modest, somewhat dirty, furnished rooms, which he found in the neighbourhood of the prison, he rented a suite of two rooms, and, having given orders about the transfer of certain things set aside in the house, he went to the lawyer. It was cold outside. After the storms and rains there was a cold spell, as generally happens in spring. It was 343 344 RESURRECTION 80 chilly and the wind was so penetrating that Nekh- lyildov froze in his light overcoat, and increased his gait, hoping to get warm. Before his imagination rose the village people, the women, children, and old men, the poverty and exhaus- tion of whom he now seemed to have noticed for the first time, especially the smiling, old-looking baby, twist- ing its calfless little legs, — and he involuntarily com- pared with them that which was in the city. Walking past butcher-shops, fish- markets, and clothing-stores, he was startled, as though he saw it for the first time, by the well-fed appearance of such an immense number of clean and fat shopkeepers. There was not such a man in the whole village. These people were evidently firmly convinced that efforts to cheat people, who knew nothing of their wares, were not only not a vain, but even a useful, occupation. Just as well-fed were the coachmen with their broad backs and buttons on their backs ; and so were the porters in their gallooned caps, and the chambermaids in their aprons and curly hair, and more especially the dashing cabmen with their shaven napes, who were sit- ting jauntily in their cabs, contemptuously, and disso- lutely watching the itinerants. In all these people he involuntarily saw the same village people who, being deprived of the laud, had been driven to the city. Some of these had managed to adapt themselves to the conditions of city life, and had become like masters, and were satisfied with their situation ; others again fell in the city into worse conditions than in the village, and were even more pitiable. Such miserable creatures seemed to Nekhlyiidov to be the shoemakers, whom Nekhlyiidov saw working in the window of a base- ment ; just as miserable were the haggard, pale, dishevelled laundresses, who, with their lean, bared arms, were ironing at open windows, from which the soap-filled steam was rising in clouds. Just as miserable were two house- EESURRECTION 346 painters whom Nekhlyudov met, in aprons, in torn shoes on bare feet, and daubed from head to foot with paint. Their sleeves were rolled up above their elbows, and in their sunburnt, venous, feeble hands they were carrying a bucket of paint, and kept cursing without interruption. Their faces were emaciated and angry. The same expres- sion was to be seen on the dusty, swarthy draymen, shaking on their wagons. The same expression was on the swollen faces of the ragged men and women standing with their children at the street corners and begging alms. The same faces were to be seen in the open windows of the inn, past which Nekhlyudov happened to go. At the dirty little tables, with bottles and tea-service upon them, between which waiters in white kept bobbing, sat per- spiring red-faced men with stupefied faces, crying and singing in loud voices. One was sitting near the window ; had raised his eyebrows, and, thrusting forward his lips, gazed in front of him, as though trying to recollect something. " Why have they all gathered there ? " thought Nekh- lyudov, involuntarily inhaling with the dust, which the chill wind wafted against him, the ubiquitous odour of rancid oil in the fresh paint. In one of the streets he came across a procession of drays hauling some iron pieces, which made such a terrible noise on the uneven pavement that his ears and head began to ache. He increased his steps, in order to get ahead of the procession, when suddenly he heard his name through the rumble of the iron. He stopped and saw a few steps ahead of him an officer with a sharp- pointed, waxed moustache, with a smooth, shining face, who, sitting in a cab, waved his hand to him in a friendly manner, displaying by his smile a row of extremely white teeth. " Nekhlyudov, is it you ? " Nekhlyudov's first sensation was that of pleasure. 346 RESUKRECTION " Ah, Sh^nbok," he said, with delight, but immediately considered that there was no reason whatsoever to be pleased. It was the same Sh^ubok who had then called for him at his aunts'. Nekhlyudov had long ago lost him out of sight, but had heard of him that he was now in the cavalry, and that, in spite of his debts, he managed in some way to hold himself in the world of rich people. His satisfied, cheerful aspect confirmed this intelligence. " I am so glad I have caught you. For there is no- body in the city. Well, friend, you have grown older," he said, stepping out of the cab, and straightening out his shoulders. " I recognized you by your gait. Well, shall we dine together ? Where can one get a good dinner here ? " " I do not know whether I shall have the time," answered Nekhlyudov, thinkiug only of how to get rid of his comrade without offending him. " What are you here for ? " he asked. " Business, my friend. A business of guardianship. I am a guardian. I manage Samanov's affairs. Do you know that rich man ? He is cracked, but he has fifty- four thousand desyatinas of land," he said, with especial pride, as though he himself h^d earned all that land. " His affairs had been dreadfully neglected. The whole land was in the hands of the peasants. They paid nothing, and there were back dues to the amount of eighty thousand roubles. I changed the whole matter in one year, and increased the trust by seventy per cent. Eh ? " he asked him proudly. Nekhlyudov recalled that he had heard that this Sh^ubok, for the very reason that he had lost all his property and had unpaid debts, had by some special influ- ence been appointed a guardian over the property of a rich old man, who was squandering his estate. It was evident that he was thriving on his trust. RESURRECTION 347 " How can I get rid of him without offending him ? " thought Nekhlyudov, looking at that sleek, plump face, with the pomaded moustache, and listening to his good- hearted friendly prattle about where one could get a good dinner, and how he had managed the affairs of his trust. " So where shall we dine ? " "I have no time," said Nekhlyudov, looking at his watch. " I say. There will be races to-night. Shall you be there ? " " No, I sha'n't." " Do come. I have no longer horses of my own, but I bet on Grishin's. Do you remember him ? He has a good stable. So come, and let us have supper together." " I can't even eat supper with you," Nekhlyudov said, smiling. " What is that ? Where are you going now ? If you want to, I shall take you there." " I am on my way to a lawyer. He lives around the corner," said Nekhlyudov. " Oh, you are doing something in the prison. Have you become a prison intercessor ? The Korchagins told me about that," Sh^nbok said, smiling. " They have left town already. What is it ? Tell me." " Yes, yes, that is all true," rephed Nekhlyudov. " But I can't tell you that in the street." " That's so, you have always been odd. So, will you come to the races ? " " No, I cannot, and I do not want to. Please, do not be angry at me." " Why should I be angry ? Where do you live ? " he asked, and suddenly his face became serious, his eyes stood still, and his brows were raised up. He was appar- ently trying to recall the address, and Nekhlyudov sud- denly observed the same dull expression in him that he had noticed in the man with the raised eyebrows and pro- 348 RESURRECTION truding lips, which had struck him in the window of the inn, " How chilly it is ! Eh ? " " Yes, yes ! " " You have the bundles ? " Sh^nbok addressed the cabman. " Well, good-bye, then. I am very, very glad to have met you," he said, and, firmly pressing Nekhlyiidov's hand, he leaped into the vehicle, waving his broad hand in a new, white, chamois-skin glove in front of his sleek face, and smiling a habitual smile with his unusually white teeth. "Is it possible I was like him?" thought Nekhlyiidov, continuing on his way to the lawyer. " Yes, if not exactly like him, I had tried to be like him, and had thought to pass all my life that way." XI. The lawyer received Nekhlyildov ahead of his turn, and at once proceeded to talk to him about the Menshov case, which he had read immediately, and which had pro- voked his indignation by its groundless accusation. " It is a shocking affair," he said. " Very hkely the fire was started by the owner himself, in order to get his insurance money, but the worst is that the guilt of the Menshdvs has not at all been proven. There is no evi- dence at all. This is due to the especial zeal of the exam- ining magistrate and to the neghgence of the prosecuting attorney. If the case came up, not in the county court, but here, I should guarantee an acquittal and ask for no remuneration. Now, the other affair, the petition of Feoddsya Biryukov to his Majesty, is ready. If you go to St. Petersburg, take it with you, and hand it in in person, and ask for its consideration. Otherwise an inquiry will be made, and that will be the end of it. You must try and reach people who have influence in the Petition Com- mission. Well, is that all for the present ? " " No, I have had a letter — " " I see you have become a funnel, a neck of a bottle, through which the complaints are poured out from prison," the lawyer said, smiling. " It is too much ; it will be above your strength." " But this is a startling case," said Nekhlyudov. He briefly told the essence of the case, which was that an intelligent peasant had been reading and expounding the Gospel to his friends in the village. The clergy regarded it as a crime. He was denounced. The magistrate ex- 349 350 hesurrectiok amiued him, the assistant prosecuting attorney wrote out an accusation — and the court confirmed the accusation. " This is something terrible," said Nekhlyudov. " Can it be true ? " " What is it that so surprises you ? " " Everything. I can see how the village officer, who is under orders, might do it ; but the assistant prosecuting attorney, who wrote out the accusation, is an educated man — " " But tliis is where the mistake is made : we are accus- tomed to think that the prosecuting attorneys, the mem- bers of the courts in general, are a kind of new, liberal men. That was once the case, but now it is quite differ- ent. They are officials, who are interested only in the twentieth of each month. They receive their salary, and they need more, and that is the limit of their principles. They will accuse, try, and sentence anybody you please." " Do there really exist laws, which permit them to deport a man for reading the Gospel in company with others ? " " Not only may he be sent to nearer districts, but even to hard labour in Siberia, if it is proved that, while reading the Gospel, he allowed himself to expound it differently from the manner he is ordered to do, and that, consequently, he has disapproved of the exposition of the Church. It is considered blasphemy of the Orthodox faith in presence of the people, and, according to Article 196, this means deportation to Siberia for settlement." " That is impossible." " I am telling you the truth. I always say to the judicial people," continued the lawyer, " that I cannot help looking gratefully at them, because it is only due to their kindness that I, and you, and all of us, are not in jail. It is the easiest thing imaginable to have us sen- tenced to the loss of special privileges, and have us de- ported to nearer regions." RESURRECTION 351 " If it is so, and everything depends on the arbitrari- ness of the prosecuting attorney and of other persons, who may or may not apply a certain law, then what is the court for ? " The lawyer burst out into a merry laugh. " You are propounding fine questions ! This, my friend, is philosophy. There is nothing to prevent discussing that. Come on Saturday. You will find at my house learned men, htterateurs, artists. Then we shall discuss these social questions," said the lawyer, pronouncing the words " social questions " with ironical pathos. " You are ac- quainted with my wife, I think. So come ! " " I shall try to," replied Nekhlyildov, being conscious cf telling a He, and that if there was anything he would try it would be not to be in the evening at the lawyer's in the company of the learned men, litterateurs, and artists, who would gath-er there. The laughter with which the lawyer had answered ISTelvhlyiidov's remark that the court had no meaning, if the members of the court may or may not apply a law as they are minded to do, and the intonation with which he pronounced the words " philosophy " and " social questions," showed Nekh- lyudov how differently he and the lawyer and, no doubt, the lawyer's friends looked at things, and how, notwith- standing the present gulf between him and his former comrades, such as Sh&bok, he felt himself even farther removed from the lawyer and the people of his circle. xn. It was far to the prison, aud late, so Nekhlyildov took a cab. In one of the streets the cabman, a man of middle age, with an intelligent and kindly face, turned to Nekhlyvidov aud pointed to an immense house which was going up. " See what an enormcus house they are building," he said, as though he had a share in this structure and were proud of it. Indeed it was a huge building, aud built in a compli- cated and unusual style. A solid scaffolding of immense pine timbers, held together by iron clamps, surrounded the structure which was going up, and it was separated from the street by a board fence. Workmen, daubed with mortar, were rushing to and fro, like ants, over the walks of the scaffolding : some were laying stones, others were cutting them into shape, while others carried full hods and barrels up and empty ones down again. A stout, well-dressed gentleman, apparently the architect, standing near the scaffolding and pointing up, was saying something to a respectfully listening Vladimir contractor. Through the gate, past the architect and contractor, empty wagons drove out into the street, and loaded ones into the yard. " How sure they all are, both those who work, and those who make them work, tliat it must all be thus, that while their pregnant women do work at home above their strength, and their children, in skull-caps, before their imminent death from starvation, smile like old people, and twist their little legs, they must build this 362 KESUKRECTION 353 stupid and useless palace for some stupid and useless man, — one of those very men who ruin and rob them," thought Nekhlyudov, looking at this house. " Yes, a fool's house," he loudly expressed his thought. " How a fool's house ? " the cabman protested, as though insulted. " It gives people work to do, and so it is not a fool's house." " But this is useless work." " It must be useful, or they would not build it," re- torted the cabman, " and the people earn a living." Nekhlyudov grew silent, especially since it was not possible to carry on a conversation through the rattle of the wheels. Not far from the prison the cabman left the pavement for a country road, so that it was easy to talk, and he again turned to Nekhlyudov. " What a lot of people nowadays rush to the city, — it is just dreadful," he said, turning on his box and point- ing to an artel of village workmen with files, axes, short fur coats, and bundles on their backs, who were coming toward them. " Are there more of them than on previous years ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " It is simply terrible the way they are crowding now in all places. The masters fling them around like chips. They are everywhere." " Why is it so ? " " They have increased so much. There is no place for them." " What of it if they have increased ? Why don't they stay in the villages ? " "What are they to do in the villages? There is no land there." Nekhlyudov experienced a sensation which one has in a bruised spot. One seems eternally to strike it, as though on purpose, whereas one merely feels the hurts in the painful places. 354 KESUKEECTION " Is it possible it is the same everywhere ? " he thought. He began to inquire of the cabman how much land there was in his village, how much he himself had, and why- he was living in the city. " There is about a desyatina to each soul, sir. There are three of us holding it," the cabman was glad to inform him. "I have a father and a brother at home; another brother is in the army. They manage the farm. But there is nothing to manage, and so my brother wanted to go to Moscow." " Is it not possible to rent land ? " " Where is one to rent it ? The masters have squan- dered theirs. The merchants have got it all into their hands. You can't buy it from them, for they are work- ing it themselves. There is a Frenchman on our estate. He has bought it from the former master, and he won't let anybody have it, and that is the end of it." " What Frenchman ? " " Dufar the Frenchman. Maybe you have heard his name. He makes wigs for the actors in the large theatre, and that is a good business in which he has made much money. He has bought our lady's whole estate. Now he rules over us. He rides us as he pleases. Fortunately, he is a good man. Only his wife, who is a Eussian, is such a dog that God save us from her. She robs the people. It is just terrible. Well, here is the prison. Where do you wish me to drive you ? To the entrance ? I think they don't admit now." XIII. With faint heart and terror at the thought of how he would find Maslova now, and with that feeling of mys- tery which he experienced before her and before that congeries of people who were in this prison, Nekhlyudov rang the bell at the main entrance, and asked the warden, who came out to him, about Maslova. The warden made inquiries, and informed him that she was in the hospital. A kind-hearted old man, the watchman of the hospi- tal, immediately admitted him, and, upon learning who it was he wanted to see, directed him to the children's division. A young doctor, all saturated with carbolic acid, came out to Nekhlyudov in the corridor, and sternly asked him what he wanted. This doctor was very indulgent with the prisoners, and so he continually had unpleasant con- flicts with the authorities of the prison, and even with the senior physician. Fearing lest Nekhlyudov should ask something illegal of him, and, besides, wishing to show that he made no exceptions of any persons, he pretended to be angry. " There are no women here ; this is the children's de- partment," he said. " I know ; but there is here an attendant who has been transferred from the prison." " Yes, there are two here. So what do you wish ? " " I have close relations with one of them, Maslova," said Nekhlyudov. " I should like to see her : I am going to St. Petersburg to enter an appeal in her case, and I 356 356 RESURRECTION . wanted to give her this. It is only a photograph," said Nekhlyudov, taking out an envelope from his pocket. " Well, you may do that," said the doctor, softening, and^ turning to an old woman in a white apron, he told her to call the attendant, prisoner Maslova. " Do you not wish to sit down or walk into the waiting- room ? " " Thank you," said Nekhlyudov, and, making use of the doctor's favourable change, he asked him whether they were satisfied in the prison with Maslova. " She will pass. She works fairly well, considering the conditions under which she has been," said the doctor. " And here she is." From one of the doors came the old attendant, and back of her was Maslova. She wore a white apron over a striped garment, and a kerchief on her head, which cov- ered all her hair. Upon noticing Nekhlyudov, her face became flushed, and she stopped as though in indecision ; then she frowned, and, lowering her eyes, walked with rapid steps toward him over the corridor strip. As she approached Nekhlyudov, she had intended not to give him her hand, but she did extend it to him, and blushed even more. Nekhlyudov had not seen her since the con- versation with her when she had excused herself for her excitabihty, and he expected to find her as she had been then. Now, however, she was quite different, and in the expression of her face there was something new : some- thing restrained, bashful, and, as Nekhlyudov thought, something hostile toward him. He repeated to her what he had said to the doctor, that he was going to St. Peters- burg, and handed her the envelope with the photograph, which he had brought with him from Panovo. " I found this at Panovo. It is an old photograph, and may give you pleasure. Take it." She raised her black eyebrows in surprise, looked at him with her extremely squinting eyes, as though to say, RESUERECTION 357 " What is that for ? " and silently took the envelope and put it back of her apron. " I saw your aunt there," said Nekhlyiidov. " You did ? " she said, with indifference. " Are you well here ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " Yes, I am," she said. " Is it not too hard ? " " No, not very. I am not yet used to it." "I am very happy for your sake. In any case it is better than there." " Than where ? " she said, and her face was flushed with a blush. " There, in the prison," Nekhlyudov hastened to say. " What makes it better ? " she asked. " I think the people are better here. There are none here as there were there." " There are many good people there," she said. " I have taken measures for the Menshdvs, and I hope they will be released," said Nekhlyudov. " God grant it. She is such a charming old woman," she said, repeating her old definition of the woman, and shghtly smiling. " I shall leave for St. Petersburg to-day. Our case will soon be heard, and I hope the verdict will be set aside." " Whether it will be or not, is all the same now," she said. " Why now ? " " It is," she said, furtively casting a questioning glance at him. Nekhlyudov understood these words and this glance to mean that she wanted to know whether he still stuck to his determination, or whether he had accepted her refusal and had accordingly changed it. " I do not know why it is all the same to you," he said. " But to me it is really quite the same whether you wiU 358 KESURRECTION be acquitted or not. I am ready in any case to do what I said I should," he said, with determination. She raised her head, and her black, squinting eyes rested on his face and past it, and all her face was beam- ing with joy. But she spoke something quite different from what her eyes were saying. " You say this in vain," she said. " I say it that you may know." " You have said everything, and there is nothing else to say," she replied, with difficulty restraining a smile. There was a noise in the hospital room. A child's cry was heard. " It seems they are calling me," she said, looking rest- lessly around. " Well, good-bye, then," he said. She tried to look as though she had not noticed the extended hand, and, without pressing it, she turned around and, trying to conceal her victory, with rapid strides walked away over the strip of the corridor. " What is going on within her ? What is she thinking about ? How does she feel ? Does she want to test me, or can she really not forgive me ? Can she not, or does she not wish to tell me all she thinks and feels ? Is slie mollified, or hardened ? " Nekhlyudov asked himself, and could not find any answers. He knew this much, that she had changed, and that an important transformation was taking place within her soul, and this transforma- tion connected him not only with her but also with Him, in whose name this transformation was being ac- complished. This connection induced in him a joyously ecstatic and contrite condition. Upon returning to the room, where eight children's beds were standing, Maslova began, at the Sister's re- quest, to make the beds ; in bending too far down with the sheet, she slipped and fell down. A convalescent boy, with a bandage around his neck, who had seen her RESURRECTION 359 fall, began to laugh, and Maslova herself could not re- strain herself, and sat down on the bed and burst into such a loud and contagious laugh that several children, too, began to laugh, and the Sister scolded her. " Don't yell hke that ! You think that you are still there where you have been ! Go for the food ! " Maslova grew silent and, taking the dishes, went where she had been ordered, but, upon casting a glance at the bandaged boy, who was not permitted to laugh, again snorted. Several times during the day, whenever Maslova was left alone, she pushed the photograph out of the envelope and looked at it ; but only in the evening, after her day's work, when left alone in the room, where she slept with another attendant, she drew the photograph entirely out of its envelope, and looked long and fixedly at the faded, yellowed picture, caressing with her eyes every detail of the faces, and dresses, and the steps of the porch, and the bushes, against which as a background his, her, and the aunts' faces had been thrown. She could not get enough of it, especially of herself, her young, beautiful face, with the hair coiling around the forehead. She looked so intently at it that she did not notice her com- panion coming into the room. "What is this? Did he give it to you?" asked the stout, kindly attendant, bending over the photograph. " is it possible it is you ? " " Who else ? " said Maslova, smiling, and looking at the face of her companion. " And who is this ? Himself ? And is this his mother ? " " An aunt. Would you have recognized me ? " asked Maslova. " No. Not for the world should I have recognized you. It is an entirely different face. I suppose ten years have elapsed since then." " Not years, but life," said Maslova, and suddenly all 860 RESURRECTION her animation disappeared. Her face grew gloomy, and a wrinkle cut itself between her eyebrows. " I suppose ' there ' life was easy." " Yes, easy ! " repeated Maslova, closing her eyes and shaking her head. " Worse than hard labour." " How so ? " " It was that way every night, from eight o'clock in the evening until four in the morning." " Why, then, don't they give it up ? " " They want to, but they can't. What is the use of talk- ing about it ? " said Maslova. She jumped up, flung the photograph into the table drawer, and, with difficulty re- pressing her evil tears, ran out into the corridor, slamming the door after her. As she had been looking at the photo- graph, she had felt herself to be such as she was repre- sented there, and had dreamed of how happy she had then been and could be with liim even now. The words of her companion reminded her of what she now was and had been there, reminded her of all the horror of that life, which she then had felt but dimly, and had not permitted herself to become conscious of. Now only did she recall all those terrible nights, and especially one during the Butter-week, when she had been waiting for a student, who had promised to redeem her. She recalled how she was clad in a dt^collet^ wine-stained, red silk dress, with a red ribbon in her tangled hair ; how, being tired out and weakened and drunk, she saw some guests off at two o'clock in the night ; and how, during an interval between the dances, she seated herself near the lean, bony, pimpled woman who played the accompa- niment to the fiddler, and complained to her of her hard life ; and how that woman herself told her that she was tired of her occupation and wished to change it ; and how Klara came up to them, and they suddenly decided all three of them to quit this life. They thought that the night was ended, and were on the point of retiring, when RESURRECTION 361 suddenly some drunken guests made a stir in the ante- chamber. The fiddler started a ritournelle, and the woman began to strike off an accompaniment to a hilarious Eus- siau song in the first figure of a quadrille ; suddenly a small, drunken, wine-sopped, and hiccoughing man, in a white tie and dress coat, which he later, in the second figure, took off, seized her, while another, a stout fellow, with a beard, also in a dress coat (they had just arrived from some ball), grasped Klara, and for a long time they whirled, danced, cried, drank — And thus it went a year, two, three years. How can one help changing ■ The cause of all that was he. And within her rose her former fury against him, and she wanted to scold and upbraid him. She was sorry she had missed to-day an opportunity of telling him again that she knew him, and that she would not submit to him, that she would not permit him to use her spiritually as he had used her physically, that she would not permit him to make her an object of his magnanimity. In order in some measure to drown that tormenting feeling of regret at herself and of uselessly reproaching him, she wanted some liquor. And she would not have kept her word, and would have drunk it, if she had been in the prison. But here it was not possible to get the liquor except from the surgeon's assistant, and of the assistant she was afraid, because he importuned her with his atten- tions. All relations with men were distasteful to her. Having sat awhile on a bench in the corridor, she returned to the cell, and, without replying to her companion's ques- tion, long wept over her ruined life. XIV. At St. Petersburg, Nekhlyudov had three affairs to attend to : Maslova's appeal to the Senate for annulment, Feddsya Biryukov's case in the Petition Commission, and, at Vy^ra Bogodiikhovski's request, the affair in the Office of the Gendarmery, or the Third Division, for the libera- tion of Miss Shiistov, and for obtaining an interview of a mother with her son, who was kept in the fortress, as mentioned in Vy^^a Bogodiikhovski's note. The last two cases he regarded as his third affair. Then there was a fourth matter, that of the sectarians, who were to be sent to the Caucasus for reading and expounding the Gospel. He had promised, not so much to them as to himself, to do everything in his power in order to clear up this business. Since his last visit to MasMnnikov's house, especially after his journey to the country, Nekhlyudov not so much decided to disregard, as with his whole being felt a dis- gust for, his circle, in which he had been moving until then, — for that circle, from which the suffering that is borne by millions of people in order to secure comforts and pleasures to a small number, is so carefully concealed that the people belonging to that circle do not see, nor ever can see, this suffering and the consequent cruelty and criminality of their own lives. Nekhlyudov could not now, without awkwardness and reproach to himself, converse with people of that circle. And still, the habits of all his former life drew him to that circle ; and he was drawn to it by his family connections and by his friends ; 362 RESURRECTION 363 but, above everything else, in order to do that which now interested him, in order to help Maslova and all those sufferers whom he wished to aid, he was compelled to invoke the aid and services of the people of that circle, whom he not only did not respect, but who frequently roused his indignation and contempt. Upon arriving at St. Petersburg, he stopped with his maternal aunt. Countess Charski, the wife of a former minister, and thus at once plunged into the very midst of that aristocratic society from which he had become estranged. This was unpleasant for him, but he could not act otherwise. If he had stopped at a hotel, and not with his aunt, she would have been offended, whereas his aunt had influential connections, and could 'be extremely useful to him in all the affairs to which he wished to devote himself. " What is it I hear about you ? Marvellous things," Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna said to him, treating him to coffee soon after his arrival. " Vous posez pour un Howard. You are aiding criminals. You travel about prisons. You are mending things." " No, I do not even think of it." " Well, that is good. There must be some romance connected with it. Tell me about it." Nekhlyudov told her about his relations with Maslova exactly as they were. " I remember, I remember. H^lfene told me sometliing about it at the time when you were living with those old ladies. I think they wanted to marry you to that ward of theirs." (The Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna had always despised those paternal aunts of Nekhlyvidov's.) " How is she ? Mle est encore j'olie ? " Aunt Ekaterina Ivanovna was a woman of sixty years of age, healthy, gay, energetic, and talkative. She was of tall stature and plump, and on her upper lip a black moustache was discernible. Nekhlyudov liked her, and 364 RESURRECTION ever since his childhood was easily infected by her energy and cheerfulness. " No, ma tante, all that is ended. I only want to help her, because, in the first place, she has been unjustly sen- tenced, and because I am to blame for it, I am to blame for her whole fate. I feel myself under obligations to do all I can for her." " But I have been told that you want to marry her ? " " Yes, I wanted to, but she does not consent." Ekaterina Ivanovna, smoothing out her brow and lower- ing her pupils, looked at her nephew in surprise and silence. Suddenly her countenance was changed, and pleasure was expressed upon it. " Well, she has more sense than you have. Oh, what a fool you are ! And you would have married her ? " " By all means." " After what she has been ? " " So much the more. I am to blame for it." " No, you are simply a dummy," his aunt said, repress- ing a smile. "A terrible dummy, but I love you for being such a terrible dummy," she repeated, evidently taking a liking to this word, which, in her opinion, pre- cisely rendered tlie mental and moral condition of her nephew. " You know this is very a propos," she con- tinued; " Aline has a remarkable home for Magdalens. I was there once. They are horrid, and I did nothing but wash myself afterward. But AHne is corps et dme in it. So we shall send that woman of yours to her. If anybody is to mend her ways, it must be Aline." " But she is sentenced to hard labour. I have come here to appeal from this verdict. This is the first busi- ness I have with you." " Indeed ? Where does that case of hers go to ? " " To the Senate." " To the Senate ? Yes, my dear cousin Levushka is in the Senate. However, lie is in the department of heraldry. KESURRECTION S65 I do not know any of the real Senators. They are all God knows who, or Germans : Ge, Fe, De, tout Valphahet, or all kinds of Ivanov, Sem^nov, Nikitin, or Ivan^nko, Simou(5nko, Nikitenko, pour varier. Des gens de I'autre monde. Still, I shall tell my husband. He knows them. He knows all kinds of people. I shall tell him, but you had better explain matters to him, for he never under- stands me. Whatever I may say, he says he does not understand. C'est un parti pris. Everybody else under- stands, but he does not." Just then a lackey in stockings brought a letter on a silver tray. " Just from Aline. You will hear Kiesewetter there." " Who is that Kiesewetter ? " " Kiesewetter ? You go there to-day, and you will find out who he is. He speaks so eloquently that the most inveterate criminals kneel down and weep and repent." Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna, however strange this may seem, and however little it comported with her character, was a fervent adherent of the doctrine accord- ing to which the essence of Christianity consisted in the belief in the redemption. She attended meetings where this at that time fashionable doctrine was preached, and gathered these devotees about her. Notwithstanding the fact that according to this doctrine all ceremonies, images, and even mysteries were denounced. Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna had holy images not only in all the rooms, but even over her bed, and continued to comply with all the demands of the Church, seeing no contradiction in all that. " Your Magdalen ought to hear him ; she would be- come converted," said the countess. " You must be at home in the evening. You will hear him. He is a re- markable man." " That does not interest me, ma tante." " And I tell you, it is interesting. And you be sure 366 RESUKRECTION and go there. Tell me what else you want of me ? Videz voire sac." " I have some business in the fortress." " In the fortress ? Well, I can give you a note to Baron Kriegsmut. C'est un tres brave homme. You yourself know him. He was a comrade of your father. II donne dans le spiritisme. Well, that is not so bad. He is a good fellow. What do you want there ? " " I want to ask the permission for a mother to see her son who is confined there. But I have been told that this does not depend on Kriegsmut, but on Chervyanski." " I do not like Chervyanski, but he is Mariette's hus- band. I can ask her. She will do it for my sake. Elle est tres gentille." " I want also to ask about a woman. She has been in the fortress for several months, and nobody knows why." " Don't tell me that. She certainly knows why. They all know. It serves them right, those short-haired ones." " We do not know whether right or not. In the mean- time they suffer. You are a Christian and believe in the Gospel, and yet you are so pitiless." " That has nothing to do with it. The Gospel is one thing, and what we do despise is another. It would be worse if I should pretend loving the nihilists, and espe- cially short-haired nihilists, when, in reahty, I hate them." " Why do you hate them ? " " Do you ask me why, after March the first ? " " But not all of them have taken part in the affair of March the first." " It makes no difference : let them keep out of what does not concern them. That is not a woman's business." " But here is Mariette, who, you find, may attend to business," said Nekhlyiidov. KESURRECTION 367 " Mariette ? Mariette is Mariette. And that other one is God knows who, — some Khalyiipkin who wants to instruct everybody." " They do not want to instruct but help the people." " We know without their aid who is to be helped and who not." " But the people are suffering. I am just back from the country. Is it right that the peasants should work as hard as they can, without getting enough to eat, while we live in terrible luxury ? " said Nekhlyiidov, involun- tarily drawn on by his aunt's good-heartedness to tell her all he was thinking. " Do you want me to work and eat nothing ? " " No, I do not want you to starve," Nekhlyiidov replied, with an involuntary smile. " All I want is that we should all work and have enough to eat." His aunt again lowered her brow and pupils, resting them on him with curiosity. " Mon cher, vous finirez mal," she said. " But why ? " Just then a tall, broad-shouldered general entered the room. That was the husband of the countess, Charski, an ex-minister. " Ah, Dmitri, good-morning," he said, offering him his freshly shaven cheek. " When did you arrive ? " He silently kissed his wife's brow. " JSfon, il est impitoyable," Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna turned to her husband. " He tells me to go down to the river to wash the linen, and to eat nothing but potatoes. He is a terrible fool, but still you do for him that for which he will ask you. He is a terrible dummy," she corrected herself. " Have you heard, they say Madame Kamenski is in such despair that they are afraid for her life," she addressed her husband. " You had better call on her." " That is terrible," said her husband. 368 RESURRECTION " You go and talk with him, for I must write some letters." Nekhlyiidov had just gone into the room next to the drawing-room, when she called out to him : " Shall I write to Mariette ? " " If you please, ma tante" " So I shall leave en hlane what it is you wish about that short-haired one, and she will tell her husband. And he will do it. Don't think tbat I am a cross woman. They are all very, very horrid, those prot^g^es of yours, but je ne leur veux ;pas de mal. God be with them. Go ! By all means be at home in the evening, and you will hear Kiesewetter. And we shall pray. If only you will not oppose yourself to it, ga vous /era heaucoup de Men. I know both Heiene and all of you are way behind in this. So, au revoir" XV. Count Ivan Mikhaylovich was an ex-minister and a man of very firm convictions. The convictions of Count Ivan Mikhaylovich had from his earliest youth consisted in this : just as it is proper for a bird to feed on worms, to be clad in feathers and down, and to fly through the air, so it was proper for him to feed on costly dishes, prepared by expensive cooks, to be clad in the most comfortable and expensive garments, to travel with the best and the fastest horses, and to expect everything to be ready for liim. Besides this, Count Ivan Mikhaylovich considered that the more kinds of various amounts he received from the treasury, and the more decorations, inclusive of all kinds of diamond tokens, he should have, and the oftener he met and spoke with distinguished personages, the better for him. Everything else, in comparison with these fun- damental dogmas, Count Ivan Mikhaylovich regarded as uninteresting and insignificant. Everything else might be as it was, or the reverse, for all he was concerned. In conformity with this belief, Ivan Mikhaylovich had been living and acting in St. Petersburg for forty years, until at last he reached the post of minister. The chief qualities of Count Ivan Mikhaylovich, by means of which he attained this post, consisted, in the first place, in his ability to comprehend the meaning of documents and laws, and to compose comprehensible, if not entirely grammatical documents, without any ortho- graphical mistakes ; in the second place, he was very rep- resentative, and, wherever it was necessary, he was able to give an impression not only of haughtiness, but also of 369 370 RESUKRECTION inaccessibility and majesty, and, on the other hand, where- ever this was necessary, to be servile to the point of self- effacement and baseness ; in the third place, he had qo general principles or rules, either of personal or of state morality, so that he could agree with everybody, if this was necessary, or equally well disagree with everybody, if that served him. In proceeding in this manner, he was concerned only about preserving his tone and not mani- festing any palpable contradiction with himself ; but he was quite indifferent as to whether his acts were in them- selves moral or immoral, or whether any great good, or great evil, would accrue from them to the Eussian Empire and to the rest of Europe. When he became minister, not only those who depended upon him (and there were very many people and close friends who depended upon him), but even all outsiders, and he himself, were convinced that he was a very wise statesman. But when some time passed, and he had done nothing, had shown nothing, and when, by the law of the struggle for existence, just such men as he, who had learned how to write and comprehend documents, and who were representative and unprincipled officials, had pushed him out, and he was compelled to ask for his discharge, it be- came clear to everybody that he was, not only not a very intelligent man, but even a man of very hmited capacities and of little culture, though a self-confident man, who in his views barely rose to the level of the leading articles of the conservative papers. It turned out that there was nothing in him which dis- tinguished him from other little-educated, self-confident officials, who had pushed him out, and he himself came to see that ; but this did not in the least shake his convictions that he must every year receive a large sum of Crown money and new decorations for his parade uniform. This conviction was so strong in him that nobody dared to re- fuse them to him, and each year he received, partly in the KESURRECTION 371 form of a pension, and partly in the form of remuneration for his membership in a higher state institution, and for presiding in various commissious and committees, several tens of thousands of roubles, and, besides, each year new rights highly esteemed by him, to sew new galloons on his shoulders or pantaloons, and to attach new ribbons and enamelled stars to his dress coat. In consequence of this Count Ivan Mikhaylovich had great connections. Count Ivan Mikhaylovich listened to Nekhlyiidov just as he would listen to the report of his secretary ; having heard all he had to say, he told him that he would give him two notes : one to Senator Wolf, in the Department of Cassation. " They say all kinds of things about him, but dans tous les cas ccst tin liomvie tres coTnimc il faut^ho, said. " He is under obligations to me, and he will do what he can." The other note Ivan Mikhaylovich gave him was to an influential person in the Petition Commission. The case of Fedosya Biryukov, as Nekhlyiidov told it to him, interested him very much. When Nekhlyiidov told him that he wanted to write a letter to the empress, he said that it really was a very pathetic case, and that he would tell it there, whenever an opportunity should offer itself. But he could not promise to do so. He had better send in the petition any way. But if there should be a chance, he said, if they should call him to a petit comitS on Thurs- day, he would probably tell it. Having received the two notes from the count, and the note to Mariette from his aunt, Nekhlyiidov at once went to all those places. First of all he repaired to Mariette. He used to know her as a young girl ; he knew that she was the daughter of a poor, aristocratic family, and that she had married a man who had made a career, and of whom he had heard some very bad things ; consequently, it was, as ever, pain- ful for Nekhlyiidov to make a request of a man whom he did not respect. In such cases he always felt an internal 372 RESUKRECTION discord, a dissatisfaction with himself, and a wavering, whether he should ask or not, and he always decided that he should. Besides being conscious of the unnaturalness of his position as a petitioner among people whom he did not regard as his own, but who considered him as theirs, he felt in that society that he was entering his former habitual routine, and that he involuntarily succumbed to the frivolous and immoral tone which reigned in that circle. He had experienced this even at the house of his aunt Ekaterina Ivanovna. He had that very morning fallen into a jocular tone, as he had been talking to her. St. Petersburg in general, where he had not been for a long time, produced upon him its usual physically bracing and morally dulling effect. Everything was so clean, so comfortable, and so well- arranged, but, above everything else, people were morally so httle exacting, that life seemed to be easy there. A beautiful, clean, polite cabman took him past beauti- ful, polite, and clean policemen, over a beautiful, smooth pavement, past beautiful, clean houses, to the one in which Mariette lived. At the entrance stood a span of Enghsh horses in a fine harness, and an English-looking coachman, with side- whiskers up to the middle of his cheeks, and in livery, sat on the box, holding a whip, and looking proud. A porter in an uncommonly clean uniform opened the door to the vestibule, where stood, in a still more clean livery with galloons, a carriage lackey with superbly combed side-whiskers, and an orderly in a new, clean uniform. " The general does not receive. Nor does the lady. They will drive out in a minute." Nekhlyiidov gave up the letter of Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna, and, taking out a visiting-card, went up to a small table, on which lay a book for the registry of visitors, and began to write that he was very sorry KESURRECTION 373 not to find her at home, when the lackey moved up to the staircase, the porter went out to the entrance, and the orderly straightened himself up, with his hands down his legs, in a motionless attitude, meeting and following with his eyes a small, lean lady, who was walking down the staircase with a rapid gait, which did not comport with her dignity. Mariette wore a large hat with a feather, a black gown, a black mantle, and new, black gloves; her face was covered with a veil. Upon noticing ISTekhlyudov, she raised her veil, dis- played a very sweet face with gleaming eyes, and looked at him interrogatively. " Ah, Prince Dmitri Ivanovich," she exclaimed, in a merry, pleasant voice. " I should have recognized — " " What, you even remember my name ? " " Certainly. Sister and I had even been in love with you," she said, in French. " But how you have changed ! What a pity I am driving out. However, let us go back," she said, stopping in indecision. She looked at the clock. " No, it is impossible. I must go to the mass for the dead at Madame Kamenski's. She is terribly cast down." " Who is this Madame Kamenski ? " " Have you not heard ? Her son was killed in a duel. He fought with Pozen. An only son. Terrible. The mother is so very much cast down." " Yes, I have heard." " No, I had better go, and you come to-morrow, or this evening," she said, walking through the entrance door with rapid, light steps. " I cannot come this evening," he answered, walking out on the front steps with her. " I have some business with you," he said, looking at the span of bay horses, which drove up to the steps. 374 KESURRECTION "What is it?" " Here is a note from my aunt about it," said Nekh- lyudov, handing her a narrow envelope with a large monogram. " You will see from this what it is." " I know, Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna thinks that I have some influence on my husband in business matters. She is in error. I cannot and will not interfere. But, of course, for the countess and for you I shall depart from my rules. What is the business ? " she said, in vain try- ing to find her pocket with her small hand in the black glove. " There is a girl who is confined in the fortress ; she is ill, and not guilty." " What is her name ? " " Shiistov. Lidiya Shiistov. You will find it in the note." " Very well, I shall try to do it," she said, lightly stepping into the softly cushioned carriage which glis- tened in the sun with the lacquer of its wings. She opened her parasol. The lackey sat down on the box, and gave the coachman a sign to drive on. The carriage started, but the same minute she touched the coachman's back with her parasol, and the slender-legged, handsome, short- tailed mares stopped, compressing their reined-in beauti- ful heads, and stamping with their slender feet. "Do come, but, if you please, disinterestedly," she said, smiling a smile, the power of which she knew too well. The performance, so to say, being over, she drew down the curtain, — let down her veil. " Well, let us start," and she again touched the coachman with the parasol. Nekhlyiidov raised his hat. The thoroughbred bay mares, snorting, struck their hoofs against the pavement, and the carriage rolled off swiftly, now and then softly leaping with its new tires over the unevennesses of the road. XVI. Eecalling the smile which he had exchanged with Mariette, Nekhlyudov shook his head at himself : " Before I shall have looked around, I shall again be drawn into that life," he thought, experiencing that internal dissension and those doubts which the necessity of invoking the aid of people whom he did not respect awakened in him. He considered where he should go first, where later, so as not to recross his way, and started to go to the Senate. Upon arriving there, he was led into the chancery, where, in a magnificent apartment, he saw an immense number of exceedingly pohte and clean officials. Maslova's petition had been received and submitted for consideration and report to that same Senator Wolf, to whom he had a letter from his uncle, so the officials told Nekhlyudov. " There will be a meeting of the Senate this week, but Maslova's case will hardly come up then. But if it should be requested, there is hope that it might pass this week, on Wednesday," said one. In the chancery of the Senate, while waiting for the information, Nekhlyudov again heard a conversation about the duel, and a detailed account of how Kamenski had been killed. Here he for the first time heard all the details of the story which interested all St. Petersburg. Some officers had been eating oysters in a shop, and, as usual, drinking a great deal. Some one said something uncomplimentary about the regiment in which Kamenski was serving : Kamenski called him a liar. The other 375 376 RESURRECTION struck Kamenski. The following day they fought, and Kamenski was hit by a bullet in the abdomen, and died from it in two hours. The murderer and the seconds were arrested, but it was said, although they were now confined in the guard-house, they would be released in two weeks. From the chancery of the Senate, Nekhlyudov drove to the Petition Commission, to see there an influential offi- cial. Baron Vorob^v, who occupied superb quarters in a Crown house. The porter and the lackey sternly in- formed Nekhlyudov that the baron could not be seen on any but reception-days, that he now was at the emperor's palace, and that on the next day he would have to report there again. Nekhlyudov left his letter, and went to Senator Wolf. Wolf had just breakfasted, and, as usual, was encour- aging his digestion by smoking a cigar and walking up and down in his room, when he received Nekhlyudov. Vladimir Vasilevich Wolf was, indeed, un homme tres eomme il faut, and this quality he placed higher than anything else. From this height he looked at all other people, nor could he help highly valuing this quality, since, thanks only to this, he had made a brilliant career, such as he had wished to make : that is, by his marriage he had acquired property giving him an income of eight- een thousand roubles, and by his own labours he had risen to the rank of a Senator. He not only regarded himself as un homme tres comme il faut, but also as a man of chivalrous honesty. By honesty he understood his rule not to take secret bribes from private individuals. But he did not consider it dishonest to extort from the Crown all kinds of travelling expenses, post moneys, and rentals, in return for which he servilely executed that which even the Government did not demand of him. To ruin and destroy, to be the cause of the deportation and incar- ceration of hundreds of innocent people, for their attach- KESUliKECTION 377 ment to their people and to the religion of their fathers, as he had done while being a governor of one of the Governments of the Kingdom of Poland, he not only did not consider dishonest, but even an act of noble-minded- ness, courage, and patriotism. Nor did he regard it as dishonest to fleece his wife, who was enamoured of him, and his sister-in-law. On the contrary, he looked upon this as a wise arrange- ment of his domestic life. His family consisted of his impersonal wife, her sister, whose property he had also taken into his hands, and whose estate he had sold, depositing the money in his own name, and a meek, timid, homely daughter, who was leading a hard, isolated life, from which she of late found distraction in evangel- ism, in the meetings at Aline's and at Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna's. Vladimir Vasilevich's son, a good-hearted fel- low, who had been bearded at fifteen years of age, and had been drinking and leading a dissolute life since then, continuing to live thus to his twentieth year, had been driven out of the house for not having graduated from anywhere, and for compromising his father by moving in bad society and making debts. His father had once paid 230 roubles for him, and anotlier time six hundred roubles, when he informed him that this was the last time, that if he did not improve he would drive him out of the house, and would break off all connections with him. His son not only did not improve, but even made another debt of one thousand roubles, and, besides, allowed himself to tell his father that it was a torment for him to live in his house. Then Vladimir Vasilevich informed his son that he could go whither he pleased, that he was not a son to him. Since then Vladimir Vasilevich pre- tended that he had no son, and his home people never dared to talk to him about his son, and Vladimir Vasile- vich was absolutely convinced that his family life was circumstanced in the best manner possible. 378 KESUKRECTION Wolf stopped in the middle of his promenade in the room, with a gracious and somewhat ironical smile (that was his mannerism, the involuntary expression of his consciousness of his comme il faut superiority above the majority of men), greeted Nekhlyiidov, and read the note. " Please be seated, and pardon me. I shall continue to walk, if you will permit it," he said, placing his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and treading with soft, light steps along the diagonal of the cabinet, which was ap- pointed in severe style. " I am very happy to make your acquaintance and, of course, to be able to do Count Ivan Mikhaylovich a favour," he said, emitting a fragrant bluish puff of smoke, and cautiously removing the cigar from his mouth, in order not to drop the ashes. " I should like to ask you to consider the case as early as possible, so that the prisoner may go to Siberia as soon as possible, if she has to go at all," said Nekhlyiidov. " Yes, yes, with the first steamers from Nizhni-Nov- gorod, — I know," said Wolf, with his condescending smile, knowing always in advance what people were going to tell him. " What is the prisoner's name ? " " Maslova — " Wolf went up to the table and looked at a paper which was lying on a box with documents. " Yes, yes, Maslova. Very well. I shall ask my asso- ciates about it. We shall take the case under advisement on Wednesday." " May I wire the lawyer about it ? " " You have a lawyer ? What is that for ? If you wish, you may." " The causes for appeal may be insufficient," said Nekh- lyiidov, " but it may be seen from the case that the verdict was due to a misunderstanding." " Yes, yes, that may be so, but the Senate does not consider the case on its essential merit," sternly said Vladimir Vasilevich, looking at the ashes. " The Senate RESURRECTION 379 is concerned only about the correct application and ex- position of the laws." " This seems to me to be an exceptional case." " I know, I know. All cases are exceptional. We shall do all we can. That is all." The ashes still held on^ but had a crack, and were in imminent peril. " Do you come often to St. Petersburg ? " said Wolf, holding his cigar in such a way that the ashes could not fail down. But the ashes trembled, and Wolf cautiously carried his cigar to the ash-tray, into which they dropped. " What a terrible incident that was with Kamenski," he said. " A fine young man. An only son. Especially his mother's condition," he said, repeating almost the identical words that all St. Petersburg was at that time saying about Kamenski. Having said something about Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna and her infatuation for the new religious movement, which Vladimir Vasilevich neither condemned nor approved of, and which was manifestly superfluous to him in his comme il faut state, he rang a bell. Nekhlyiidov bowed himself out. " If it is convenient to you, come to dinner," WoK said, giving him his hand, " say, on Wednesday. I shall then give you a decisive answer." It w^as late, and Nekhlyiidov drove home, that is, to his aunt's. XVII. Dinner was served at the house of Ekaterina Ivanovna at half-past seven in a new fashion, which Nekhlyudov had not seen before. The dishes were placed on the table, and the lackeys went out at once, so that the diners helped themselves to the food. The gentlemen did not permit the ladies to exert themselves by superfluous move- ments, and, being the strong sex, bravely attended to the labour of filling the ladies' and their own plates with food, and filling their glasses with drinks. When one course was consumed, the countess pressed the button of an electric bell on the table, and the lackeys entered noiselessly, rapidly, cleaned off the table, changed the dishes, and brought the next course. The dinner was excellent, and so were the wines. In the large, well-lighted kitchen a French chef was busy with two assistants in white. There were six persons at the table : the count and the countess, their son, a gloomy officer of the Guards, who put his elbows on the table, Nekhlyudov, a French lady- reader, and the count's manager, who had come up from the country. The conversation here, too, turned upon the duel. The emperor's view of the affair was under consideration. It was known that the emperor was very much grie->.'ed for the mother, and all were grieved for the mother. But, as it was also known that, although the emperor sympa- thized with her, he did not wish to be severe on the murderer, who had defended the honour of his uniform, all were condescending to the murderer, who had defended RESURRECTION 381 the honour of his uniform. Countess Ekaterina Ivauovna alone, with her frivolous free ideas, condemned him. " I should not forgive them for anything in the world for carousing and for killing innocent young men," she said. " I cannot understand that," said the count. " I know that you never understand what I say," said the countess, turning to Nekhlyiidov. " Everybody under- stands except my husband. I say that I am sorry for the mother, and that I do not want them to kill and to be content." Then the son, who had been silent until now, defended the murderer and attacked his mother, proving to her in a sufficiently coarse manner that the ofl&cer could not have acted differently, that if he had he would have been expelled from the army by a court of officers. Nekh- lyiidov listened, without taking part in the conversation ; having been an officer, he understood, though he did not approve, the proofs which young Charski adduced ; at the same time he involuntarily compared the officer who had killed another with the prisoner, the fine-looking young fellow, whom he had seen in prison, and who had been sentenced to hard labour for killing a man in a brawl. Both became murderers through drinking. The peasant had killed in a moment of excitement, and he was sepa- rated from his wife, his family, his relatives, was chained in fetters, and with a shaven head was on his way to hard labour, while the officer was located in a beauti- ful room at the guard-house, eating good dinners, drinking ^ good wine, and reading books, and in a few days he would be let out, continuing his previous life, and being only a more interesting person for his deed. He ^aid what he thought about the matter. At first Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna agreed vdth her nephew, but later she was silent. Nekhlyiidov felt, like the rest, that with his story he had, as it were, committed an indecency. 382 RESURRECTION In the evening, after dinner, chairs with high carved backs were placed in the parlour, as though for a lecture, in rows, and in front of the table was put a chair with a small table, with a decanter of water for the preacher, and people began to congregate, to hsten to the sermon of the newly arrived Kiesewetter. Near the entrance stood expensive carriages. In the luxuriously furnished parlour sat ladies in silk, velvet, and laces, with false hair and tightly laced waists and false bosoms. Between the women sat gentlemen, soldiers and private citizens, and five men from the lower classes : two janitors, a shopkeeper, a lackey, and a coachman. Kiesewetter, a strongly built, gray-haired gentleman, spoke in English, and a lean young lady, with eye-glasses, translated rapidly and well. He said that our sins were so great, and the punishment for these was so great and unavoidable, that it was impos- sible to live in expectation of this punishment. " Let us only think, dear sisters and brethren, of our- selves, of our lives, of what we are doing, how we are living, how we anger long-sufiering God, how we cause Christ to suffer, and we shall see that there is no forgive- ness for us, no issue, no salvation, — that we are all doomed to perdition. A terrible doom, eternal torments await us," he said, in a trembling voice. " How are we to be saved, brethen, how are we to be saved from this terrible conflagration ? It has already seized upon the house, and there is no issue from it ! " He grew silent, and real tears flowed down his cheeks. He had been delivering this speech for eight years, with- out any errors, and whenever he reached that passage of his very popular sermon he was seized by convulsions in his throat, and tickling in his nose, and tears began to flow from his eyes. And these tears touched him still more. Sobs were heard in the room. Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna sat KESURRECTION 383 near a mosaic table, leaning her head on both her arms, and her fat shoulders shrugged convulsively. The coach- man looked in surprise and fear at the foreigner, as though he had. driven right into him with the shaft, aud he did not budge. The majority sat in poses similar to that of Countess Ekaterma Ivanovna. Wolf's daughter, who resembled him, in a fashionable garment, was on her knees, covering her face with her hands. The orator suddenly revealed his face and called forth upon it that which strikingly resembled a real smile, such as actors use to express joy with, and began to speak in a sweet and tender voice : " There is a salvation. Here it is : it is* easy and bliss- ful. This salvation is the blood of the only begotten Son of God, who has allowed Himself to be tormented for our sakes. His suffering. His blood saves us. Sisters and brethren," he again said, with tears in his eyes, " let us praise the Lord who has given His only begotten Son for the redemption of the human race. His holy blood — " Nekhlyudov was overcome by such a painful feeling of nausea that he softly rose and, frowning and repressmg a groan of shame, walked out on tiptoe and went to his room. XVIII. On the following day, just as Nekhlyiidov had dressed himself and was on the point of going down-stairs, a lackey brought him the visiting-card of the Moscow lawyer. The lawyer had arrived to look after his affairs and, at the same time, to be present at the discussion of Maslova's case in the Senate, if it was to be heard soon. The despatch which Nekhlyiidov had sent him had missed him. Upon hearing when Maslova's case was to come up and who the Senators were, he smiled. " There you have all three types of Senators," he said : " Wolf is a Petersburgian official ; Skovorodnikov is a learned jurist ; and Be is a practical jurist, consequently the liveliest of them all," said the lawyer. " There is most hope in him. And how is it about the Petition Commission ? " " I am going down to-day to Baron Vorobev. I could not get any interview yesterday." " Do you know how Vorobev comes to be a baron ? " said the lawyer, replying to the somewhat comical intona- tion, with which Nekhlyiidov had pronounced this foreign title in connection with such a Eussian name. " Paul had rewarded his grandfather, a lackey of the chamber, I think, for some great favour of his, as much as to say : ' Have a baronetcy, and don't interfere with my pleasure ! ' Since then goes the race of the Barons of Vorobev. He is very proud of it. And he is a shrewd one." " I am on my way to him," said Nekhlyiidov. " Very well, let us go together. I shall take you down to his house." 884 RESURRECTION 385 Nekhlyudov was already in the antechamber, being on the point of leaving, when he was met by a lackey with a note from Mariette : " Pour vous /aire plaisir, fai agi tout h fait contre mes principes, et fai intercede aupres de mon mari pour votre protegee. II se trouve que cette per Sonne peut etre ralCichee innnediatement. Mon mari a ecrit au commandant. Venez done disinterestedly. Je vous attends. M." " How is this ? " Nekhlyudov said to the lawyer. " This is simply terrible. The woman whom he has been keep- ing for seven months in soUtary confinement proves to be innocent, and, in order to release her, it was only necessary to sav the word." " It is always that way. At least, you have got what you wanted." "Yes, but this success grieves me. Just think what must be going on there ? What were they keeping her for ? " " Well, it would be better not to try to get to the bot- tom of that. So let me take you down," said the lawyer, as they came out to the front steps, and a fine carriage, which the lawyer had hired, drove up to the entrance. " You want to go to Baron Vorob^v ? " The lawyer told the coachman where to drive, and the good horses soon brought Nekhlyudov to the house which the baron occupied. The baron was at home. In the first room were two young ladies and a young official in his vice-uniform, with an exceedingly long neck and a bulg- ing Adam's apple, and an extremely light gait. " Your name ? " the young official with the bulging Adam's apple asked, passing with an extremely light and graceful gait from the ladies to Nekhlyudov. Nekhlyudov told him his name. 386 RESURRECTION " The baron has mentioned you. Directly .' " The adjutant went through the closed door, and brought out from the room a lady in mourning, who was in tears. The lady with her bony fingers adjusted the tangled veil, in order to conceal her tears. "Please," the young official turned to Nekhlyudov, walking with a light step over to the door, opening it, and stopping. Upon entering the cabinet, Nekhlyudov found himself in front of a middle-sized, stocky, short-haired man in half-uniform, who was sitting in an armchair at a large writing-desk, and cheerfully looking in front of him. His good-natured face, which stood out quite prominently with its ruddy blush from the white moustache and beard, formed itself into a gracious smile at the sight of Nekhlyildov. " Very glad to see you. Your mother and I were old friends. I used to see you when you were a boy, and later as an officer. Sit down and tell me what I can do for you. Yes, yes," he said, shaking his close-cropped gray head as Nekhlyudov was telling him Fedosya's history. " Go on, go on, I have understood it all. Yes, yes, this is touching indeed. Well, have you entered a petition ? " " I have prepared a petition," said Nekhlyudov, taking it out of his pocket. " I wanted to ask you to give it your especial attention, and I hope you may." " You have done well. I shall by all means make the report myself," said the baron, awkwardly expressing compassion in his merry face. " It is very touching. She was apparently a child, and the husband treated her rudely ; this made him repulsive to her, and later came a time when they began to love each other — Yes, I shall report it." " Count Ivan Mikhaylovich said that he wanted to ask — " RESURRECTION 387 Nekhlyudov did not finish his phrase, when the baron's face was suddenly changed. " You had better hand in the petition at the chancery, and I shall do what I can," he said to Nekhlyudov. Just then the young official, apparently proud of his gait, entered the room. " The lady asks to be permitted to say two words more." " Well, call her in. Ah, mon chcr, what a lot of tears one sees here ; if one only could dry them all! I do what I can." The lady entered. " I forgot to ask you not to let him give up the daughter, or else — " " I told you I should do it." " Baron, for God's sake ! You will save a mother." She seized his hand and began to kiss it. " Everything will be done." When the lady left, Nekhlyudov, too, rose to say good- bve. " We shall do what we can. We shall consult the minister of justice. He will give us his view, and then we shall do what we can." Nekhlyudov went out and walked into the chancery. Again, as in the Senate, he found in a superb apartment superb officials, who were clean, poUte, correct in their dress and speech, precise, and severe. " How many there are of them, how very many, and how well fed they are ! What clean shirts and hands they have ! How well their shoes are blackened ! And who does it all? And how well they are off in com- parison not only with the prisoners, but even with the peasants," Nekhlyudov again involuntarily thought. XIX. The man on whom depended .the alleviation of the lot of those who were confined in St. Petersburg had decora- tions enough to cover him, but, with the exception of a white cross in the buttonhole, he did not wear them ; he was a superannuated old general, in his dotage, as they said, and was of German baronial origin. He had served in the Caucasus, where he had received this extremely flattering cross because under his command Russian peas- ants, with their hair cropped and clad in uniforms and armed with guns and bayonets, had killed more than a thousand people who were defending their hberty, their homes, and their families. Then he had served in Poland, where he again compelled Eussian peasants to commit all kinds of crimes, for which he received new decorations and embellishments on his uniform. Then he had served somewhere else, and now, being an enfeebled old man, he obtained the place, which he now was occupying, and which supplied him with good apartments and support, and gave him honours. He executed severely all orders from above, and was exceedingly proud of this execution ; to these orders from above he ascribed a special mean- ing, and thought that everything in the world might be changed, except these orders from above. His duty con- sisted in keeping political prisoners in barracks, in soli- tary confinement, and he kept them there in such a way that half of them perished in the course of ten years, partly becoming insane, partly dying from consumption, and partly committing suicide : some by starving them- 888 RESURRECTION 389 selves, others by cutting their veins open with pieces of glass, or by hanging, or by burning themselves to death. The old general knew all this ; all this took place under his eyes, but all these cases did not touch his con- science any more than his conscience was touched by accidents arising from storms, inundations, and so on. These accidents happened on account of his executing orders from above, in the name of the emperor. These orders had to be carried out without questioning, and therefore it was quite useless to think of the consequences resulting from these orders. The old general did not permit himself even to think of such affairs, considering it his patriotic duty as a soldier not to think, in order not to weaken in the exe- cution of these, as he thought, extremely important duties of his. Once a week the old general regarded it as his duty to visit all the barracks and to ask the pris- oners whether they had any requests to make. The prisoners generally had requests to make of him. He listened to them calmly and in impenetrable silence, and never granted them because they were all contrary to the regulations of the law. As Nekhlyudov was approaching the residence of the old general, the soft chimes of the tower played " Praise ye the Lord," and the clock struck two. Listening to the chimes, Nekhlyudov involuntarily recalled having read in the memoirs of the Decembrists what an effect this sweet music, repeated every hour, had on the souls of those who were confined for life. As Nekhlyudov drove up to the entrance of his lodg- ings, the general was sitting in a dark drawing-room at an inlaid table and, together with a young man, an artist, a brother of one of his subordinates, was twirling a small dish on a sheet of paper. The thin, moist, feeble fingers of the artist were linked with the rough, wrinkled lingers of the general, which were stiff in their joints, and these 390 RESURRECTION" linked hands were jerking about, together with the in- verted saucer, over the sheet of paper upon which were written all the letters of the alphabet. The saucer was answering the question put by the general as to how the spirits would recognize each other after death. Just as one of the orderlies, who was acting as valet, entered with Nekhlyudov's card, Joan of Arc's spirit was communicating with them by means of the saucer. Joan of Arc's spirit had already spelled out, " They will recog- nize each other after their," and this had been noted down. Just as the orderly had entered, the saucer, which had first stopped at " 1," was jerking about in all directions just after it had reached the letter " i." It was wavering because the next letter, according to the general's opinion, was to have been " b," that is, Joan of Arc, in his opinion, was to have said that the spirits would recognize each other after their liberation from all earthly dross, or something to that effect, and the next letter, therefore, had to be " b " ; but the artist thought that the next letter would be " g," that the spirit was going to say that the souls would recognize each other after their lights, which would emanate from their ethe- real bodies. The general, gloomily arching his thick gray eyebrows, was looking fixedly at the hands, and, imagin- ing that the saucer was moving of its own accord, was pulling it in the direction of letter " b." But the young, anoemic artist, with his scant hair combed behind his ears, was looking with his lifeless blue eyes into the dark corner of the drawing-room, and, nervously twitching his lips, was pulling the saucer in the direction of " g." The general scowled at the interruption of his occupation, and, after a moment's silence, took the card, put on his eye- glasses, and, groaning from a pain in the small of his back, arose to his full tall stature, rubbing his stiffened joints. " Take him to the cabinet." EESURRECTION 391 " Permit me, your Excellency, I shall finish it myself," said the artist, getting up. " I feel the presence." " Very well, finish it," the general said, in a resolute and severe voice, while with a resolute and even gait he directed the long steps of his parallel feet to the cabinet. " Glad to see you." The general said ^hese gracious words to Nekhlyiidov in a coarse voice, pointing to a chair at the writing-desk. "Have you been long in St. Petersburg ? " Nekhlyiidov told him that he had arrived but lately. " Is the princess, your mother, well." " Mother is dead." *' Pardon me, I am very sorry. My son told me that he had met you." The general's son was making the same career as his father. After leaving the military academy, he served in the detective bureau, and was very proud of the business which there was entrusted to him. His occupation con- sisted in supervising the spies. " Yes, I have served with your father. We were friends and comrades. Well, are you serving ? " " No." The general shook his head disapprovingly. " I have a request to make of you, general," said Nekh- lyiidov. " Oh, oh, I am very glad. What can I do for you ? " " If my request is improper, you will forgive me, I hope. But I must communicate it to you." « What is it ? " " There is a certain Gur^vich confined in the fortress. His mother wishes to have an interview with him, or, at least, to let him have certain books." The general expressed neither joy nor displeasure at Nekhlyudov's question ; he bent his head sidewise and closed his eyes, as though lost in thought. He really was not thinking of anything and was not even inter- 392 RESUKKECTION ested in Nekhlyudov's question, knowing very well that he would answer him in accordance with the laws. He was simply taking a mental rest, thinking of nothing. " This, you see, does not depend on me," he said, after a moment's rest. " In regard to interviews there is a regulation confirmed by his Majesty, and whatever is decreed there is carried out. As to the books, we have a hbrary, and they get such books as are permitted to them." " But he needs scientific books. He wants to work." " Don't believe that." The general was silent for a while. " That is not for work. Nothing but unrest." " But they have to do something to occupy their time in their heavy situation," said Nekhlyiidov. " They always complain," said the general. " We know them." He spoke of them in general as of some especially bad tribe of men. " They are furnished such comforts here as one will rarely find in places of confinement," continued the general. And, as though to justify himself, he began to tell in detail of all the comforts which the prisoners had, as though the chief aim of this institution consisted in pro- viding pleasant quarters for its inmates. " Formerly, it is true, it was very hard, but now they are kept nicely. They eat three courses, and one of these is meat, either forcemeat or cutlets. On Sundays they get a fourth course of sweetmeats. May God only grant that every Russian have such meals ! " The general like all old people, having once come to a subject which he knew by rote, kept saying that which he had repeated so often in order to prove their exactions and ingratitude. " They get books, both of a rehgious character, and old periodicals. We have a hbrary. But they do not like RESURRECTION 393 to read. At first they seem to be interested, and after- ward the new books remain half uncut, while the pages of the old ones are not turned over. We have tried them," said the baron, with a distant resemblance to a smile, " by putting pieces of paper in. The papers remain untouched. Nor are they kept from writing," continued the general. " They get slates and pencils, so that they may write for their amusement. They may rub ofi' what they have written, and write over again. But they don't write. No, they very soon become very quiet. Only in the beginning they are restless ; and later they grow fat, and become very quiet," said the general, without suspect- ing what terrible meaning his words had. Nekhlyudov listened to his hoarse old voice ; he looked at his stiffened joints ; at his dimmed eyes beneath his gray brows ; at his shaven, overhanging, old cheeks, supported by a military collar ; at the white cross, which this man prided himself on, especially since he had received it for an extraordinarily cruel and wholesale murder, — and he understood that it was useless for him to explain to him the meaning of his words. But he, nevertheless, made an effort over himself and asked about another affair, about prisoner Shiistov, about whom he had received that day the information that she would be released. " Shustov ? Shiistov — I do not remember them all by name. There are so many of them," he said, appar- ently reproaching them for overcrowding. He rang a bell and sent for his secretary. While they went to fetch his secretary, he tried to persuade Nekhlyudov that he should serve, saying that honest and noble-minded people, including himself in the number, were especially useful to the Tsar — " and the country," he added, appar- ently as an adornment of speech. "I am old, but I am serving so far as my strength permits." The secretary, a dried-up, lean man, with restless, clever 394 RESURRECTION eyes, arrived and informed them that Shustov was kept in some strange fortification, and that no document in refer- ence to lier had been received. " We shall send her away the day we get the papers. We do not keep them, and we are not particularly proud of their visits," said the general, again with an attempt at a playful smile, which only contorted his old face. Nekhlyiidov arose, trying to repress an expression of a mixed feeling of disgust and pity, which he experienced in regard to this terrible old man. The old man, on his side, thought that he ought not to be too severe with a frivolous and, obviously, erring son of his comrade, and ought not to let him go away without giving him some instruction. " Good-bye, my dear. Don't be angry with me for what I am going to tell you. I tell you this because I like you. Don't keep company with the people who are confined here. There are no innocents. They are all a very immoral lot. We know them," he said, in a tone which did not admit the possibility of a doubt. He really did not doubt, not because it was actually so, but because, if it were not so, he could not regard himself as a respected hero who was finishing a good life in a worthy manner, but as a villain who had been selling, and in his old age still continued to sell, his conscience. " Best of all, serve," he continued. " The Tsar needs honest men — and so does the country," he added. " If I and all the others refused to serve, as you do, who would be left ? We condemn the order of things, and yet do not ourselves wish to aid the government." Nekhlyiidov drew a deep breath, made a low bow, con- descendingly pressed the large, bony hand stretched out to him, and left the room. The general shook his head in disapproval, and, rubbing the small of his back, again entered the drawing-room, where the artist was awaiting him, with the answer from KESURRECTION 395 the spirit of Joan of Arc all written out. The general put on his eye-glasses and read : " They will recognize each other after their lights, which will emanate from their ethereal bodies." " Ah/' the general said approvingly, closing his eyes, " but how are you going to tell them if the light is the same with all ? " he asked, and again sat down at the table, linking his fingers with those of the artist. Nekhlyiidov's cabman came out of the gate. " It is dull here, sir," he said, turning to Nekhlyudov, " and I wanted to leave, without waiting for your return." " Yes, it is dull," Nekhlyudov agreed with him, inhaling the air with full lungs, and restfully gazing at the smoky clouds that were scudding along the sky, and at the sparkling waves of the Neva, rippling from the boats and steamers that were moving upon it. XX. On the following day Maslova's case was to be heard, aud Nekhlyiidov went to the Senate, The lawyer met him at the grand entrance of the Senate building, where several carriages were standing already. Mounting the magnificent parade staircase to the second story, the lawyer, who knew all the corridors, turned to the left to a door, on which was written the year of the introduction of the code of laws governing the courts. Having taken off his overcoat in the first long room, and having learned from the porter that the Senators had all arrived, and the last had just entered, Fanarin, now left in his dress coat and his white tie on his white bosom, passed into the next room with cheerful self-confidence. Here there was, on the right, a large safe and then a table, and, on the left, a winding staircase, down which now came an ele- gant-looking official in a vice-uniform, with a portfolio under his arm. In this room the attention was attracted by a patriar- chal old man, with long white hair, in a jacket aud gray pantaloons, near whom stood two assistants in a respect- ful attitude. The old man with the white hair went up to the safe, and was lost in it. Just then Fanarin, having spied a comrade of his, a lawyer in a white tie and in a dress coat, immediately entered into an animated conver- sation with him. In the meantime Nekhlyiidov watched those who were in the room. There were in all about fifteen persons present, among them two ladies. One of these wore eye-glasses, and the other was a gray-haired old woman. The case which was to be heard was in regard 396 KESUKRECTION 397 to a libel of the press, and therefore more than a usual audience had assembled, — they were nearly all people belonging to the newspaper world. The bailiff, a ruddy-faced, handsome man, in a magnif- icent uniform, with a note in his hand, walked over to Fauarin to ask him what his case was, and, having heard that it was the Maslova case, he made a note of something and went away. Just then the door of the safe was opened, and the patriarchal old man emerged from it, no longer in his jacket, but in a galloon-embroidered gar- ment, with metal plates on his breast, which made him look like a bird. This ridiculous costume apparently embarrassed the old man himself, and he walked more rapidly than was his custom through the door opposite the entrance. " That is Be, a most respectable man," Fanarin said to Nekhlyiidov, and, introducing him to his colleague, told him of the extremely interesting case, as he thought, which was to be heard now. The case soon began, and Nekhlyudov, with the rest of the audience, went into the hail on the left. All of them, Fanarin included, went behind a barrier, to seats intended for the public. Only the St. Petersburg lawyer stepped out beyond the barrier to a writing-desk. The hall of the meetings of the Senate was smaller than the one of the Circuit Court, simpler in its appoint- ments, and differed from it only in that the table, at which the Senators were sitting, was not covered with green cloth, but with crimson velvet, embroidered with gold lace ; all the other attributes of the execution of justice were the same : there was the Mirror of Laws,i the emblem of duplicity — the holy image, and the emblem of servility — the portrait of the emperor. The bailiff announced in the same solemn voice, " The court is com- 1 A triangular prism with certain laws promulgated by Peter the Great printed upon it, to be found in every covirt. 398 RESURRECTION ing." All rose in the same manner; the Senators, in their uniforms, walked in in the same way, sat down in the same way in the chairs with the high backs, and in the same way leaned over the table, trying to look natural. There were four Senators : the presiding judge, Nikitin, a clean-shaven man, with a narrow face and steel eyes ; Wolf, with compressed lips and white little hands, with which he fingered some sheets of paper ; then Skovoroduikov, a fat, massive, pockmarked man; — a learned jurist ; and the fourth, Be, that patriarchal old man who had been the last to arrive. With the Senators came out the secretary-general and the associate prosecut- ing attorney-general, a middle-sized, spare, clean-shaven young man, with a very dark skin and black, melancholy eyes. In spite of his strange uniform, and although six years had passed since Nekhlyudov had last seen him, he at once recognized in him the best friend of his student days. "Is this Associate Prosecuting Attorney-General Sel^- nm?" " Yes. Why ? " " I know him well. He is a fine man — " " And an excellent associate prosecuting attorney-gen- eral, who knows his business. You ought to have asked him," said Eanarin. " He will in any case be conscientious," said Nekhlyu- dov, recalling his close relations and friendship with Sel^nin, and his gentle qualities of purity, honesty, and decency, in the best sense of the word. " It is too late now," Fanarin whispered to him, paying strict attention to the report of the case. The case Vvas an appeal to the verdict of the Superior Court which had left unchanged the judgment of the Circuit Court. Nekhlyudov listened and tried to understand the mean- ing of that which was going on before him, but, just as RESURRECTION 399 in the Circuit Court, the chief impediment to compre- hension lay in the fact that they were not considering that which naturally seemed to be the main point, but a side issue. The case under advisement was an article in a newspaper, in which the rascality of a presiding offi- cer of a certain stock company had been brought to light. It seemed that the only important question was whether really the president of the stock company was fleecing his creditors, and what means were to be taken to stop him from stealing. But that was not at all considered. The only question they discussed was whether the pub- lisher had a legal right to print the article of the feuille- ton writer, or not, and what crime he had committed by printing it : whether it was a defamation or libel, and how defamation includes libel, or libel defamation, and other unintelligible points for common people about various articles and decrees of some general department. There was one thing which Nekhlyiidov understood, and that was that, notwithstanding the fact that Wolf, who made the report on the case, and who on the previous day had so sternly informed him that the Senate could not consider the essence of a case, in this particular affair reported with an apparent bias in favour of the annul- ment of the verdict of the Superior Court, and that Sel^nin, quite out of keeping with his characteristic re- serve, suddenly hotly expressed an opposite opinion. The impassionedness of the ever reserved SeMnin was based on the fact that he knew the president of the stock com- pany as unreliable in business matters, and that he had accidentally found out that Wolf had almost on the eve of the hearing of this case been present at a luxurious dinner given by this suspicious business man. When now Wolf reported in an apparently biassed, even though very cautious, manner on the case, Sel^nin became excited and expressed his opinion with greater vigour than was necessary for such a usual matter. His speech evidently 400 RESURRECTION offended Wolf : he blushed, twitched his muscles, made silent gestures of surprise, and with a very dignified and offended look retired with the other Senators to the con- sultation-room. " What is your case ? " the bailiff again asked Fanarin, the moment the Senators had retired. " I have told you before that I am here to hear Mas- lova's case," said Fanarin. "That is so. The case will come up to-day. But — " " What is it ? " asked the lawyer. " You see, it has been put down without discussion, and the Senators will hardly come out after the announce- ment of their decision. But I shall inform them — " " What do you mean ? " " I shall inform them," and the bailiff made a note of something on the paper. The Senators actually intended, after announcing their decision in the libel-suit, to finish all the other business, including Maslova's case, at tea and cigarettes, without leaving the consultation-room. XXI. The moment the Senators sat down at the table of the consultation-room, Wolf began in a very animated manner to adduce the reasons why the case ought to be annulled. The presiding Senator, who was as a rule not well dis- posed, happened to be in an unusually bad humour. Listening to the case during the session, he had formed his opinion, and so he now sat lost in thought, without paying any attention to what Wolf was saying. His thought was centred on the consideration of w^hat he had written the day before in his memoirs in regard to Vilyanov's appointment, instead of him, to that impor- tant post which he had long wished to get. President Nikitin was very firmly convinced that his reflections on the officials of the highest two ranks, with whom he came in contact during the time of his service, formed very important historical material. Having on the previous day written a chapter, in which he gave some hard knocks to some officials of the first two classes for having pre- vented him, as he formulated it, from saving Eussia from the destruction into which the present rulers were draw- ing it, — but in reality for having kept him from getting a larger salary than he now was receiving, — he now was meditating on the fact that this circumstance would have an entirely new light thrown upon it for the use of pos- terity. " Yes, of course," he replied to Wolf's words which he had addressed to him, but wliich he had not heard. Be listened with a sad countenance to what Wolf 401 402 RESURRECTION was saying, drawing garlands on the paper which was lying before him. Be was a liberal of the purest water. He sacredly preserved the traditions of the sixties, and if he ever departed from his severe im- partiality it was always in favour of liberalism. Thus, in the present case, apart from the fact that the stock speculator, who had brought the accusation of libel, was an unclean individual, Be was for letting the complaint remain without consequences because this accusation of libel against a writer was a restraint upon the freedom of the press. When Wolf had finished his proofs, Be, without having finished drawing a garland, with sadness, — he was aggrieved that he had to prove such truisms, — in a soft, pleasant voice, gently, simply, and convincingly proved the groundlessness of the complaint, and, lower- ing his head with its white hair, continued to draw the garland. Skovorodnikov, who was sitting opposite Wolf, and who was all the time pulling his beard and moustache into his mouth with his fat fingers, the moment Be ceased talking, stopped chewing his beard, and in a loud, creaking voice said that, notwithstanding the fact that the president of the stock company was a great scoundrel, he would be for the annulment of the verdict if there were legal reasons for it, but as such were lacking, he seconded the opinion expressed by Ivan Sem^novich (Be), he said, enjoying the sting which he had thus given to Wolf. The presiding Senator sided with Skovorodnikov, and the case was decided in the negative. Wolf was dissatisfied, especially since he was, so to say, accused of dishonest partiality. However, he pretended to be indifferent and opened the next case to be reported upon, that of Maslova, and buried himself in it. In the meantime the Senators rang the bell and asked for tea ; they began to discuss an affair which, together vsith Kamenski's duel, then interested all the Petersburgians. RESURRECTION 40 Q It was the case of a director of a department who had been convicted of a crime provided for in Article 995. " What baseness," Be said, in disgust. " What evil do you see in it ? I shall show you in our literature a plan of a German writer who proposes point- blank that this should not be regarded as a crime, and that marriage between two men be permitted," said Skovorodnikov, eagerly sucking in the smoke from a crushed cigarette which he was holding at the roots of his fingers, near the palm of his hand, and bursting out into a loud laugh. " It is impossible," said Be. " I shall show it to you," said Skovorodnikov, quoting the full title of the work, and even the year and place of pubhcation. " They say he is to be appointed governor in some Siberian city," said Nikitin. " That is all right. The bishop will come out to meet him with the cross. They ought to have a bishop of the same kind. I could recommend a bishop to them," said Skovorodnikov, and, throwing the stump of the ciga- rette into the ash-tray, he took into his mouth as much as he could of his beard and moustache, and began to chew at them. Just then the bailiff, who had entered, informed them of the lawyer's and Nekhlyiidov's desire to be present at the discussion of Alaslova's case. " Now this case," said Wolf, " is a whole romance," and he told all he knew about Nekhlvudov's relations with Maslova. After having talked of this, and having fin- ished smoking their cigarettes and drinking their tea, the Senators went into the hall of sessions, announced their decision in the previous case, and took up Maslova's. Wolf in his thin voice reported in a very detailed manner en Maslova's appeal for annulment, and again spoke not entirely without impartiality, but with the 404 RESURRECTION manifest desire to have the judgment of the court annulled. " Have you anything to add ? " the presiding Senator addressed Fanarin. Fanarin arose, and, expanding his broad white chest, began, by points, and with remarkable impressiveness and precision, to prove the departure of the court in six points from the exact meaning of the law, and, besides, took the liberty of touching, though briefly, on the merits of the case itself, and on the crying injustice of the verdict. The tone of Fanarin's short but strong speech was to the effect that he begged the Senate's indulgence for insisting on something which the Senators, in their sagacity and judicial wisdom, saw and understood better than he, saying that he did so only because his duty demanded it. After Fanarin's speech, there seemed to be not the least doubt but that the Senate would reverse the decision of the court. Having finished his speech, Fanarin smiled a victorious smile. Looking at his lawyer, and seeing this smUe, Nekhlyil- dov was convinced that the case was won. But when he glanced at the Senators, he noticed that Fanarin was the only one who was smiling and triumphing. The Senators and the associate prosecuting attorney-general neither smiled nor triumphed, but had the aspect of people who felt ennui, and who were saying, " We have heard a lot of your kind of people, and that all leads to nothing." They were all, apparently, glad when the lawyer got through and stopped delaying them. Immediately after the end of the lawyer's speech, the presiding officer turned to the associate prosecuting attor- ney-general. SeMnin clearly and precisely expressed him- self in a few words against the reversal of the judgment, finding the causes for the annulment insufficient. There- upon the Senators arose and went away to hold their consultation. In the consultation-room the votes were divided. Wolf was for the repeal. Be having grasped RESUREECTION 405 the whole matter, also very warmly sided with the annul- ment, vividly presenting to his associates a picture of the court and the misunderstanding of the jury, just as he had comprehended it very correctly. Nikitin, who always stood for severity in general and for severe formality, was against it. The whole affair depended on Skovorodnikov's vote. He cast it against a reversal chiefly because Nekli- lyudov's determination to marry this girl in the name of moral demands was in the highest degree distasteful to him. Skovorodnikov was a materialist and a Darwinist, and considered all manifestations of abstract morahty, or, still worse, of rehgiousness, not only a contemptible madness, but a personal affront. All this interest in the prostitute, and the presence in the Senate of a famous lawyer, who was defending her, and of Nekhlyudov himself, was ex- tremely distasteful to him. And thus, he stuck his beard into his mouth and, making a grimace, pretended not to know anything about the affair except that the causes for annulment were insufficient, and that, therefore, he agreed with the president in disregarding the appeal. The appeal was denied. XXII. " Tekkible ! " said Nekhlyiidov, walking into the wait- ing-room with the lawyer, who was arranging his portfolio. " In a most palpable case they stickle for form, and refuse it. Terrible ! " " The case was spoilt in court," said the lawyer. " And Sel^niu is for a refusal ! Terrible, terrible ! " Nekhlyiidov continued to repeat. " What is to be done now ? " " Let us appeal to his Majesty. Hand in the petition while you are here. I shall write it out for you." Just then thick-set Wolf, in his stars and uniform, came into the waiting-room and walked over to Nekhlyiidov. " What is to be done, dear prince ? There were not any sufficient causes," he said, shrugging his narrow shoulders and closing his eyes. He passed on. After Wolf came Sel^nin, having learned from the Senators that Nekhlyiidov, his former friend, was there. " I did not expect to fiud you here," he said, going up to Nekhlyiidov, smiling with his lips, while his eyes re- mained sad. " I did not know you were in St. Petersburg." " And I did not know that you were prosecuting attor- ney-general — " " Associate," Sel^nin corrected him. " What are you doing in the Senate ? " he asked, looking sadly and gloomily at his friend. " I heard that you were in St. Petersburg. But what brings you here ? " " Here ? I came here, hoping to find justice and to save an innocent condemned womap." " What woman ? 406 HESURRECTION 407 " She whose case has just been decided." " Oh, Maslova's affair," Sel^niu said, recalling it. " An entirely uufoimded appeal." " The question is uot in the appeal, but in the woman, who is uot guilty and yet condemned." Sel(5nin heaved a sigh : " Very likely, but — " " Not very likely, but absolutely — " " How do you know ? " "Because I was one of the jury. I know where we made a mistake." Seleniu fell to musing. " You ought to have announced it then and there," he said. " I did." " You ought to have written it down in the protocol. If that had been in the appeal for annulment — " " But it was manifest as it is that the verdict was senseless." " The Senate has no right to say so. If the Senate should take the liberty of annulling the judgments of the courts on the basis of their own views of their justice, not only the Senate would lose every point of support and would be rather in danger of violating justice than establishing it," Selenin said, recalling the previous case, " but the verdicts of the juries would also lose their meaning." " I know this much : the woman is absolutely innocent, and the last hope to save her from an unmerited punish- ment is gone. The highest court has confirmed a case of absolute illegality." " It has not confirmed it, because it has not considered, and it cannot consider, the merits of the case itself," said SeMnin, blinking. Selenin, who was always busy at home and never went out in society, had apparently heard nothing of Nekhlyu- dov's romance; and Nekhlyiidov, being aware of this, decided that it was not necessary for him to speak of his relations with Maslova. 408 RESUKRECTION " You, no doubt, are stopping with your aunt," he added, evidently wishing to change the subject. " I heard only yesterday from her that you were here. The countess invited me to be with you at the meeting of the visiting preacher," said Sel^uin, smiling with his lips only. " Yes, I was there, but went away in disgust," angrily said Nekhlyiidov, provoked at Sel^nin for changing the subject. " But why in disgust ? It is, nevertheless, a mani- festation of religious feeling, even though one-sided and sectarian," said Sel^nin. " It is nothing but some wild insipidity," said Nekh- lyiidov. " Not at all. The only strange thing about it is that we know so little the teachings of our own church that we receive our fundamental dogmas as a kind of new reve- lation," said Selt^nin, as though hastening to express his views, which were new to his old friend. Nekhlyudov looked at SeMnin with surprised attention. Seleuin lowered his eyes, in w^hich there was an expression not only of sadness, but of hostility as well. " Do you believe in the dogmas of the church ? " Nekhlyudov asked. " Of course I do," Sel^nin replied, gazing with a straight and dead stare at Nekhlyudov. Nekhlyudov sighed. " Eemarkable," he said. " However, we shall speak of it later," said Sel^nin. " I am coming," he turned to the bailiff, who had walked up to him with a respectful gait. " We must by all means see each other," he added, with a sigh. " But shall I find you at home ? You will always find me at home at seven o'clock, at dinner. Nad^zhdinskaya," and he gave the number of the house. " Much water has flowed since then," he added, walking away, and again smihng with his lips alone. " I shall come if I have time," said Nekhlyudov, feel- RESURRECTION 409 ing that Sel^nin, who had once been a close and favourite friend of his, had suddenly become, in consequence of this short conversation, strange, distant, and unintelligible, if not hostile. XXIIL When Nekhlyudov knew SeMnin as a student, he was a good son, a faithful comrade, and, accordmg to his years, a cultivated man of the world, with much tact, always elegant and handsome, and, at the same time, of extraor- dinary truthfulness and honesty. He studied beautifully without any effort and without a sign of pedantry, receiv- ing gold medals for his themes. Not only in words, but in deeds, he made serving people the aim of his youthful life. This service he never presented to himself in any other form than as a government service, and therefore, the moment he graduated, he systematically passed in review all the activities to which he might devote his energy, and decided that he would be most useful in the second division of the Private Chancery, which has charge of the making of laws, and so he entered there. But, in spite of the most precise and conscientious execution of everything demanded of him, he did not in this service find a satisfaction for his desire to be useful, and could not appease his conscience with the thought that he was doing the right thing. This discontent was so strength- ened by his conflicts with the petty and vainglorious superior immediately above him, that he left the second division, and transferred himself to the Senate. Here he was more at ease, but the feeling of discontent pursued him still. He did not cease feeling that it was all different from what he had expected and what it ought to be. Wliile occupying his post in the Senate, his relative obtained for him an appointment as Yunker of 410 llfiSURRECTION 411 the Chamber, and he was obliged to drive out in an em- broidered uniform, and a white linen apron, in a carriage, to thank all kinds of people for having promoted him to the dignity of a lackey. However much he tried, he could not discover a sensible explanation for this office. And he felt even more than in the service that it was " not it ; " at the same time he could not refuse this appointment, on the one hand, in order not to offend those who were convinced that they had given him a great pleasure, while, on the other, the appointment flattered the lower quahties of his nature, and it gave him pleasure to see himself in the mirror in an em- broidered gold lace uniform, and to enjoy that respect which his appointment elicited from certain people. The same thing happened with him in regard to his marriage. They arranged for him a very brilliant mar- riage, from the standpoint of society. And he married, mainly because by refusing to he would have offended and pained the bride, who was very anxious to marry him, and those who had arranged the marriage for him ; as also, because his marrying a young, sweet, aristocratic maiden flattered his vanity and gave liim pleasure. But the marriage soon proved to be " not it " in a far greater way than the service and his court duties. After the first baby was born, his wife did not want to have any more children, and began to lead a luxurious society life, in which he was compelled to take part against his will. She was not particularly beautiful, was faithful to him, and, although she poisoned her husband's life by it, and herself gained nothing from it but an expenditure of terrible strength, and weariness, she continued intently to lead such a life. All attempts of his to change this existence were wrecked, as against a stone wall, against her conviction that it had to be so, in which opinion she was supported by her relatives and acquaintances. The child, a girl, with long golden locks and bare legs, 412 RESURRECTION was entirely estranged from her father, more especially because she was brought up differently from what he had wished her to be. Between the married couple naturally arose misunderstanding and even an absence of any desire to understand each other, and a quiet, silent struggle, con- cealed from outsiders and moderated by proprieties, which made hfe for him at home exceedingly hard. Thus, his domestic life proved, even more than liis service and court appointment, to be " not it." His relation to religion was, however, most "not it." Like all people of his circle and time, he had, without the least effort, by his mental growth, broken those fetters of religious superstitions in which he had been brought up, and he did not know liimself when that liberation had taken place. Being a serious and honest man, he did not conceal this freedom from the super- stitions of the official religion while he was still young, during his student days and his friendship with Nekh- Iviidov. But with advancing years and rise in service, especially during the reaction of conservatism which had in the meantime taken possession of society, this spiritual free- dom stood in his way. Not only in his domestic rela- tions, especially at the death of his father, at the masses for his soul, and because his mother desired him to pre- pare himself for the sacrament, and public opinion partly demanded this, — but even in his service he had continu- ally to be present at prayers, dedications, and thanks- givings, and other similar services : hardly a day passed without his coming in contact with some external forms of religion, which it was impossible to avoid. Being present at these services, one of two things had to be done : either he had to pretend (which, with his truthful character he never could do) that he believed in that in which he did not believe, or, acknowledging all these external forms to be a he, so to arrange his life as not to RESURRECTION" 413 be compelled to be present at what he considered to be a lie. But, in order to accomplish this apparently unimportant deed, very much had to be done : it was necessary to take up an unending struggle with all his close friends ; it was necessary to change his position, to give up his service, and to sacrifice all his usefulness, which he now was con- vinced he brought people by his service, and hoped even to increase in the future. And in order to do this, it was necessary to be convinced of the justice of his views. Of this he was as firmly convinced as every cultivated man of our time must be of the justice of his sound reason, if he knows anything of history, and if he knows anything of the origin of rehgion in general, and of the origin and decay of the Church-Christian religion in particular. He could not help knowing that he was right in refusing to acknowledge the truth of the Church teachings. But, under the pressure of the conditions of life, he, a veracious man, permitted himself a small lie, which consisted in saying to himself that, in order to assert that the sense- lessness is senseless, it is necessary first to study that senselessness. This was a small he, but it led him to that great lie, in which he now was stuck fast. In putting the question to himself whether that Ortho- doxy, in which he had been born and brought up, which was demanded of him by all those who surrounded him, and without which he could not continue his useful ac- tivity among men, was right, — he had already prejudged it. Therefore, in order to elucidate this question, he did not take Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Kant, but the philosophical works of Hegel, and the religious books of Vinet and Khomyakdv, and he naturally found in them what he wanted : a semblance of acquiescence and justi- fication of that religious teaching in which he had been educated, wliich his reason had long rejected, but without which all his life was filled with annoyances, and by the 414 RESURRECTION acceptance of which all these annoyances would at once be removed. He appropriated all those customary sophisms that the separate reason of man cannot comprehend truth, that truth is revealed only to the aggregate of humankind, that the only means for conceiving it is the revelatiou, that rev- elation is in the keeping of the church, and so forth. Since then he could calmly, without being conscious of the lie, be present at prayers and masses, take the sacra- ment, 'and cross himself before the images, and he could continue in his post, which gave him the consciousness of his utihty and a consolation in his cheerless domestic life. He thought that he believed, and yet he was con- scious with all his being, even more than in anything else, that this faith was absolutely " not it." And it was this that made his eyes look so melancholy. And it was this which caused him, at the sight of Nekhlyiidov, whom he used to know when these hes had not taken possession of him, to recall the time when he was still different ; especially after he had hastened to hint to him about his religious views, he felt more than ever that all this was " not it," and he was overcome by painful mel- ancholy. The same sensation took possession of Nekh- lyiidov, after the first impression of joy in seeing liis old friend had passed. It was for this reason that, although they had promised to see each other, neither of them sought the meeting, and they never again met during Nekhlyiidov's stay in St. Petersburg. XXIV. Upon leaving the Senate, Nekhlyiidov walked down the sidewalk with the lawyer. The lawyer ordered his carriage to follow him, and began to tell Nekhlyiidov the history of that director of a department of whose convic- tion the Senators had been talking, and who, instead of being condemned to hard labour, was to be appointed governor in Siberia. He told him the whole story, and all its nastiness, and also expatiated with especial pleasure on the story of the highly placed persons who had stolen the money which had been collected for the construction of the unfinished monument past which they had driven in the morning ; and of how the mistress of a certain man had made millions at the Exchange ; and of how one had sold and the other had bought a wife ; then he began his narrative about the rascalities and all kinds of crimes of the higher officials of government, who were not confined in jails, but occupied president's chairs in various institu- tions. These stories, of which the supply seemed to be inexhaustible, caused the lawyer much pleasure, since they gave evident proof of the fact that the means which he, the lawyer, employed to make money were quite lawful and innocent in comparison with the means employed for the same purpose by the highest functionaries at St. Petersburg. Therefore, the lawyer was very much sur- prised when Nekhlyiklov did not wait for the end of the last story about the crimes of the officials, but bade him good-bye and took a cab to drive him home. Nekhlyudov felt very sad. He was sad more especially because the Senate's refusal confirmed the senseless torture 415 416 EESURRECTION of innocent Maslova, and because this refusal made more difficult his unchangeable determination to unite his fate with hers. This melancholy was increased by those terri- ble stories of the reigning evil, of which the lawyer had been telling him with such delight ; in addition to this, he continually thought of the grim, cold, repelling look of Sel^nin, whom he had known as a gentle, frank, and noble- minded man. When Nekhlyildov returned home, the porter, with a certain contemptuous look, handed him a note which a certain woman, so he expressed himself, had written in the porter's lodge. It was a note from Miss Shustov's mother. She wrote that she had come to thank the bene- factor and saviour of her daughter, and, besides, to beg and implore him to call at their house, on the Vasilev Island, Fifth Avenue, Number so and so. This was very neces- sary for the sake of Vy^ra Efr^movna. She said he need not be afraid of being annoyed by expressions of gratitude, that this would not even be mentioned, but that they would be very happy to see him. If he could, he should come the next morning. There was also another note from his former comrade, Aid-de-camp Bogatyr^v, whom Nekhlyudov had asked to hand in person to the emperor the petition in the name of the sectarians. Bogatyr^v wrote in his large, firm hand that he would hand the petition to the emperor, as he had promised, but that it had suddenly occurred to him that it would be well for Nekhlyildov to go and see the person on whom the matter depended, and to ask him to use his influence. After the impressions of the last few days in St. Peters- burg, Nekhlyildov was in a state of complete hopelessness as regards the success of anything. His plans, which he had formed in Moscow, appeared to him like those youthful dreams, in which people are invariably disenchanted when they enter life. Still, while he was in St. Petersburg, he RESURRECTION 417 regarded it as his duty to fulfil every tiling he had set out to do, aud so he resolved to call on Bogatyr^v, after which he would go and see the person on whom the affair of the sectarians depended. He drew the petition of the sectarians out of his port- foho and began to read it, when the lackey of Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna knocked at the door and entered, in- viting liim up-stairs to tea. Nekhlyvidov said he would be there at once. Having put away his papers, he went to his aunt's rooms. On his way up, he looked through the window into the street and saw the span of Mariette's bays, and he suddenly felt unexpectedly happy, and wished to smile. Mariette, in a hat no longer black, but of some bright colour, and a many-coloured dress, was sitting with a cup in her hand near the countess's armchair, and was chat- tering, beaming with her beautiful, smiling eyes. As Nekhlyudov entered the room, Mariette had just finished telling something funny, something indecently funny, — this Nekhlyiidov saw from the character of the laughter, — so that the good-natured, mustachioed Countess Eka- terina Ivanovna shook with her stout body, rolling from laughter, while Mariette, with a peculiarly mischievous expression, twisting her smiling mouth a little, and turn- ing her energetic and merry face to one side, looked silently at her interlocutor. Nekhlyiidov understood from the few words which he heard that they had been speaking about the second latest St. Petersburg news, — the episode of the Siberian governor, and that it was in this region that Mariette had said something so funny that the countess could not for a long time control herself. " You will kill me," she said, coughing. Nekhlyiidov greeted them aud sat down near them. He was on the point of condemning Mariette for her frivolity, when she, noticing the serious and shghtly 418 RESURRECTION dissatisfied expression of his face, immediately changed, not only the expression of hers, Lnt also her whole mood, in order that she might please him, ^ — and this she had desired to do ever since she had met him. She suddenly grew serious, discontented with her life, seeking some- thing, and striving for sumething. She did not exactly simulate the mood Nekhlyudov was in, but actually appropriated it to herself, although she would not have been able to express in words what it consisted in, • She asked him how he had succeeded in his affairs. He told her about his failure in the Senate and about his meeting with Sel^nin. " Ah, what a pure soul ! Now this is really a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. A pure soul," both ladies used the invariable epithet under which Sel^nin was known in society. " What kind of a woman is his wife ? " Nekhlyudov asked. " She ? Well, I am not going to condemn her. But she does not understand him." " Is it possible he, too, was for denying the appeal ? " she asked, with sincere sympathy. " That is terrible, and I am very sorry for her ! " she added, with a sigh. He frowned, and, wishing to change the subject, began to speak of Miss Shustov, who had been confined in the prison, and now was released by her intercession. He thanked her for her appeal to her husband and wanted to tell her how terrible it w^as to think that that woman and her whole family suffered only because nobody thought of them, but before he had a chance to finish saying what he wanted to say, she herself expressed her indignation. " Don't tell me," she said. " The moment my husband told me that she could be released, I was struck by that idea. Why was she kept, if she is innocent ? " she KESUKRECTION 419 said, expressing ISTekhlyiidov's thought. " It is shocking, shocking ! " Countess Ekaterma Ivanovna saw that Mariette was coquetting with her nephew, and this amused her. " Do you know what ? " she said, when they grew silent, " come to-morrow to Ahne's house: Kiesewetter will be there. And you too," she turned to Mariette. " II vous a remarque" she said to her nephew. " He told me that everything you said — I told him about it ■ — was a good sign, and that you will certainly come to Christ. Go there by all means. Tell him, Mariette, to come, and come yourself." " Countess, in the first place, I have no right to advise the prince," said Mariette, looking at Nekhlyiidov, and with this glance establishing between him and herself a full agreement in regard to the words of the countess and to evangelism in general, " and in the second place, I am not very fond, you know — " " You always do everything topsyturvy and in your own way." " How so in my own way ? I believe like the com- monest kind of a woman. And, in the third place," she continued, " I shall go to the French Theatre to-morrow." " Ah ! Have you seen that — well, what is her name ? " said Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna. Mariette helped her out with the name of a famous French actress. " Go there by all means, she is remarkable." " Whom am I to see first, ma tante, the actress or the preacher ? " said Nekhlyiidov, smiling. " Please, don't catch me at words." " I think, first the preacher and then the French actress, otherwise I shall lose all my interest in the sermon," said Nekhlyiidov. " No, you had better begin with the French Theatre, and then repent of your sins," said Mariette. 420 RESURRECTION "Don't dare make fun of me! The preacher is one thina, and the theatre another. In order to be saved it is not necessary to make a face a yard long and weep all the time. One must beheve, and then you are happy." " Ma tante, you preach better than any preacher." "Do you know what," said Mariette, thoughtfully, " come to-morrow to my opera-box." " I am afraid I sha'n't be able — " The conversation was interrupted by the lackey's announcement of a visitor. It was the secretary of a charitable institution, of which the countess was the president. " He is a dreadfully tiresome man. I had better receive him in there. And then I shall come out here again. Give him tea to drink, Mariette," said the countess, walk- ing to the parlour, with her rapid, waddling gait. Mariette took off her glove and laid bare an energetic, sufficiently flat hand, with its ring-finger covered with rings. " Will you have a cup ? " she said, taking hold of the silver teapot over the spirit-lamp, and strangely spreading out her little finger. Her face became serious and sad. " It is always terrible, terrible and painful, for me to think that people, whose opinion I value, should con- found me with the situation in which I am placed." She looked as though ready to weep, as she was saying these words. Although, upon analysis, these words had either no sense at all, or only a very indefinite meaning, they seemed to Nekhlyudov to be of unusual depth, sincerity, and goodness, — for he was attracted by the glance of those sparkling eyes, which accompanied the words of the young, beautiful, and well-dressed woman. Nekhlyudov looked at her in silence, and could not tear his eyes away from her face. " You think that I do not understand you and every- RESURRECTION 421 thing that takes place within you. That which you have done is known to all. C'est le secret de polichinelle. And I rejoice in it and approve of it." " Eeally, there is nothing to rejoice in ; I have done so Httle as yet." " That makes no difference. I understand your feeling, and I understand her. Well, well, I sha'n't speak of it," she interrupted herself, noticing an expression of dissatis- faction on his face. " I also understand that, having seen all the suffering and all the horrors of the prisons," said Mariette, who had but the one wish, to attract him, with her feminine feeling guessing all that might be important and dear to him, " you wisli to succour all those people who suffer and suffer so terribly, so terribly from men, from indifference, from cruelty — I comprehend how one may give his life for it, and I myself should give up mine. But everybody has his lot — " " Are you dissatisfied with yours ? " " I ? " she asked, as though startled by such a question. " I have to be satisfied, and I am. But there is a worm which awakens — " " You ought not to permit it to fall asleep. You must trust this voice," said Nekhlyudov, submitting completely to the deception. Afterward Nekhlyudov often thought with shame of his whole conversation with her ; he thought of her words, which were not so much false as simulating his own, and of her face, feigning humble attention, as she listened to his recital of the horrors of the prison and of his impressions of the country. When the countess returned, they were conversing, not only as old, but as intimate friends, like those who under- stand each other in a throng of men, who do not compre- hend them. They spoke of the injustice of the government, of the sufferings of the unfortunates, of the poverty of the 422 KESURRECTION" masses, but in reality their eyes, which watched each other through the sounds of the conversation, kept asking, " Can you love me ? " and answered, " I can," and tlie sexual feeling, assuming the most unexpected and joyous aspect, drew tliem one to the other. As she was leaving, she told him that she was always ready to serve him to the best of her ability, and asked him to be sure and come to see her in the theatre on the fol- lowing evening, at least for a moment, as she had to talk to him about one important matter. " For when shall I see you again ? " she added, with a sigh, carefully putting the glove on her ring-bedecked hand. " Say that you will come." Nekhlyiidov promised he would. During that night, Nekhlyiidov, being all alone in his room, lay down on his bed and put out the light. He could not sleep for a long time. Thinking of Maslova, of the decree of the Senate, and yet of his determination to follow her, of bis renunciation of his rights to the land, there appeared suddenly before him, as though in reply to his questions, Mariette's face, her sigh, and her glance, when she said, " When shall I see you again ? " and her smile ; she appeared before him as clearly as though she were actually standing before him, and he smiled. " Am I doing well to go to Siberia ? And shall I be doing well in giving up my wealth ? " he asked himself. The answers to these questions on that clear St. Peters- burg night, which streamed in through the half-drawn blinds, were indistinct. Everything was mixed in his head. He called back his former mood, and thought of his former ideas, but they no longer had their former convincing power. " I have evoked all this in my imagination, and shall not be able to live according to it : I shall repent doing good," he said to himself, and, not being able to answer these questions, he experienced such a feeling of pining RESURRECTION 423 aud despair as he had not experienced for a long time. Unable to find liis way through the maze of these ques- tions, he fell into that heavy sleep which used to come over him after some great loss at cards. XXV. Upon awakening on the next morning, Nekhlyudov's first feeling was that he had on the previous day com- mitted some villainy. He began to reflect: there was no villainy, no bad act, but there were thoughts, bad thoughts, which were that all his present intentions, his marrying Katyusha, his gift of the land to the peasants, that all this was an unreahzable dream, that he would not carry it to its conclusion, that it was all artificial, unnatural, and that he ought to live as he had been living. There was no bad act, but there was that which was much worse than a bad act: there were those thoughts from which spring all bad deeds. A bad act may not be repeated, and one may repent of it ; but evil thoughts generate all evil deeds. A bad act only smooths out the path for another bad act ; while bad thoughts irrepressibly drag one down that path. Having recalled in his imagination all the thoughts of the previous evening, Nekhlyudov marvelled how it was he could have had any faith in them even for a moment. However new and difficult all that was which he in- tended to do, he knew that it was the only possible life for him, and that, however easy and natural it was for him to return to his former life, it would be his death. The temptation of the previous day now appeared to him analogous to the feeling of a man who has had a good sleep and still wishes, not to sleep, but to stay awhile in his bed, although he knows full well that it is time to 424 RESURRECTION 425 f get up in order to attend to an important and joyful matter. On that day, the last of his sojourn in St. Petersburg, he went early in the morning to the Shustovs, in the Vasilev Island. The lodgings of the Shustovs were in the second story. Nekhlyudov, following the janitor's indication, got to the back stairs, and mounted a straight, steep staircase, and walked straight into a hot, close kitchen, smelling of the cooking. An elderly woman with roUed-up sleeves, in an apron, and in glasses, was standing at the stove and mixing something in a steaming pan. "Whom do you wish?" she asked, sternly, looking above her glasses at the stranger. Nekhlyudov had barely mentioned his name, when the woman's face assumed a frightened and, at the same time, joyful expression. " prince ! " cried the woman, drying her hands on her apron. " But why did you come by the back staircase ? You are our benefactor. I am her mother. They had entirely ruined the girl. You are our saviour," she said, grasping Nekhlyiidov's hand and wishing to kiss it. " I was at your house yesterday. My sister in partic- ular asked me to go. She is here. This way, this way, please follow me," said Mother Shvistov, leading Nekhlyu- dov through a narrow door and a dark corridor, and on her way adjusting her tucked-up dress and her hair. "My sister is Kornilov, you have no doubt heard her name," she added, in a whisper, stopping before the door. " She has been mixed up in political affairs. She is a very clever woman." Having opened a door in the corridor, Mrs. Shilstov led Nekhlyudov into a small room, where, in front of a table, on a small sofa, sat a short, plump girl, in a striped chintz 426 RESURRECTION bodice, with waving blond hair, which encased her round and very pale face that resembled her mother's. Opposite to her sat the bent form of a young man with black moustache and beard, wearing the national shirt with the embroidered collar. They were evidently both so absorbed in their conversation that they turned around only after Nekhlyiidov had entered through the door. " Lida, Prince Nekhiyudov, the same — " The pale girl sprang up nervously, putting back a lock of hair whicli had strayed from behind her ear, and timidly fixed her large gray eyes on the stranger. " So you are that dangerous woman for whom Vy^ra Efr^movna has interceded," said Nekhiyudov, smiling, and extending his hand to her. " Yes, I am that woman," said Lidiya, and, opening wide her mouth, and thus displaying a row of beautiful white teeth, she smiled a kindly, childish smile. " It is aunty who was so anxious to see you. Aunty ! " she called out through the door, in a sweet, tender voice. " Vy^ra Efr^movna was very much aggrieved at your arrest," said Nekhiyudov. " Sit down here, or better still, here," said Lidiya, point- ing to a soft broken chair, from which the young man had just arisen. " My cousin, Zakharov," she said, noticing the glance wliich Nekhiyudov cast upon the young man. The young man, smiling as kindly a smile as Lidiya, greeted the guest, and, when Nekhiyudov sat down in his seat, took a chair from the window and sat down near him. From another door came a blond gymnasiast, about sixteen years of age, and silently sat down on the window- sill. " Vy^ra Efri^movna is a great friend of aunty's, but I hardly know her," said Lidiya. Just then a woman with a very sweet, intelligent face. RESURRECTION 427 in a white waist, girded by a leather belt, came out from the adjoining room. " Good morning. Thank you for having come," she began, the moment she had seated herself on the sofa near Lidiya. " Well, how is Vy^ra ? Have you seen her ? How does she bear her situation ? " "She does not complain," said Nekhlyudov. "She says that she is in Olympian transport." " Ah, Vy6'a, I recognize her," said the aunt, smiling, and shaking her head. " One must know her. She is a splendid personality. Everything for others, nothing for herself." " That is so. She did not wish anything for herself, but was concerned only about your niece. She was tor- mented more especially because she had been arrested without cause." "That is so," said the aunt, "it is a terrible affair! She has really suffered in my stead." " Not at all, aunty," said Lidiya. " I should have taken the papers even without you." "Permit me to know better," continued the aunt. "You see," she continued, turning to Nekhlyiidov, "everytliing began from a certain person's request that I should keep his papers for awhile. As I had no sepa- rate quarters, I took them to her. They made a raid on her that night, and took both the papers and her. They kept her all this time, and wanted her to tell from whom she had received them." "But I did not tell," Lidiya said rapidly, nervously twirling a lock of hair which was not at all in her way. " I do not say you did," her aunt retorted. " If they did take Mitiu, it was not through my fault," said Lidiya, blushing, and restlessly looking about her. "Do not even speak about it, Lidochka," said her mother. 428 KESUKRECTION " Let me tell about it," said Lidiya, no longer smiling, but blushing, and no longer adjusting her lock, but curl- ing it about her finger, and looking all the time about her. " You know what happened yesterday when you began to talk of it." "Not at all — let me alone, mamma. I did not say anything, but only kept silent. When he questioned me twice about aunty and about Mitin, I said nothing, and informed him that I should not answer his questions. Then that — Petrov — " " Petrov is a spy, a gendarme, and a great scoundrel," interposed the aunt, explaining her niece's words to Nekhlyudov. " Then he," continued Lidiya, in an agitated and hurried manner, " began to persuade me. ' All you will tell me,' he said, ' will hurt nobody ; on the contrary, by telling the truth, you will only free some innocent people whom we are tormenting for nothing.' I still insisted that I would not tell. Then he said : ' Very well, say nothing, only do not deny what I am going to say,' And he mentioned Mitin." " Don't talk," said her aunt. " aunt, don't interrupt me — " and she kept pulling her lock, and looking all around her, " and suddenly, imagine, on the following day I was informed by knocks at the wall that Mitin had been arrested. Well, thought I, I have betrayed him. And that began to torment me so that I almost went insane." " And then it turned out that it was not at all through o you that he was arrested," said the aunt. " But I did not know it. I thought I had betrayed him. I kept walking from wall to wall, and I could not keep from thinking. I thought I had betrayed him. I lay down, covered myself, and I heard somebody whisper- ing into my ear, ' You have betrayed, you have betrayed RESURRECTION 429 Mitin, you have betrayed him.' I knew it was a hallu- cination, but T could not keep from listening. I wanted to fall asleep, and I could not. I wanted to keep from thinking, and I could not. It was so terrible ! " said Lidiya, becoming more and more agitated, winding her lock around her finger, again unwinding it, and looking all around her. " Lidoclika, calm yourself," repeated her mother, putting her hand on her shoulder. But Lidiya could no longer stop. " It is terrible because — " she began to say, but she burst into sobs, without finishing her words, jumped up from the sofa, and, catching her dress in a chair, ran out of the room. Her mother went out after her. " These scoundrels ought to be hanged," said the gym- nasiast, who was sitting on the window. " What have you to say ? " asked his aunt. " Oh, nothing — I was just talking," replied the gymnasiast, picking up a cigarette, which was lying on the table, and lighting it. XXVI. "Yes, for young people this solitary confinement is terrible," said the aunt, shaking her head, and also light- ing a cigarette. " I think, for everybody," said Nekhlyudov. " No, not for all," replied the aunt. " For real revolu- tionists, so I was told, it is a rest, a relief. These illegal people Uve in "eternal turmoil and material want and fear for themselves, for others, and for the cause ; and when, at last, they are arrested, all is ended, and they are re- lieved of all responsibility : all they have to do is to sit and rest themselves. I have been told that they really experience joy when they are arrested. But for young innocent people, — they always take innocent people, like Lidochka, first, — for these the first shock is terrible. Not because you are deprived of liberty, because they treat you rudely, feed you badly, and because the air is ■bad, — in general, all the privations are notliing. If even there were three times as many privations, they could all be borne easily, if it were not for that moral shock which one experiences when arrested for the first time." " Have you experienced it ? " "11 I have been confined twice," said the aunt, smil- ing a sad, pleasant smile. "When I was arrested the first time — and it was for no cause whatsoever," con- tinued she — "I was twenty-two years old. I had a baby, and I was with child. However hard my loss of liberty was, and my separation from my child and my husband, all that was nothing in comparison with what I felt when I saw that I ceased to be man, and became a thing. I 430 RESURRECTION 431 wanted to bid my child good-bye, and I was told to hurry to take my seat in a cab. I asked them whither they were taking me, and I was told I should find out when I got there. I asked them what it was I was accused of, and I received no reply. When I was undressed after the inquest and a prison garb was put on me, I was given a number and taken to a vaulted room, and a door was opened, and I was pushed in, and the door was locked after me, and they went away, and only a sentry was left, who with his gun walked silently up and down, and now and then peeped through the crack in my door, — a terribly heavy sensation overcame me. I was particularly struck at the inquest by the fact that the officer of the gendarmes offered me a cigarette. Evidently he knew that people like to smoke; he consequently knew that people like liberty and light ; he knew that mothers loved their children, and children their mothers ; how, then, could they have pitilessly torn me away from everything which was dear to me, and have me locked up like a wild beast ? One cannot bear this without results. If one has beheved in God and men, and that people love each othei. he will after that cease believing. I have quit be- lieving in men ever since that time, and have become furious," she concluded, and smiled. The mother entered through the door, through which Lidiya had left, and announced that Lidiya would not come in, as she was all unnerved. " Why should they ruin a young hfe ? It pains me more especially," said the aunt, " since I am the involun- tary cause of it." " With God's aid she will improve in the country," said the mother. " We shall send her out to father." " Yes, if it had not been for you, she would have been en- tirely ruined," said the aunt. " Thank you. But I wanted to see you to ask you to give a letter to Vy^ra Efr^movna," she said, drawing a letter out of her pocket. " The letter 432 KESUKRECTION is uot sealed. You may read it and tear it up, or trans- mit it to her, whichever you will find more in conformity with your convictions," she said. " There is nothing of a compromising character in the letter." Nekhlyudov took the letter, and, promising to transmit it to her, rose, and, bidding them good-bye, went out into the street. He sealed the letter without reading it, and decided to transmit it to its destination. XXVII. The last affair which kept Nekhlyildov at St. Petersburg was the case of the sectarians, whose petition he intended to hand in to the Tsar through his former comrade in the army, Aid-de-camp Bogatyrev. He went to see him in the morning, and found him at home at breakfast, though on the point of leaving. Bogatyrdv was short and stocky, endowed with unusual physical strength, — he could bend horseshoes, — a kindly, honest, straightforward, and even liberal man. In spite of these qualities, he was an intimate at court, and loved the Tsar and his family, and, in some admirable manner, knew, while living in that highest circle, how to see only its good side, and not to take part in anything bad and dishonest. He never condemned men, nor measures, but either kept silent, or spoke in a bold, loud voice, as though shouting, whatever he had to say, frequently bursting into just as loud laughter. He did this, not for diplomatic reasons, but because such was his character. " Now this is charming that you have come. Do you not want to breakfast with me? Sit down. Superb beefsteak ! I always begin and end with substantial things. Ha, ha, ha! Come, have a glass of wine. I have been thinking of you. I shall hand in the petition. I shall put it into his hands ; only it has occurred to me that it would be better for you first to see Toporov." Nekhlyildov frowned at the mention of Toporov. " All this depends upon him. They will ask his opinion in any case. And maybe he himself wnll satisfy you." " If you so advise, I shall go to see him." 433 434 RESURRECTION "Very well. Well, how does St. Petersburg affect you ? " shouted Bogatyr^v. " Tell me, eh ? " "I feel that I am becoming hypnotized," said Nekh- lyudov. " You are becoming hypnotized ? " repeated Bogatyr^v, laughing out loud. " If you don't want to, all right." He wiped his mouth with a napkin. " So you will go to see him ? Ah ? If he will not do it for you, let me have it, and I shall hand it in to-morrow," he exclaimed, rising from the table, and, crossing himself with a broad sign of the cross, apparently as unconsciously as he had wiped his mouth, he began to gird on his sword. " Now good- bye, I must be off." " We shall go out together," said Nekhlyudov, delighted to press Bogatyr^v's strong, broad hand, and parting from him at the steps of his house, with the pleasant feeling of something healthy, unconscious, fresh. Although he did not expect anything good to come from his visit, he took Bogatyr^v's advice and went to see Toporov, the person on whom the case of the sectarians depended. The post which Toporov occupied, by its very constitu- tion, formed an internal contradiction, to which only a man who was dull and deprived of all moral sense could be blind. Toporov was possessed of both these negative qualities. The contradiction contained in the post held by him consisted in the fact that its purpose was to maintain and defend by external means, not excluding violence, that church which, by its definition, had been established by God Himself and could not be shaken either by the fiends of hell or by any human efforts. It was this divine and imperturbable godly institution that the human institution, over which Toporov and his officials presided, had to support and defend. Toporov did not see this contradiction, or did not wish to see it, and therefore he was seriously concerned lest KESUliKECTION 435 some Eoman Catholic priest, or Protestant preacher, or sectarian destroy the Church which the gates of hell could not vanquish. Topoi'ov, like all people deprived of the fundamental religious sense, and of the consciousness of the equality and brotherhood of men, was firmly con- vinced that the people consisted of creatures who were quite different from himself, and that the people were in dire need of that without which he himself could very well get along. In the depth of his soul, he believed in nothing, and he found such a condition very convenient and agreeable ; but he was in fear lest the people come to the same state, and so he considered it his sacred duty, as he said, to save the people from it. Just as it says in a certain cook-book that lobsters like to be boiled alive, so. he was firmly convinced, by no means in a metaphorical sense, as it is to be taken in the cook- book, but in the direct sense, — and so he expressed him- self, — that the people like to be superstitious. He stood in the same relation to the religion which he was supporting that the poultry-keeper occupies in regard to carrion with which he feeds his chickens : the carrion is a very disagreeable business, but the chickens like to eat it, and so they must be fed on it. Of course, all these miracle-working images of Iver, Kazan, and Smolensk are a very rude idolatry, but the people believe in it and like it, and so these superstitions must be maintained. Thus thought Toporov, forgetting to reflect that the reason he thought the people liked the superstitions was because there have always been such cruel men as he, Toporov, was, who, having themselves become enlightened, used their light not for that for which they ought to use it, — to succour the people emerging from the darkness of ignorance, — but only to confirm them still more in it. As Nekhlyudov entered the waiting-room, Toporov was conversing in his cabinet with an abbess, a lively aristo- 436 RESURRECTION crat, who was spreading and supporting Orthodoxy in the western country amidst the Uniates, who had been by force driven into the folds of the Orthodox Church. An official on special missions, who was in the waiting- room, asked Nekhlyildov about his business, and, having discovered that Nekhlyiidov had made up his mind to hand in the petition of the sectarians to the emperor, asked him whether he could not let him have the petition to read it over. Nekhlyildov gave it to him, and the official went with it into the cabinet. The abbess, in cowl, wavy veil, and trailing black skirt, having folded her white hands with their clean nails, in which she held a topaz rosary, came out of the cabinet, and directed her steps to the entrance. Nekhlyildov was not asked in yet. Toporov was reading the petition and shaking his head. He was unpleasantly surprised, as he read the clearly and strongly formulated petition. " If it gets into the hands of the emperor, it might give rise to unpleasant questions and misunderstandings," he thought, as he finished the petition. The trouble was that the Christians who had departed from Orthodoxy had been reprimanded and then tried before a court of justice, but the court had acquitted them. Then the bishop and the governor decided, on account of the ille- gality of their marriages, to deport the men, women, and children to different places. What these fathers and wives asked was that they should not be separated. Toporov thought of the first time the case had come to his notice. He had then wavered whether he had better not quash the case. But there could be no harm in con- firming the decree of scattering the various members of the peasant families ; their sojourn in the same places might have bad consequences on the rest of the population in the sense of their defection from Orthodoxy ; besides, it showed the zeal of the bishop, and so he let the case take the course which had been given to it. KESUIiRECTION 437 But now, with such a defender as Nekhlyiidov, who had connectious in St. Petersburg, the affair might be brought to the emT^eror's particular attention, as something cruel, or it might get into the foreign newspapers, and so he at once took an extraordinary stand. " Good morning," he said, with the look of a very busy man, meeting Nekhlyudov while standing, and immedi- ately passing over to the affair. " I know this affair. The moment I looked at the names, I recalled that unfortunate matter," he said, taking the petition into his hands, and showing it to Nekhlyudov. " I am very grateful to you for reminding me of it. The governmental authorities have been a little too zealous — " Nekhlyudov was silent, looking with an evil feeling at the motionless mask of the pale face. " I will order this measure to be withdrawn, and these people to be restored to their places of abode." " So I do not need to attend any further to the pe- tition ? " asked Nekhlyudov. "Certainly not. / promise you this," he said, with especial emphasis on the word " I," being evidently quite convinced that his honesty, his word, were the best guarantee. " I shall write at once. Please be seated." He went up to the table and began to write. Nekh- lyudov did not sit down, but looked down upon that nar- row, bald skull, and upon his hand with its large blue veins, which was rapidly moving the pen, and wondered why he was doing it, and why a man, who seemed to be so indifferent to everything, did this thing with so much apparent anxiety. Why ■ — ? " So here it is," said Topordv, sealing the envelope. " You may inform your clients of it," he added, compressing his lips into a semblance of a smile. " For what, then, have those people been suffering ? " Nekhlyudov said, accepting the envelope. 438 RESURRECTION Topordv raised his head and smiled, as though Nekh- lyiidov's question afforded him pleasure. " That I am unable to tell you. I can only tell you that the interests of the people, over which we watch, are so important that superfluous zeal in matters of faith are not so terrible and dangerous as the superfluous indifference to them, which is now spreading." " But how, in the name of religion, are the first demands of goodness violated, and families broken up?" Toporov was still smiling in the same condescending way, as though finding Nekhlyiidov's remarks very charming. Whatever Nekhlyudov might have said, Toporov would have found charming and one-sided from the height of that broad consideration of state, on which, he thought, he stood. " From the standpoint of a private individual that may seem so," he said, " but from the point of view of state it appears somewhat differently. My regards to you," said Toporov, bending his head and extending his hand. Nekhlyudov pressed it, and silently and hurriedly went away, regrettiug the fact that he had pressed his hand. " The interests of the people," he repeated Toporov's words. " Your interests, only yours," he thought, upon leaving Toporov. He mentally ran through the list of persons against whom was exercised the activity of the institutions that reestablish justice, support faith, and educate the people, — the woman who was punished for the illegal sale of liquor, and the young fellow for stealing, and the vagrant for tramping, and the incendiary for arson, and the banker for robbery, and also unfortunate Lidiya, simply because it might have been possible to obtain the neces- sary information from her, and the sectarians for violating Orthodoxy, and Gur(^vich for wishing a constitution, — and Nekhlyudov was suddenly struck with unusual force KESURRECTION 439 by the thought that all these people had been arrested, confined, and deported, not because they had all violated justice, or committed lawlessness, but only because they interfered with the officials and rich people in their possession of the wealth which they were amassing from the people. They were interfered with equally by the woman who was trafficking without a license, and by the thief who was tramping through the city, and by Lidiya with her proclamations, and by the sectarians who were breaking down superstition, and by Gurevich with his constitution. And therefore it seemed quite clear to Nekhlyiidov that all these officials — beginning with his aunt's husband, the Senators, and Topordv, and coming down to all those petty, clean, and correct gentlemen, who were sitting at the tables in the various ministries — were not in the least concerned about the suffering of the innocent people under such an order of things, but about the removal of all the dangerous elements. So that not only was the rule neglected which enjoins that ten guilty men be pardoned lest one innocent man suffer, but, on the contrary, just as it is necessary to cut out the healthy part together with the decay, in order to remove the latter, so they removed ten innocent people by means of punishments, in order to get rid of one guilty person. Such an explanation of all that was taking place seemed so very simple and clear to Nekhlyiidov, but it was this same simplicity and clearness which made him hesitate in accepting it. It seemed hardly possible that such a complicated phenomenon should have such a simple and terrible explanation ; it could not be that all these words about justice, goodness, laws, faith, God, and so on, should be nothing but words, and should shroud the coarsest selfishness and cruelty. XXVIIT. Nekhlyudov would have left that very evening, but he had promised Mariette to come to see her in the theatre, and, although he knew that he ought not to do it, he nevertheless compromised with his soul and went, considering himself bound by his word. " Can I withstand this temptation ? " he thought, not quite sincerely. " I shall see for the last time." Having put on his dress coat, he arrived during the second act of the eternal " Dame aux Camillas," in which the visiting actress showed in a new fashion how con- sumptive women die. The theatre was filled. Mariette's box was at once pointed out to Nekhlyudov, with due respect to the person who was asking for it. In the corridor stood a liveried lackey. He bowed as to an acquaintance and opened the door. All the rows of the boxes opposite, vdth the figures sitting there and standing behind them, and the near-by backs and the gray, half-gray, bald, and pomaded, fixed-up heads of those who were sitting in the orchestra circle, — all the spectators centred their attention on the lean, bony actress who, dressed up in silk and laces, was con- torting herself and declaiming a monologue in an un- natural voice. Somebody was hissing as the door was being opened, and two streams of warm and cold air passed over Nekhlyudov's face. In the box were Mariette and a strange lady in a red wrap and a large, massive coiffure, and two men : a general, Mariette's husband, a handsome, tall man, with a severe, 440 o ;'iki4'W*'*"*'T.--^'"'j RESURRECTION 441 impenetrable, hook-nosed face and a broad, military chest, padded with cotton and starched linen, and a hght-com- plexioned, bald man, with a clean-shaven, dimpled chin between majestic side-whiskers. Mariette, graceful, slen- der, elegant, d^coUet^, with her strong muscular shoulders, slanting from the neck,- at the juncture of which with the shoulders there was a black birthmark, immediately turned around, and, indicating a seat behind her to Nekhlyudov with her fan, smiled to him approvingly, gratefully, and, as he thought, significantly. Her husband calmly looked at Nekhlyudov, as he always did, and bent his head. One could see in him, in the glance which he exchanged with his wife, the master, the owner of his beautiful wife. "When the monologue was finished, the theatre shook with applause. Mariette arose and, holding her rustling silk skirt, went to the back of the box and introduced her husband to Nekhlyudov. The general kept smiling with his eyes, and, saying that he was very glad, grew impenetrably silent. " I must leave to-day, but I promised you," said Nekh- lyvidov, turning to Mariette. " If you do not wish to see me, you will see a remark- able actress," said Mariette, replying to the meaning of his words. " Was she not fine in the last scene ? " she addressed her husband. Her husband bent his head. " This does not affect me," said Nekhlyudov. " I have seen so many real miseries to-day that — " " Sit down and tell me about them." Her husband listened, and ironically smiled ever more with his eyes. " I called on the woman who has been released, and who has been confined so long : she is a crushed being." " This is the woman of whom I told you," Mariette said to her husband. 442 RESURRECTION " I was very glad that it was possible to release her," he said, calmly, shaking his head and smiling quite ironic- ally under his moustache, as Nekhlyiidov thought. " I shall go out to have a smoke." Nekhlyiidov sat in expectation that Mariette would tell him that important thing of which she had spoken, but she said nothing and did not even try to say any- thing, but only jested and talked about the play which, so she thought, ought to interest him very much. Nekhlyudov saw that she had nothing to tell him, but that she only wished to appear before him in all the splendour of her evening toilet, with her shoulders and birthmark, and he felt both pleased and annoyed. All that covering of charm, wliich lay over everything before, was now, as far as Nekhlyudov was concerned, taken away, and he also saw what there was beneath that covering. He admired Mariette as he looked at her, but he knew that she was a liar, who was living with a man who was making his career by the tears and lives of hundreds and hundreds of people, while all this was a matter of indifference to her, and that everything she had said the day before was an untruth, and that she wanted, he did not know why, nor did she, that he should fall in love with her. He was both attracted and repelled by her. He made several attempts to leave, and picked up his hat, and again remained. But finally, when her husband returned to the box, with the odour of tobacco on his thick moustache, and cast a condescendingly contemptuous look at Nekhlyu- dov, as though not recognizing him, Nekhlyudov left for the corridor, before even the door was closed, and, having found his overcoat, went away from the theatre. On his way home along the N^vski Prospect, he in- voluntarily noticed in front of him a tall, very well built, and provokingly dressed woman, who was slowly walking over the asphalt of the broad sidewalk ; both in her RESUERECTION 443 face and in her whole figure could be seen the conscious- ness of her evil power. All the people who met her or came abreast with her surveyed her form. Her face, no doubt painted, was handsome, and the woman smiled at Nekhlyiidov, sparkling her eyes at him. Strange to say, Nekhlyiidov at once thought of Mariette, because he ex- perienced the same sensation of attraction and repulsion which he had experienced in the theatre. Walking hurriedly past her, Nekhlyudov turned into the Morskaya Street, and, upon reaching the shore, began, to the surprise of the pohceman, to stroll up and down. " Just so she smiled at me in the theatre, as I entered," he thought, " and the same meaning was in that smile as in this. The only difference is that this one says simply and directly, * If you need me, take me ! If not, pass on.' While the other pretends not to be thinking of it, but to live by some higher, refined sentiments, whereas there is no difference in fact. This one, at least, is telling the truth ; the other one lies. " More than that : this one is driven to her condition by necessity ; while the other one plays and dallies with that beautiful, repulsive, terrible passion. This street-walker is malodorous, dirty water which is offered to those whose thirst is greater than their disgust ; the one in the thea- tre is poison which imperceptibly poisons that into which it falls." Nekhlyvidov thought of his connection with the mar- shal's wife, and disgraceful memories burst upon him. " Disgusting is the animality of the beast in man," he thought, " but when that beast in man is in its pure form, you survey it from the height of your spiritual life and despise it; whether you have fallen or not, you remain what you have been ; but when this animal is concealed beneath a quasi-testhetic, poetical film and demands worship, then you become all rapt in it, and, 444 EESURRECTION worshipping the animal, no longer distinguish right from wrong. Then it is terrible." Nekhlyudov saw this now as clearly as he saw the pal- aces, the sentries, the fortress, the river, the boats, the Exchange. And as there was no soothing, restful dark- ness upon earth in that night, but an indistinct, cheerless, unnatural hght without its source, even thus there was no longer a restful darkness of ignorance in Nekhlyiidov's soul. Everything was clear. It was clear that that which is considered important and good is bad and detestable, and that all that luxury and splendour conceal old, habitual crimes, which not only go without being punished, but are triumphant and adorned with all the charm which people are able to invent. Nekhlyudov wanted to forget this, not to see it, but he no longer could keep from seeing it. Although he did not see the source of the light which revealed all this to him, and although this light appeared to him indistinct, cheerless, and unnatural, he could not help seeing that which was revealed to him in this light, and he had at the same time a joyous and a perturbed sensation. XXIX. Upon arriving at Moscow, Nekhlyiidov first of all drove to the prison hospital to give Maslova the sad news of the Senate's confirmation of the verdict of the court, and to tell her that she must prepare herself for the journey to Siberia. He had little hope in the appeal to his Maj- esty, which the lawyer had composed for him, and which he now took to the prison to have signed by Maslova. Strange to say, he did not desire any success now. He had accustomed himself to the thought of journeying to Siberia, and of living among deported and hard labour criminals, and he found it hard to imagine how he should arrange his life and that of Maslova, if she were ac- quitted. He recalled the words of the American author, Thoreau, who had said, at the time when there was slavery in America, that the only place which was proper for an honest man in a country where slavery is legalized and protected was the jail. Even thus Nekhlyiidov thought, particularly after his visit to St. Petersburg, and after all he had learned there. " Yes, the only proper place for an honest man in Eussia at the present time is the jail ! " he thought. He had this direct sensation, as he now approached the prison and entered within its walls. The porter in the hospital, recognizing Nekhlyiidov, at once informed him that Maslova no longer was there. " Where is she, then ? " " Again in the prison." '* Why has she been transferred ? " asked Nekhlyiidov. 445 446 HEStJRRECTION " They are such a lot, your Serenity," said the porter, smiling contemptuously. " She started an intrigue with the assistant, so the senior doctor sent her back." Nekhlyiidov had not imagined that Maslova and her spiritual condition could be so near to him. The news stunned him. He experienced a sensation akin to the feeling which overcomes one when suddenly informed of some great misfortune. He felt a severe pain. The first sensation which he experienced upon heariug the news was that of shame. First of all, he appeared ridiculous to himself with his joyful expectation of her changing spiritual condition. All those words about not wishing to receive his sacrifice, and the reproaches, and tears, — all this, he thought, was only the cunning of a corrupt woman wishing to make the best possible use of him. It now seemed to him that at his last visit he had noticed the symptoms of that incorrigibility which had now become apparent. All that flashed through his mind as he instinctively put on his hat and left the hospital. " But what am I to do now ? " he asked himself. " Am I bound to her ? Am I not freed by this very deed of hers ? " he asked himself. The moment he put this question to himself, he imme- diately saw that, considering himself free and abandoning her, he would not be punishing her, as he wished to do, but himself, and he felt tenibly. " No, that which has happened cannot change, it can only confirm me in my determination. Let her do what results from her spiritual condition, — even her intrigues with the assistant are her own affair. My business is to do that which my conscience demands of me," he said to himself. "My conscience demands the sacrifice of my liberty for the expiation of my sin, and my determination to marry her, even though in fictitious marriage, and to follow her whither she may be sent, remains unchanged," he said to himself, with evil stubbornness. Upon leaving RESUKRECTION 447 the hospital, he went with determined steps toward the large gate of the prison. At the gate he asked the officer of the day to tell the superintendent that he wished to see Maslova. The offi- cer of the day knew Nekhlyudov, and, being an acquaint- ance, he informed him of an important piece of prison news. The captain had asked his discharge, and in his place was now another, a severe chief. " There are terrible severities practised here now," said the warden. " He is here now, and will be informed at once." The superintendent was really in the prison, and soon came out to Nekhlyudov. The new superintendent was a tall, bony man, with protruding cheek-bones, very slow in his movements, and gloomy. " Interviews are granted only on stated days in the visiting-room," he said, without looking at Nekhlyudov. " But I have to give her a petition to his Majesty to sign." " You can give it to me." " I have to see the prisoner myself. I have been granted the permission before." " That was before," said the superintendent, looking cursorily at Nekhlyudov. " I have a permit from the governor," Nekhlyudov in- sisted, taking out his pocketbook. " Let me see it," the superintendent kept saying, with- out looking at his eyes. He took the paper, which Nekh- lyudov handed to him, with his dry white fingers, with a gold ring on one of them, and read it slowly, " Please step into the office," he said. This time there was nobody in the office. The super- intendent sat down at the table, rummaging tli rough the papers that were lying upon it, apparently intending to be present at the interview. When Nekhlyudov asked him whether he could not 448 EESURIIECTION see the political prisoner, Miss Bogodiikhovski, the super- intendent curtly replied that it was impossible, " There are no interviews granted with political prisoners," he said, again burying himself in the reading of the papers. Having a letter to Miss Bogodiikhovski in his pocket, Nekhlyiidov felt himself to be in the attitude of a guilty person whose plans were discovered and destroyed. When Maslova entered the office, the superintendent lifted his head and, without looking at either Maslova or Nekhlyiidov, said, " You may ! " and continued to busy himself with his documents. Maslova was dressed as before, in a white bodice, skirt, and kerchief. Upon approaching Nekhlyiidov and seeing his cold, unfriendly face, she grew red in her face and, fingering the edge of her bodice, lowered* her eyes. Her embarrassment was to Nekhlyiidov a confirmation of the words of the hospital porter. Nekhlyiidov wanted to address her as at the previous meeting ; but he could 7wt, however much he wished it, give her his hand, because she was so repulsive to him. " I have brought you bad news," he said, in an even voice, without looking at her, or giving her his hand. " The Senate has refused the appeal." " I knew it," she said, in a strange voice, as though choking. At any former time Nekhlyiidov would have asked how it was she knew ; but now he only glanced at her. Her eyes were full of tears. But this did not appease him ; on the contrary, it only provoked him still more against her. The superintendent arose, and began to walk up and down in the room. In spite of the disgust which Nekhlyiidov now felt for Maslova, he felt that he must express his regi-et to her for the Senate's refusal. RESURRECTION 449 " Do not lose your courage," he said, " the petition to his Majesty may be successful, aud 1 hope that — " " I am uot concerned about it," she said, pitifully looking at him with her moist aud squinting eyes. " About what, then ? " " You were in the hospital, and, no doubt, they told you — " . . . , " That is your affair," coldly said Nekhlyiidov, frowning. The dormant cruel feeling of ofi'ended pride arose in him with renewed vigour, the moment she mentioned the hospital. " He, a man of the world, whom any girl of the highest circle would consider herself lucky to marry, had proposed to this woman to become her husband, and she could not wait, but had to begin intrigues with the assistant," he thought, looking hatefully at her. " You sign this petition," he said, and, getting a large envelope out of his pocket, he laid it out on the table. She wiped her tears with the end of her kerchief, aud sat down at the table, asking him wdiere and what to write. He showed her where and what to write, and she sat down, adjusting the sleeve of her right arm with her left hand; he stood over her and silently looked at her bend- ing back, which now and then was convulsed from repressed sobs, and in his soul struggled the feelings of evil and of good : of offended pride and pity for her suffering, and the latter feeling came out victorious. He did not remember what happened first, whether his heart felt pity for her, or whether he first thought of himself, his sins, his own villainy in that of which he accused her. But he suddenly became conscious both of his guilt and of his pity for her. Having signed the petition and wiped her soiled finger on her skirt, she arose and looked at him. " Whatever may be the issue of this, nothing will change my determination," said Nekhlyildov. The thought of his forgiving her intensified in him the feeling of pity and 450 KESURRECTION tenderness, and he wished to console her. " I will do what I have told you I would. I shall be with you, wherever you may be." " In vain," she interrupted him, and all beamed with joy- " Think of what you need for your journey." " I think, nothing special. Thank you." The superintendent walked over to them, but Nekhlyu- dov did not wait for him to make any remarks and bade her good-bye. He went out, experiencing an entirely new sensation of quiet joy, calm, and love for all men. Nekh- lyiidov was rejoiced to find himself elevated to such an unaccustomed height where no acts of Maslova's could change his love for her. Let her have intrigues with the assistant, — that was her business, but he loved her not for his own sake, but for hers and God's. The intrigues with the assistant, for which M^slova had been expelled from the hospital, and in the existence of which Nekhlyildov believed, consisted in this : at the request of the female assistant, she went to the apothecary- room, which was at the end of the corridor, to get some pectoral tea; there she found an assistant, Ustinov by name, a tall fellow with a blistered face, who had long been annoying her with his attentions ; in trying to escape from him, she pushed him so hard that he struck against a shelf, from which two bottles fell down and broke. The senior doctor, who happened to pass along the corridor, heard the sound of broken glass and called out angrily at Maslova, who was running out, with her face all red. " Motherkin, if you are going to start intrigues here, I'll have you taken away. What is it ? " he turned to the assistant, looking severely at him over his glasses. The assistant smiled, and began to justify himself. The doctor did not listen to all he had to say, but, rais- ing his head in such a way that he began to look through RESURRECTION 451 his glasses, went to tlie hospital rooms ; he told the superintendent that very day to send him another attend- ant in Maslova's place, one that would be more reliable. That was all there was to Maslova's intrigues with the assistant. This expulsion from the hospital, under the pretext of her having started intrigues with men, was particularly painful to Maslova, since after her meeting with Nekhlyiidov all relations with men, distasteful as they had been, had become unusually repulsive to her. She was especially offended to see everybody, and among them the assistant with the blistered face, judge her from her past, and from her present position, considering it proper to insult her and wondering at her refusal, and this provoked her pity for herself, and tears. As she had come out to see Nekhlyiidov, she had intended to explain away the unjust accusation which, no doubt, he must have heard. But, as she began to justify herself, she saw that he did not believe her and that her vindication only confirmed his suspicion, and the tears rose in her throat, and she grew silent. Maslova was still under the impression, and she con- tinued to assure herself of it, that she had not forgiven him and that she hated him, as she had expressed it to him at their second meeting, but in reality she loved him, and loved him so that she involuntarily executed all his wishes : she stopped drinking and smoking, gave up coquetting, and had entered the hospital as an attendant. She had done it all because she knew he wished it. The reason she so firmly refused to accept his sacrifice of marrying her, every time he spoke of it, was because she wanted to repeat the proud words which she had once uttered to him, but chiefly because she knew that his marrying her could only make him unhappy. She was determined not to accept his sacrifice, and yet she was pained to think that he despised her, that he thought that she continued to be such as she had been, and that 452 RESURRECTION he did not see the change which had taken place in her. She was more pained by the fact that he was con- vinced she had done something wrong in the hospital than l)y the news that she had finally been condemned to hard labour. XXX. Maslova could be sent away with the first deportation party, and therefore Nekhlyiidov was getting ready for the journey. He had so many things to attend to, that he felt that no matter how much free time he should have, he would never finish them. Everything was dif- ferent from what it had been before. In former days he had to think of what to do, and the centre of interest was always the same Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov ; and yet, notwithstanding the fact that all the interests of life centred upon that Dmitri Ivanovich, all these matters were uninteresting to him. Now, all his business was in reference to other people than Dmitri Ivanovich, and they were all interesting and attractive, and there was plenty to do. More than that, — all the previous occu- pations and affairs of Dmitri Ivanovich had always pro- voked annoyance and petulance, while these affairs of other people generally put him in a pleasant mood. The affairs which at that time occupied Nekhlyudov were divided in three categories ; he himself, with his customary pedantry, divided them in that manner, ar- ranging them, in accordance with that division, in three portfolios. The first affair was in reference to Maslova and the aid to be accorded her. This consisted in bringing influ- ence to bear on the petition to his Majesty, which he had sent in, and in making preparations for the journey to Siberia. The second affair was in reference to his estates. In Panovo the land had been given to the peasants, on condi- 453 454 RESURRECTION^ tion that the rental thereof was to be used for the com- mon needs of the village. But, in order to confirm them in their rights, he had to write out and sign the condi- tions and testament. In Kuzminskoe matters were left as he had arranged them, that is, he was to receive the money for the land ; so he had to determine yet on the periods of payment, and how much of that money he was to take for his own use, and how much was to be left for the benefit of the peasants. As he did not know what expenses he would have in the proposed journey to Siberia, he could not decide to give up this income, which was already cut down by half. The third affair was in reference to the aid he was to bestow on the prisoners who kept turning to him ever more frequently. When he at first came in contact with the prisoners, who invoked his aid, he at once set out to intercede for them, tjyiug to alleviate their fate ; but later there was such a large number of petitioners that he felt his in- ability to succour all of them, and so he was involuntarily led to a fourth affair, wliich occupied him of late more than any other. This fourth affair consisted in the solution of the ques- tion what was, for what purpose existed, and whence came that remarkable institution, called the criminal court, the result of which was that prison, with the inmates of which he had partly become acquainted, and all those places of confinement, from the Petropavlovsk fortress to Sakhalin, where hundreds and thousands of victims of that to him wonderful criminal law were pining. From his personal relations with the prisoners, from the stories of the lawyer, the prison priest, the superin- tendent, and from the lists of those confined, Nekhlyudov came to the conclusion that the composition of the pris- oners, the so-calletl criminals, could be divided into five categories. One of these, the first, consisted of entirely EESUKKECTION 455 innocent people, victims of judicial error, like the sus- pected incendiary Menshov, Like Maslova, and others. There were not very many of that category, — accordiug to the priest's observation, about seven per cent., but the position of these people evoked a special interest. The second category consisted of people who were condemned for crimes committed under exceptional circumstances, such as excitement, jealousy, drunkenness, and so on, that is, crimes which would be, no doubt, committed by those who judged and punished them, if subjected to the same conditions. This category, according to Nekhluydov's observations, was formed by more than one-half of all the criminals. The third was composed of people who were punished for doing that wliich, in their opinion, consti- tuted very common and even good acts, which, in the opinion of the strangers who had written the laws, were crimes. To this category belonged people who secretly trafficked in liquor, who smuggled, and who mowed grass and picked up wood in the large proprietary and Crown forests. To this same category also belonged the thiev- ing mountaineers and such infidels as robbed churches. The fourth category was formed by people who were considered criminals only because they stood morally above the level of society. Such were the sectarians, the Poles, the Circassians, who rebelled for their freedom ; such were also the political prisoners, sociahsts and strikers, who were condemned for opposing the author- ities. The percentage of such people, the very best of society, was, according to Nekhlyildov's observation, very large. Finally, the fifth category was composed of people before whom society was much more guilty than they were before society. Those were the outcasts who were dulled by constant oppressions and temptations like the boy with the foot-mats and hundreds of other people, whom Nekhlyudov had seen in the prison and outside 456 KESURRECTION the prison, whom the conditions of life systematically lead to the unavoidable act which is called a crime. To such people belonged, according to Nekhlyudov's obser- vation, very many thieves and murderers, with some of whom he had during this time come in contact. In this category he, having closely examined the matter, counted also all those corrupt and debauched men whom the new school calls a criminal type, and the presence of which in society is regarded as the chief proof of the necessity for criminal law and punishment. These so-called cor- rupt, criminal, abnormal types were, in Nekhlyudov's opinion, nothing else than those other people, against whom society had sinned more than they had sinned against society, but toward whom society was not guilty directly, but against whose parents and ancestors society had sinned long ago. In reference to this latter point, Nekhlyudov was struck, among these people, by the confirmed criminal, Okhotiu the thief, the illegitimate son of a prostitute, the alumnus of a night lodging-house, who apparently, up to his thirtieth year, had never met men of higher moral- ity than that of policemen, who had early joined a gang of thieves, and who, at the same time, was endowed with an unusual comic talent, by which he attracted people to himself. He asked Nekhlyudov to intercede for him, all the while scoffing at himself, at the judges, at the prison, and at all laws, not only criminal, but also divine. Another was handsome Fedorov, who, with a gang, of which he was the leader, had killed and robbed an old official. He was a peasant, whose father had been quite illegally deprived of his house, and who later served in the army, where he suffered for falling in love with the mis- tress of an officer. He had an attractive, impassioned nature, and was a man who wished to enjoy himself at whatsoever cost, who had never seen any people who in any way restrained themselves in their enjoyments, and RESUIIRECTION 457 who had never heard that there was any other aim in life than that of enjoyment. It was evident to Nekhlyu- dov that both were rich natures that were neglected and twisted, as are raukly growing plants. He also saw a tramp and a woman, who repelled him by their stupidity and seeming cruelty, but he could not bring himself to see in them that criminal type, of which the Italian school speaks, but saw only people in them who were personally repulsive to him, just as those were whom he had seen at large in dress coats, epaulets, and laces. So the fourth business which interested Nekhlyiidov at that time consisted in the investigation of the question why these many different people were imprisoned, while others, just such people as these, were not only at liberty, but sitting in judgment over them. At first, Nekhlyiidov had hoped to find an answer to this question in books, and so he bought everything that touched upon this subject. He bought the books of Lom- broso, and Garofalo, and Ferry, and Liszt, and Maudsley, and Tarde, and carefully perused these books. But the more he read them, the more he was disap- pointed in them. There happened to him that which always happens to people who turn to science, not in order to play a role in science, to write, to discuss, to teach, but to get answers to straiglit, simple, hving questions : science gave him answer to thousands of various extremely clever and wise questions, which stood in some relation to crimi- nology, but not to the question for which he was trying to find an answer. He propounded a very simple question : Why and by what right does one class of people confine, torture, deport, flog, and kill another, when they themselves are no better than those whom they torture, flog, and kill ? To which he received replies in the shape of reflections like these : Is man possessed of freedom of the will, or not ? Can a man be declared a criminal from cranial measurements, 458 RESURKECTION and so forth, or not ? What part does heredity play in crime ? Is there an innate immorality ? What is moral- ity ? What is insanity ? What is degeneration ? What is temperament ? What influence on crime have cUmate, food, ignorance, suggestion, hypnotism, the passions ? What is society ? What are its duties ? and so forth. These reflections reminded Nekhlyiidov of an answer he had once received from a small boy who was returning from school. Nekhlyiidov asked the boy whether he had learned to spell. " I have, " replied the boy. " Well, spell ' foot.' " " What kind of a foot, a dog's ? " the boy answered, with a cunning face. Just such answers in the shape of questions Nekhlyiidov found in scientific works to his fundamental question. There was in them much which was clever, learned, and interesting, but there was no answer to the chief question : By what right do they punish others ? Not only was there no answer to it, but all discussions took place in order to explain and justify punishment, the necessity for which was assumed as an axiom. Nekhlyiidov read a great deal, by snatches, and he ascribed the absence of an answer to this superficial reading, hoping later to find a reply, and so he did not permit himself to believe the justice of the answer which of late presented itself to him ever more frequently. XXXI. The party with which Maslova was to be deported was to start ou July 5th. Nekhlyudov was getting ready to leave on the same day. On the day before his departure, Nekhlyudov's sister and her husband came to town to see him. Nekhlyudov's sister, Natalya Ivano\Tia Eagozhinski, was ten years older than her brother. He had partly grown up under her influence. She loved him very much as a boy, and later, just before her marriage, when she was twenty-five years old and he fifteen, they met almost like equals. She was then in love with his deceased friend, Nikoleuka Irt^nev. Both of them loved Nikolenka, loving in him and in themselves that which was good in them, and which unites all people. Since then they had both become corrupted : he by his military service, and she by her marrying a man whom she loved in a sensual way, but who not only did not love all that which had been most sacred and dear to her and Dmitri, but who even could not understand what it was, and ascribed all her striving for moral perfection and for serving people, which had formed the basis of her life, to vanity and a desire to excel among people, the only senti- ment he was capable of comprehending. Eagozhinski was a man without a name or fortune, but a very subservient official, who had managed to make a comparatively brilliant judicial career, by artfully steer- ing between liberalism and conservatism, making use of the one or the other of the two tendencies which at a given moment and in a given case gave him the best 459 460 RESURRECTION results for his life, and, chiefly, by something especial by which he pleased the ladies. He was a man past his first youth, when he met the Nekhlyudovs abroad ; he made Natalya, who was not very young then, fall in love with him, and married her, almost against her mother's will, who saw a mesalliance iu this marriage. Nekhlyiidov, however much he concealed his feeling from himself and struggled against it, hated his brother-in- law. He had an antipathy for him on account of the vulgarity of his sentiments, his self-confident narrowness, and, chiefly, for the sake of his sister, who was able to love this barren mind so passionately, selfishly, and sen- sually, and, to please him, to choke all the good that had been in her. It was always an anguish for him to think that Natalya was the wife of that bearded, self-confident man, with the shining bald spot on his head. He even could not repress a feeling of disgust for their children. Every time he heard she was about to become a mother, he experienced a feeling akin to regret for having once more become in- fected from this man who was strange to all their interests. The Kagozhinskis arrived without their children (they had two, a boy and a girl), and they stopped in the best room of the best hotel. Natalya Ivanovna at once went to her mother's old quarters, but not finding her brother there, and learning from Agrafdna Petrovna that he had taken furnished rooms, at once drove there to see him. A dirty servant, who met her iu the dark, oppressive-smell- ing corridor, which had to be hghted in the daytime, told her that the prince was not at home. Natalya Ivanovna wanted to go to her brother's room, in order to leave a note there. The servant took her there. Upon entering his two small rooms, Natalya Ivanovna surveyed them attentively. She saw the familiar order and cleanliness iu everything, but was struck by the KESURRECTION 461 simplicity of the furnishing, which was so unusual for him. On the writing-desk she saw the familiar paper- weight with the bronze dog ; equally familiar to her were the properly placed portfolios and papers, and the writing- material ; and there were some volumes of criminal juris- prudence, and an English book by Henry George, and a French book by Tarde, with a large, crooked ivory paper-knife between its leaves. She sat down at the table and wrote a note to him, asking him to be sure and come to see them that very day ; shaking her head in surprise at what she saw, she returned to her hotel. Two questions now interested ISTatalya Ivanovna in reference to her brother: his marriage to Katyusha, of which she had heard in her town, as everybody was speaking of it, and his distribution of land among the peasants, which was also known to everybody, and which appeared to many to have a political and dangerous signifi- cance. For one reason, his intended marriage to Ka- tyiisha pleased ISTatalya Ivanovna. She admired this determination, and recognized him and herself in it, such as they had been in those good days before her marriage ; at the same time she was horrified at the thought that her brother was going to marry such a terrible woman. The latter feeling was the stronger, and she decided to use all her influence to keep him from it, although she knew that this would be diificult. The other matter, his distribution of the land to the peasants, was not so near to her heart, but her husband was incensed by it, and asked her to use her influence with her brother. Ignati Nikiforovich said that such an act was the acme of inconsistency, frivolity, and pride, that this act could only be explained — if there was any possibility at all of explaining it — as a desire to show off, and brag, and make people talk of himself. " What sense is there in giving land to peasants with the 462 KESURRECTION rental to revert to them ? " he said. " If he wanted to do it, he could have sold it through the rural bank. There would have been some sense in that. Taken altogether, this act verges on abnormality," said Ignati Nikiforovich, with an eye to the guardianship, insisting that his wife should have a serious talk with her brother about this strange intention of his. xxxn. When Nekhlyudov returned home and found the note on his table, he immediately went to see her. It was in the evening. Ignati Nikiforovich was resting in another room, and Natalya Ivanovna met her brother alone. She was dressed in a black silk garment fitting her closely, with a red ribbon over her chest, and her black hair was puffed up and combed according to the latest fashion. She evidently tried to appear as young as possible before her husband, who was of lier age. When she saw her brother, she jumped up from the divan, and rapidly walked up to him, producing a whistling sound with her silk skirt. They kissed and looked at each other with smiles. There took place that mysterious, inexpressible, significant exchange of looks, in which everything was truth, and there began an exchange of words, in which there was not that truth. They had not seen each other since the death of their mother. " You have grown stouter and younger," he said. Her hps puckered with delight. " And you look thinner." •' How is Ignati Nikiforovich ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " He is resting. He did not sleep last night." There was much to be said, but the words said nothing, while the glances said that much which ought to have been told had been left untold. " I was at your room." " Yes, I know." " I have left the house. It is too large for me, and 463 464 KESURRECTION lonely, and dulL I need none of those things, so you had better take them, the furniture, and all that." " Yes, Agraf^na Petrovna has told me about it. I was there. I am very grateful to you, but — " Just then the hotel waiter brought a silver tea service. They kept silent as long as the waiter was busy about the service. Natalya Ivanovna walked over to a chair near a small table, and silently poured in the tea. Nekh- lyiidov was silent, too. " Dmitri, I know it all," Natalya said, looking at him with determination. " I am very glad that you do." " Can you hope to correct her after such a life ? " she said. He was sitting straight, without leaning, on a small chair, and attentively listened to her, trying to catch all her meaning and to give her good answers. The mood evoked in him by his last meeting with Maslova con- tinued to fill his soul with calm joy and good-will to all men. " I am not after correcting her, but myself," he an- swered. Natalya Ivanovna heaved a sigh. " There are other means than marriage." " I think this is the best means ; and, besides, it takes me into that world where I can be useful." " I do not think," said Natalya Ivanovna, " that you can be happy there." " It is not a question of my happiness." " Of course. But she, if she has a heart, cannot be happy, and cannot even wish it." " She does not wish it — " " I understand, but hfe — " " What about life ? " " Demands it." " It demands nothing but that we should do what is RESURRECTION 465 necessary," said Nekhlyudov, looking at her face, which was still beautiful, though already covered with small wrinkles near the eyes and mouth. " I do not understand this," she said, with a sigh, " Poor, dear sister. How could she have changed so ? " Nekhlyudov thought, thinking of Natalya as she was before her marriage, and drawn to her by a tender feeling made up of endless childish memories. At this time Ignati Nikiforovich, bearing, as always, his head high, expanding his broad chest, stepping softly and lightly, sparkling with his spectacles, his bald spot, and his black beard, entered the room, smiling. " Good evening, good evening," he said, emphasizing his words in an unnatural and conscious manner. (At first after the marriage they had tried hard to say " thou " to each other, but they had not succeeded.) They pressed each other's hands, and Ignati Nikiforo- vich hghtly fell back into an armchair. " Am I not interfering with your conversation ? " " No, I conceal from nobody that which I say and do." The moment Nekhlyudov saw this face, these hirsute hands, and heard his condescending, self-confident voice, his meek spirit fled from him, "We were speaking of his mtention," said Natalya Ivanovna. " Shall I give you a glass ? " she added, taking hold of the teapot. " Yes, if you please. What intention ? " " To go to Siberia with the party of prisoners, among whom is the woman toward whom I consider myself guilty," said Nekhlyudov, " I have heard that you intend not only to accompany them, but to do something more." " Yes, to marry her, if she wishes it." " I declare ! If it is not unpleasant to you, explain your motives to me. I do not understand them." "The motives are that this woman — that her first 466 RESURRECTION step on the path of immorality — " Nekhlyudov was augry at himself for not being able to find the proper expression. " The motives are that I am guilty, and she is punished." " If she is punished, she, no doubt, is not guiltless." " She is absolutely innocent." Nekhlyudov told of the whole affair with unnecessary agitation. " Yes, it is an omission of the presiding judge, and con- sequently a carelessness in the reply of the jury. But there is a Senate for such a thing." " The Senate has refused the appeal." " If it has refused it, there could not have been suffi- cient cause for an annulment," said Ignati Nikiforovich, apparently sharing the well-known opinion that truth is a product of a judicial verdict. " The Senate cannot enter into the merits of the case. But if there really is an error of the court, his Majesty ought to be appealed to." " That has been done, but there is no probability of success. They will inquire of the ministry, the ministry will refer it to the Senate, the Senate will repeat its ver- dict, and, as ever, the innocent person will be punished." " In the first place, the ministry will not ask the Sen- ate," Ignati Nikiforovich said, with a smile of condescen- sion, " but will ask the court for the proceedings in the case, and, if an error is discovered, they will report accord- ingly ; and, secondly, innocent people are never punished, or, at least, only in exceptional cases. Only guilty people are punished," said Ignati Nikiforovich, leisurely, with a smile. " I have become convinced of the opposite," said Nekhlyudov, with an evil feeling for his brother-in-law\ " I am convinced that the greater half of those who are condemned by courts are innocent." " How is that ? " " They are innocent in the straight sense of the word, just as this woman is innocent of poisoning, as a peasant. HesUkrection 467 whose acquaintance I have just made, is innocent of mur- der, which he has not committed ; as a mother and her son, who came very near being convicted, are innocent of the incendiarism caused by the owner of the property." " Of course, there always have been and always will be judicial errors. A human institution cannot be perfect." " Then an immense number are innocent because, hav- ing been brought up in a certain circle, they do not regard their acts as crimes." " Pardon me, this is unjust. Every thief knows that stealing is not good," Ignati Nikiforovich said, with the same calm, self-confident, and shghtly contemptuous smile, which irritated Nekhlyiidov. " No, he does not. You tell him, ' Don't steal ! ' and he sees that the owners of factories steal his labour, re- taining his wages, that the government, with all its officials, does not stop robbing him, by means of taxes." " This is anarchism," Ignati Nikiforovich qviietly defined the meaning of the words of his brother-in-law. " I do not know what it is ; I only tell you what actually takes place," continued Nekhlyiidov. " He knows that the government robs him ; he knows that we, the landed proprietors, have robbed him long ago, by taking away his land, which ought to be a common possession ; and then, when he gathers twigs on that land in order to make a fire in his stove with them, we put him in jail, and want to convince liim that he is a thief. He knows that he is not the tliief, but that the thief is he who has taken away the land from him, and that every restitution of that which has been stolen is a duty which he has to his family." " I do not understand you, and if I do, I do not agree with you. The land cannot help being somebody's prop- erty. If you were to divide it up," began Ignati Nikiforo- vich, with the full and calm conviction that Nekhlyudov was a socialist, and that the theory of sociahsm consisted 468 RESURRECTION in the demand that the land be divided up in equal parts, and that such a division was very foolish, and he could easily prove its inconsistencies, " if you were to divide it up to-day in equal parts, they will to-morrow pass back into the hands of the most industrious and able men." " Nol)ody intends to divide the land up equally. The land ought to be nobody's property ; it ought not to be the subject of purchase and sale, or of mortgaging." " The right of property is inborn in man. Without property rights there will be no interest in working the land. Take away the right of ownersliip, and we return to the savage state," Ignati Nikiforovich said, authorita- tively, repeating the customary argument in favour of the ownership of land, which is considered incontestable, and which consists in the assumption that the greed for the ownership of land is a sign of its necessity. " On the contrary. The land will not lie idle, as it does now, when the proprietors, like dogs in the manger, do not allow those to make use of it who can, and them- selves do not know how to exploit it." " Listen, Dmitri Ivanovich ! This is absolutely sense- less ! Is it possible in our day to do away with the ownership of land ? I know this is your hobby. But let me tell you straight — " Ignati Nikif orovich grew pale, and his voice trembled ; this question evidently touched him closely. " I should advise you to consider this subject carefully, before you enter on its practical solution." " Are you speaking of my own personal affairs ? " " Yes. I assume that we are all placed in a certain position, that we must carry out the duties which flow from this position, that we must maintain the conditions of existence under which we were born, which we have inherited from our ancestors, and which we must transmit to our posterity." " I consider my duty to be — " RESUKRECTION 469 " Excuse me," Ignati Nikiforovich continued, not allow- ing himself to be interrupted. " I am not speaking for myself, nor for my children, who are securely provided for ; I am earning enougli to live comfortably, and I sup- pose my children will not have to suffer; therefore my protest against your ill-advised actions, permit me to say, originates not in my personal interests, but because I cannot agree with you from principle. I should advise you to think about them a little more carefully, and to read — " " You wiU permit me to attend to my own business, and to decide for myself what I am to read, and what not," said Nekhlyudov, growing pale. He felt his hands becoming cold, and that he was losing control of himself, so he grew silent, and began to drink tea. xxxin. " How are the children ? " Nekhlyudov asked his sister, after he had somewhat composed himself. She told him that they had been left with their grand- mother, her husband's mother. Happy to see that the discussion with her husband had come to an end, she began to tell him how her children played travelling just as he had done with his dolls, — one a negro, and the other called a Frenchwoman. " Do you remember that ? " said Nekhlyudov, smiling. "Just think of it, they are playing in precisely the. same manner." The disagreeable conversation was not renewed. Na- talya calmed herself, but she did not wish to speak in the presence of her husband of that which her brother alone could understand ; in order to introduce a general subject, she mentioned the St. Petersburg news that had just reached them in reference to the sorrow of Madame Ka- menski, who had lost her only son m the duel. Ignati Nikiforovich expressed his disapproval of the order of things which excluded murder in a duel from the common order of capital crimes. This remark called forth a retort from Nekhlyudov, and there again flamed up a discussion on the same theme, where everything was only half said, and both interlocutors did not express their full views, but per- sisted in their mutually condemnatory convictions. Ignati Nikiforovich felt that Nekhlyudov condemned him and despised all his activity, and he was anxious to show him the whole injustice of his judgments. Nekhlyudov again, 470 RESUERECTION 471 indepeudently of the annoyance he experienced from his brother-iu-law's interference in his land affairs (in the depth of his soul he felt that his brother-in-law and his sister and their children, as his heirs, had a right to it), fretted because this narrow-minded man continued, with the greatest confidence and composure, to regard that as regular and legal which to Nekhlyudov now appeared as unquestionably senseless and criminal. This self-confi- dence irritated Nekhlyudov. " What would the court have done ? " asked Nekh- lyudov. " It would have convicted one of the two duellists as a common murderer, and would have sent him to hard labour." Nekhlyudov's hands again grew cold, and he said, excitedly : " What would have been then ? " " Justice would have been done." "As though justice formed the aim of a court's activ- ity," said Nekhlyudov. " What else, if not that ? " " The maintenance of class interests. The courts, in my opinion, are only an administrative tool for the maintenance of the existing order of things, which is advantageous for our class." " This is an entirely novel view," Ignati Nikiforovich said, with a calm smile. " A somewhat different meaning is commonly ascribed to the courts." " Theoretically, and not practically, as I have had occasion to see. The purpose of the courts is the main- tenance of society in its present condition, and so they prosecute and punish equally these who stand higher than the common average, and who wish to lift it up, the so-called political criminals, and those who stand below it, the so-called criminal types." " I cannot agree with you, first, that all so-called politi- 472 RESURRECTION cal prisoners are punished for standing higher than the common average. They are chiefly outcasts of society, just as corrupt, although somewhat differently, as those crim- inal types, whom you consider to be below the average." " I know many people who stand incomparably higher than their judges ; all the sectarians are moral, firm people — " But Ignati Nikiforovich, with the habit of a man who is not interrupted, when he is speaking, was not listening to Nekhlyildov, and continued to speak at the same time with Nekhlyiidov, which especially irritated him. " Nor can I agree with your statement that the pur- pose of the courts is the maintenance of the existing order. The courts pursue their aims, which are the correction — " " The correction they receive in jail is fine," interposed Nekhlyiidov. " Or the removal," stubbornly proceeded Ignati Nikifor- ovich, " of those corrupt and beastly people who threaten the existence of society." " The trouble is they do neither the one nor the other. Society has not the means for accomplishing it." "How is that? I do not understand," said Ignati Nikiforovich, with a forced smile. " I mean to say that there are only two really sensible punishments, those that were in vogue in ancient days, the corporal and capital punishments, which, on account of the refinement of manners, are going ever more out of use," said Nekhlyiidov. " This is new, and rather remarkable from your mouth." " There is some sense in causing a man bodily pain, so that he may abstain in the future from doing that for which he has received the punishment, and there is good reason to chop off the head of a dangerous and hurtful member of society. Both these punishments have a sensible purpose. But what sense is there in locking up RESURRECTION 473 a man, who is corrupt through indolence and bad example, subjecting him to conditions of secure and obligatory in- dolence, in company with exceedingly corrupt people ? Or to transport them at the expense of the Crown, — each costs more than five hundred roubles, — from the Government of Tula to Irkutsk, or from the Government of Kursk — " " But the people are afraid of this journey at the Crown's expense, and if it were not for these journeys and prisons, we should not be sitting here as securely as we are." " These prisons cannot ensure our security, because these people do not stay there all the time, but are let out again. On the contrary, in these institutions these people are made acquainted with the highest degree of vice and corruption, that is, the danger is only increased." " You mean to say that the penitentiary system ought to be improved." " It cannot be improved. The improved prisons would cost more than what is spent on popular education, and would impose a new burden on the people." " But the imperfections of the penitentiary system by no means invalidate the courts," Ignati Nikiforovich con- tinued his speech, paying no attention to his brother-in-law. " These imperfections cannot be corrected," Nekhlyiidov said, raising his voice. " So, according to you, we shall have to kill ? Or, as a statesman has proposed, we ought to put out their eyes," said Ignati Nikiforovich, with a victorious smile. " This would be cruel, but to the point. But that which is being done now is not only not to the point, but so stupid that it is impossible to understand how men- tally healthy people can take part in so stupid and cruel a business as a criminal court." "I am taking part in it," Ignati Nikiforovich said, growing pale. 474 KESUKRECTION " That is your business. But I do not understand it." " I think there are many things which you do not understand," Iguati Nikiforovich said, in a trembling voice. " I saw the associate prosecutor use all his endeavour at court to convict an unfortunate boy, who in any uncorrupted man ought to provoke nothing but compas- sion. I know how another prosecutor examined a sec- tarian and made out the reading of the Gospel a crimi- nal offence. The whole activity of the courts consists in such senseless and cruel acts." " I should not serve, if I thought so," said Ignati Niki- forovich, rising. Nekhlyildov noticed a peculiar sparkle under the spec- tacles of his brother-in-law. " Can it be tears ? " thought Nekhlyiidov. Indeed, those were tears of affront. Ignati Mkiforovich went up to the window, took out his hand- kerchief, and, clearing his throat, began to clean his glasses, at the same time wiping his eyes. Upon return- ing to the sofa, Iguati Nikiforovich lighted a cigar, and never said another word. Nekhlyudov was ashamed and pained at having grieved his brother-in-law and his sister to such an extent, especially since he was to leave on the next day, and would not see them again. He bade them farewell in embarrassment, and went home. " It may be that what I said was true, at least he has not successfully answered me ; but I ought not to have spoken to him in such a manner. I have changed little enough, if I can allow myself "to be so carried away by an evil passion, and so insult him and grieve poor Natalya," thought he. XXXIV. The party with which Maslova went was to start from the station at three o'clock, and therefore, in order to see them depart from the prison and to reach the station with them, Nekhlyudov intended to arrive at the prison before noon. As Nekhlyudov was putting away his things and his papers, he stopped at his diary and began to read some passages in it, and what he had last written in it. The last thing he had noted down before his departure for St. Petersburg ran as follows : " Katyusha does not wish my sacrifice, but her own. She has conquered, and so have I. I rejoice in that internal change which I think — I hardly dare beheve it — is taking place within her. I hardly dare believe it, but it seems to me she is reviv- ing." Immediately after it was written : " I have passed through a very heavy and a very joyful experience. I have learned that she did not behave well in the hospital. It gave me a sudden pang. I spoke to her in disgust and hatred, and then I suddenly thought of myself and of how often I have even now been, in thought, guilty be- fore her of the very thing for which I hated her, and immediately I loathed myself and pitied her, and I was happy. How much better we should be if we succeeded in time in seeing the beam in our own eye." On the last day he had written : " I saw Natalya, and my contentment made me unkind and cross, and a heavy feeling is left behind. What is to be done 1 With to- morrow a new life begins. Good-bye, old hie, for ever. 475 476 RESURRECTION There is an accumulation of many impressions, but I cannot yet harmonize them." Upon awakening on the following morning, Nekhlyii- dov's first feeling was regret at what had happened between him and his brother-in-law. " I cannot leave thus," he thought. " I must go to see them and smooth it over." But when he looked at his watch, he saw that it was too late, and that he had to hurry, in order not to miss the departure of the party. He quickly collected all his things and sent them by the porter and by Taras, Feddsya's husband, who was travelling with him, straight to the station ; then he took the first cab he could get, and drove to the prison. As the train of the prisoners left within two hours of the express on which Nekhlyiidov was to travel, he settled his bill at the hotel, not intending to come back again. It was an oppressive July day. The stones of the streets and houses, and th*^, iron sheets of the roofs, which had not cooled off after the sultry night, reflected their heat into the close, immovable air. There was no wind ; whenever a breeze started, it wafted a hot and malo- dorous air, saturated with dust and the stench of oil- paint. There were but few people in the streets, and those that were out tried to walk in the shade of the houses. Only the tawny, sunburnt peasant street-pavers in their bast shoes were sitting in the middle of the street and striking their hammers on the cobblestones that were placed in the hot sand ; gloomy policemen, in unbleached blouses and with the orange-coloured ribbons of their revolvers, stood along the streets, sullenly chang- ing their places ; and the tram-cars, shaded by blinds on the sunny side, and drawn by horses in white capotes, with tlieir ears sticking through the openings in the clotli, ran, tinkling, up and down the streets. When Nekhlyiidov reached the prison, the convoy of RESURRECTION 477 prisoners had not yet started, aud within the jail the trans- fer of the prisoners to be taken away, which had begun at four o'clock in the morning, was still causing busy work. In the party were 623 men and sixty-four women. They had all to be checked off on the lists ; the ailing and feeble had to be segregated ; and they had to be handed over to the soldiers of the guard. The new superintend- ent, two assistants of his, the doctor, with his assistant, the officer of the guard, and the scribe were seated at a table, which was placed in the yard, in the shade of a wall ; on it were lying papers and apyjurtenances of the chancery. They called out, examined, and noted down one prisoner after another, as they walked up to the table. The sun was now falling over half the table. It was growing hot and extremely sultry, both from the absence of a breeze and from the exhalations of the throng of prisoners who were standing there. " Will there ever be an end of it ? " said, puffing at his cigarette, the tall, stout, red-faced officer of the guard, with his raised shoulders and short arms, who never stopped smoking through his moustache, which covered his mouth. " They are tiring me out. Where did you get such a lot of them ? How many more will there be ? " The scribe looked up the matter. " Twenty-four men more, and the v/omen." " Don't stand there, but walk up here ! " cried the officer to the prisoners who had not yet been checked off, and who were crowding each other. They had been stand- ing for three hours in rows, not in the shade, but in the sun, waiting for their turns. This was the work which was going on within the precincts of the prison ; without, at the gate, stood, as always, a sentry with a gun, and about twenty drays for the belongings of the prisoners and for the feeble, and at the corner there was a throng of relatives and friends, who were waiting for the prisoners to come out, in order to see 478 RESURRECTION them, and, if possible, to say a few words and give them something for their journey. Nekhlyiidov joined this crowd. He stood there about an hour. At the end of that time there was heard the clanking of chains within the gate, the sound of steps, the voices of the officers, clearing of throats, and the subdued conversation of a large throng. This lasted about five minutes, during which the wardens walked in and out through a small door. Finally a com- mand was given. The gate opened with a crash, the clanking of the chains became louder, and the soldiers of the guard, in white blouses and with their guns, came out and, apparently executing a familiar and habitual evolution, took up a position in a large semicircle around the gate. When they had taken their stand, another command was heard, and the prisoners began to come out in pairs : they wore pancake-shaped caps on their shaven heads, and carried bags on their backs ; they dragged along their fettered legs, swung their one free arm, and with the other held the bags over their shoulders. First came the male prisoners, who were to be deported to hard labour, — all of them wearing the same gray trousers and cloaks, with black marks on their backs. All of them — whether they were young, old, lean, stout, pale, red, blac]^, bearded, mustachioed, beardless, Eussians, Tartars, or Jews — came out rattling with their chains and briskly swinging their arms, as though going out for a long walk, but after making about ten steps they stopped and docilely arranged themselves in rows of four, one behind the other. After these, without interruption, there were poured forth from the gate just such shaven prisoners, without their leg-fetters, but chained to each other by handcuffs, and wearing the same kind of garb. These were the prisoners to be deported for settlement. They walked out just as briskly, stopped, and also arranged themselves in rows of four. Then came those deported by RESURRECTION 479 the Communes. Then the women, also in successive order : first the hard labour convicts, in gray prison caftans and kerchiefs, then the deportation convicts, and those, who voluntarily followed their husbands, in their city and peasant attires. A few of the women carried babes in the folds of their gray caftans. With the women walked their children, boys and girls. These children pressed close to the prisoners, like colts in a herd of horses. The men stood silent, now and then clearing their throats, or making abrupt remarks. But the women chattered incessantly. Nekhlyudov thought he had recoguized Maslova as she came out of the gate, but later she was lost in the large throng of the women who were placed back of the men, and he saw only a crowd of gray 'beings, which seemed to have lost all human, especially all feminine, qualities, with their children and their sacks. Notwithstanding the fact that all the prisoners had been counted within the walls of the prison, the soldiers of the guard began to count them again, in order to see whether they tallied with the previous number. This recounting lasted for a long time, especially since some of the prisoners kept moving about and confusing the counts of the soldiers. The soldiers cursed and pushed the submissive, but angry prisoners, and began to count anew. After they had all been counted, the officer of the guard gave a command, and then there was a dis- turbance in the crowd. Feeble men, women, and children, trying to outrun each other, hurried to the wagons, where they deposited their bags, and themselves chmbed in. Into them also climbed the women with the crying suck- liug babes, the cheerful children, who were contending for their seats, and grim, gloomy prisoners. A few prisoners doffed their caps, and walked over to the officer of the guard, to ask him for something. Nekhlyudov later learned that they were asking to be 480 KESUERECTION allowed to ride in the wagons. Nekhlyiidov saw the officer calmly puff at his cigarette, without looking at the speaker, and then suddenly lift his short arm, as though to strike the prisoner, and the latter, ducking his head, in expectation of a blow, jump away from him. " I will make such a nobleman of you that you will remember me ! You will get there on foot ! " cried the officer. The officer permitted only one tottering tall old man, in leg-fetters, to take a seat in a wagon, and Nekhlyiidov saw this old man take off his pancake-shaped cap and' make the sign of the cross, as he was walking toward the wagon. He had a hard time getting in, as the chains made it hard for him to lift his weak, fettered legs, and a woman, who was already seated in the wa«on, helped him, by pulling him up by his arms. When all the wagons were filled with the bags, and those who were permitted had taken their seats in them, the officer of the guard took off his cap, wiped his fore- head, his bald pate, and his stout red neck with his hand- kerchief, and made the sign of the cross. " The party, march ! " he commanded. The soldiers clattered with their guns ; the prisoners took off their caps, some doing so with their left hands, and began to cross themselves ; the friends who were seeing them off called out something ; the prisoners cried something in reply ; among the women weeping was heard, — and the party, surrounded by soldiers in white blouses, started, raising the dust with their fettered legs. In front were soldiers ; behind them, clanking with their chains, were the fettered men, four in a row ; then came the deportation convicts, then the communal prisoners, handcuffed by twos ; and then the women. After these followed the Vv'agons with the bags and the feeble prisoners. On one of these, on a high load, sat a woman, who was all wrapped up, and who did not stop wailing and sobbing. XXXV. The procession was so long that only when the men in front had disappeared from view, the wagons began to move. When these started, Nekhlyiidov seated himself in the cab, which was waiting for liim, and ordered the driver to drive past the party, in order to see whether there were no men among them whom he knew, and then, to find Maslova among the women and to ask her whether she had received the things which he had sent her. It was very hot. There was no breeze, and the dust which was raised by a thousand feet hovered all the time above the prisoners who were walking in the middle of the street. They marched rapidly, and the dobbin of the cab, in which Nekhlyiidov was riding, took a long time in getting ahead of the procession. There were rows and rows of unfamiliar creatures of strange and terrible aspect, moving in even measure their similarly clad legs, and swinging their free arms, as though to give themselves courage. There were so many of them, and they so re- sembled each other, and were placed in such exceptional and strange conditions, that it seemed to Nekhlyiidov that they were not men, but some peculiar, terrible beings. This impression was shattered by his espying, in the throng of the hard labour convicts, murderer F^dorov, and, among the deportation convicts his acquaintance, the comedian Okhdtin, and another, a tramp, who had invoked his aid. Nearly all the prisoners turned around, eyeing the vehicle which was driving past them, and the gentleman 481 482 RESURRECTION in it, who was looking closely at them. Fedorov gave an upward shake of the head in token of his having recognized Nekhlyiidov ; Okhotin only winked. Neither the one nor the other bowed, considering this to be against the regulation. Upon coming abreast with the women, Nekhlyildov at once recognized Maslova. She was walk- ing in the second row. On the outside walked a red- faced, short-legged, black-eyed, ugly woman ; it was Beauty. Then followed a pregnant woman, who with difficulty dragged her legs along ; the third was Maslova. She was carrying a bag over her shoulder, and was looking straight ahead of her. Her face was calm and determined. The fourth one in the same row was a young, handsome woman, in a short cloak and with her kerchief tied in peasant fashion, stepping briskly, — that was Fedosya. Nekhlyiidov got down from the vehicle and walked over to the moving women, wishing to ask Maslova whether she had received the things, and how she felt ; but the under-officer of the guard, who was walking on the same side of the party, having at once noticed him, ran up to him. " It is not permitted, sir, to walk up to the party, — it is against the law," he cried, as he was coming up. Having come close, and recognizing Nekhlyudov (every- body in the prison knew him), the under-officer put his fingers to his cap, and, stopping near Nekhlyudov, said, " Here it is not permitted. At the station you may, but here it is against the law. Don't stop ! March ! " he cried to the prisoners, and, trying to appear dashing, in spite of the heat, galloped off in his new foppish boots to his place. Nekhlyudov walked down to the sidewalk, and, order- ing the vehicle to follow him, kept in the sight of the party. Wherever the procession passed it attracted atten- tion mingled witli compassion and terror. People in their carriages put out their heads and followed the prisoners RESURRECTION 483 with their eyes. Pedestrians stopped and looked in amazement and fear at this terrible spectacle. Some walked up and offered alms. The soldiers of the guard received these gifts. Some followed in the wake of the procession, as though hypnotized, and then they stopped and, shaking their heads, accompanied the party with their eyes only. People rushed out from the front steps and gates, calling to each other, or hung out of the win- dows, and immovably and silently watched the terrible procession. At a cross street the party stopped the passage for an elegant carriage. On the box sat a broad-backed coach- man, with a shining face and a row of buttons on his back ; in the carriage, on the back seat, sat a man with his wife ; the wife was thin and pale, in a bright-coloured hat, with a coloured parasol, and her husband wore a silk bat and a bright-coloured foppish overcoat. In front, opposite them, sat their children : a little girl, dressed up and shining like a flower, with loosely hanging blond hair, also with a bright-coloured parasol, and an eight-year-old boy with a long, thin neck and protruding shoulder-bones ; he wore a sailor hat, adorned with ribbons. The father angrily upbraided the coachman for not having passed in time ahead of the procession, while the mother finically blinked and frowned, shielding herself against the sun and dust with her silk parasol, which she put close to her face. The broad-backed coachman scowled angrily, listening to the unjust accusation of his master, who had himself ordered him to drive by that street, and with difficulty restrained the glossy black stalhons, lathered at their bits and necks, that were eager to start. A pohce- man was very anxious to serve the owner of the elegant carriage and to let him pass, by stopping the prisoners, but he felt that in this procession there was a gloomy solemnity, which could not be violated even for that rich gentleman. He only saluted, in sign of his respect for 484 RESUKRECTION wealth, and sternly looked at the prisoners, as though promising under all conditions to protect the persons in the carriage from them. Thus, the carriage was compelled to wait for the pass- ing of the whole procession, and it went on only when the last dray with the bags and prisoners upon it had gone by ; the hysterical woman, who was sitting upon the wagon, and who had quieted down, at the sight of the elegant carriage again burst out into tears and sobs. Only then the coachman hghtly touched his reins, and the black chargers, tinkling with their hoofs on the pave- ment, whisked off the softly swaying carriage, with its rubber tires, into the country, whither the gentleman, and his wife, his girl, and the boy with the thin neck and pro- truding shoulder-bones were driving for an outing. Neither the father nor the mother gave their children an explanation of what they saw ; thus the children were compelled to solve for themselves the question what this spectacle meant. The girl, taking into consideration the expression of her parents' faces, came to the conclusion that these were very different people from what her parents and acquaint- ances were ; that they were bad people, and that, conse- quently, they had to be treated as they were. Therefore the girl felt terribly, and was glad when she no longer saw them. But the boy vdth the long, thin neck, who did not take his eyes off the prisoners, as long as the procession went by, found a different answer to this question. He knew firmly and beyond any doubt, having learned it directly from God, that they were just such people as he himself and all other people were, and that, consequently, some- thing very bad had been done to them, something that ought not to have been done to them, and he was sorry for them and experienced terror both before the people who were fettered and shaven, and before those who had RESURRECTION 485 fettered and shaved them. And so the boy's lips kept swelling more and more, and he made great efforts to keep from crying, assuming that it was shameful to weep under such circumstances. XXXVI. Nekhlyudov walked with as rapid a gait as the prisoners, but even though he was hghtly clad, and wearing a light overcoat, he felt dreadfully hot, and oppressed by the dust and motionless sultry air in the streets. Having walked about an eighth of a mile, he seated himself in the vehicle and drove ahead, but in the middle of the street, in the cab, he felt even warmer. He tried to recall his thoughts about his last conversation with his brother-in- law, but now they no longer agitated him as they had in the morning. They were overshadowed by the impres- sions of the start from the prison and the procession of the prisoners. Above everything else, it was oppressively hot. At a fence, in the shade of trees, two students of the Eeal Gymnasium were standing with their caps off, before a squatting ice-cream seller. One of the boys was already enjoying the feast, licking off the bone spoon, while the other was waiting for the glass to be filled to the top with something yellow. " I wonder where I can get a drink here ? " Nekhlyudov asked the cabman, being overcome by irrepressible thirst. " There is a good inn not far from here ! " said the driver, 'and, turning around the corner, he took Nekh- lyudov to a building with a large sign. A puffy clerk in a shirt, who was standing back of the counter, and waiters, who had once looked clean and white and who were now sitting at the tables, as there were no guests present, looked with curiosity at the unusual guest and offered their services to him. Nekhlyudov asked for seltzer water, and sat down a distance away from the 486 RESURRECTION 487 window, at a small table with a dirty cloth. Two men were sitting at a table, on which stood a tea service and a bottle of white glass. They kept wiping off the perspi- ration from their brows, and figuring at something in a peaceable manner. One of these was swarthy and bald- headed, with just such a border of black hair on the back of his head as Ignati Nikiforovich had. This impression again reminded Nekhlyiidov of his conversation with his brother-in-law on the previous day, and of his desire to see him and his sister before his departure. " I shall hardly have enough time before the train leaves," he thought. " I had better write her a letter." He asked for paper and an envelope, and a stamp, and, sipping the fresh, effervescent water, was thinking what to write. But his thoughts were distracted, and he was unable to com- pose the letter. " Dear Natalya, — I cannot leave under the heavy impression of yesterday's conversation with Ignati Niki- forovich," he began. ." What next? Shall I ask forgive- ness for what I said yesterday ? But I said what I thought. And he will imagine that I recant. No, I can- not — " and, feeling again a rising hatred for this, to him, strange, self-confident man, who did not understand him, Nekhlyildov put the unfinished letter in his pocket and, paying for what he had used, went out into the street, and told the driver to catch up with the party. The heat had become even more intense. The walls and stones seemed to exhale hot air. The feet burnt against the heated pavement, and Nekhlyudov felt as though he burnt his hand when he put it to the lacquered wing of the vehicle. The horse dragged himself along the streets in an in- different amble, evenly striking the dusty and uneven pavement with his hoofs ; the cabman kept dozing off ; Nekhlyudov sat, thinking of nothing in particular and looking indifferently in front of him. At a turn of the 488 RESURRECTION street, opposite the gate of a large house, stood a throng of people aud a soldier of the guard with his gun. Nekhlyudov stopped the cab. " What is it ? " he asked a janitor. " Something the matter with a prisoner." Nekhlyvidov left the vehicle and walked up to the crowd. On the uneven stones of the inclined pavement, near the sidewalk, lay, with his head lower than his feet, a broad-shouldered, middle-aged prisoner, with a red beard, red face, and flat nose, in a gray cloak and gray trousers. He lay on his back, stretching out his freckled hands, with their palms down, and at long intervals evenly heaved his broad, high chest aud sobbed, looking at the sky with his stariug, bloodshot eyes. Over him stood a frowning policeman, a peddler, a letter-carrier, a clerk, an old woman with a parasol, and a short-haired boy with an empty basket. " He has grown weak sitting in jail, quite feeble, — and they take him through a very hell," the clerk condemned somebody, turning to Nekhlyudov, who had stepped up. "He will, no doubt, die," said the woman with the parasol, in a tearful voice. " You ought to untie his shirt," said the letter-carrier. The policeman began with trembling, stout fingers awkwardly to loosen the tape on his venous, red neck. He was apparently agitated and embarrassed, but, never- theless, he deemed it necessary to address the crowd. " Why have you gathered there ? It is hot enough even without you. You are cutting off the breeze." " The doctor ought to inspect the weak and keep them back. Instead, they have taken a man who is half-dead," said the clerk, evidently displaying his knowledge of the law. Having untied the tape of the shirt, the policeman straightened himself up and looked about him. " Step aside, I say. It is none of your business. What is there to be seen here ? " he said, turning with a glance RESURRECTION 489 of compassion to Nekhlyudov, but not getting any sym- pathy from him, he looked at the soldier of the guard. But the soldier was standing to one side, and, examining the worn-off heel of his boot, was quite indifferent to the trouble the policeman was in. " People who know better don't take the proper trouble. Is it right to kill a man that way ? " " A prisoner is a prisoner, but still he is a man," some- body remarked in the crowd. " Put his head higher, and give him some water," said Nek hly lido V. " They have gone to bring some," said the policeman, and, taking the prisoner under his arms, with difficulty raised his body. " What is this gathering for ? " suddenly was heard a commanding voice, and to the crowd collected around the prisoner strode with rapid steps a sergeant of police, in an exceedingly clean and shining blouse and even more shin- ing long boots. " Move on ! You have no business standing here ! " he cried to the crowd, before he knew what they were doing there. When he came close and saw the dying prisoner, he nodded his head approvingly as though he had ex- pected that very thing, and turned to the policeman. " What is the matter ? " The policeman informed him that a party of prisoners had walked past, and that he had fallen down, and the officer of the guard left him there. " Well, take him to the station. Get a cab ! " " A janitor has run to fetch one," said the policeman, saluting. The clerk began to say something about the heat. " That is not your business, is it ? Walk along," ex- claimed the sergeant, looking so sternly at the clerk that he grew silent. " You ought to give him some water to drink," said 490 RESURRECTION Nekhlyudov. The sergeant looked as sternly at Nekhlyu- dov, without saying anything. When a janitor brought some water in a cup, he ordered the policeman to give it to the prisoner. The policeman raised the man's listless head, and tried to pour the water into his mouth, but the prisoner would not take it ; the water streamed down his beard, wetting the blouse and the dusty hempen shirt on his chest, " Pour it out on his head ! " commanded the sergeant, and the pohcemau took off liis pancake-shaped cap, and poured out the water on his red curly hair and bare skull. The prisoner's eyes opened wide, as though frightened, but the position of his body did not change. Down his face trickled dirty streams, but the same sobs escaped from his mouth, and his body kept jerking convulsively. "What about this one? Take it," the sergeant ad- dressed the policeman, pointing to Nekhlyudov's cab. " Ho there, come along ! " " I am hired," gloomily said the driver, without raising his eyes. "This is my cab," said Nekhlyudov, "but you may take it. I shall pay for it," he added, turning to the driver, " Don't stand here ! " cried the sergeant. " Move on ! " The pohceman, some janitors, and the soldier raised the dying man, carried him to the vehicle, and placed him on the seat. He could not hold himself ; his head fell back, and his body slipped off the seat. " Lay him down," commanded the sergeant. " Never mind, your Honour. I will take him down," said the policeman, firmly seating liimself at the side of the dying man and putting his strong right hand under his arm. The soldier lifted his feet, which were clad in prison slioes without leg-rags, and straightened them out under the box. RESUKRECTION 491 The sergeant looked about him, and, noticing on the pavement the prisoner's pancake-shaped cap, lifted it and put it on his dirty, flabbily hanging head. " March ! " he commanded. The cabman looked back angrily, shook his head, and, accompanied by the soldier, slowly moved toward the police station. The policeman, who was sitting with the prisoner, kept adjusting the shpping body, with its head shaking in all directions. The soldier, who was walking near by, stuck the feet back under the box. Nekhlyudov walked behind him. XXXVII. Passing by a sentry of the fire-brigade, the cab with the prisoner drove into the yard of the police station and stopped before a building. In the yard, firemen, with roUed-up sleeves, were con- versing aloud and laughing, while washing a wagon. The moment the cab stopped, several policemen sur- rounded it, took the lifeless body of the prisoner under his arms and by his legs, and raised him from the squeak- ing vehicle. The policeman who had brought him jumped down from the cab, waved his stiffened arm, doffed his cap, and made the sign of the cross. The dead man was carried through the door up-stairs. Nekhlyiidov followed them. In the small dirty room, to which the body was carried, there were four cots. Two sick men in cloaks were sitting on two of them, — one, a wry-mouthed fellow with his neck wrapped up, and the other, a consumptive man. Two cots were unoccupied. The prisoner was placed on one of these. A small man, with sparkling eyes and continually moving brows, in nothing but his underwear and stockings, walked over to the prisoner with soft, rapid steps, looked at him, then at Nekhlyiidov, and burst out laughing. This was an insane person who was kept in the wait- ing-room. " They want to frighten me," he said. " Only, they won't succeed." Soon after the pohcemen, who had brought in the body, came the sergeant and a surgeon's assistant. The assistant walked up to the prisoner, touched the 4\)2 KESUEKECTION 493 cold, yellow, freckled, still soft, but deathly pale hand of the man, held it awliile, and then dropped it. It fell lifelessly upon the dead man's abdomen. " He is done with," said the assistant, shaking his head, but, apparently to comply with the rules, he pushed aside the wet, coarse shirt of the dead man, and, brushing his curly hair away from his ear, leaned over the pris- oner's yellowish, immovable, high breast. Everybody was silent. The assistant arose, again shook his head, and put his finger, now on one, now on the other lid of the open and staring blue eyes. " You will not frighten me, you will not frighten me," said the insane man, all the time spitting out in the direction of the assistant. " Well ? " asked the sergeant. " Well ? " repeated the assistant. " He ought to be taken to the dead-house." " Be sure it is so ! " said the sergeant. " It is time I should know," said the assistant, for some reason covering the dead man's open breast. " I shall send for Matvyey Ivanych, and let him take a look. Petrdv, go for him," said the assistant, walking away from the body. " Carry him to the dead-house," said the sergeant. " You come to the chancery, and sign a receipt," he added to the soldier of the guard, who aU this time stuck closely to the prisoner. " Yes, sir," replied the soldier. The policemen lifted the dead man and carried him down-stairs. Nekhlyudov wanted to follow them, but the insane person stopped him. " You are not in the conspiracy, so give me a ciga- rette," he said. Nekhlyiidov took out his cigarette-holder, and gave him one. The insane man, moving his eye- brows, began to speak rapidly and to tell him that they tortured him with suggestions. 494 EESUKRECTION " They are all against me, and they torment me through their mediums — " " Pardon me," said Nekhlyiidov, and, without waiting to hear what he had to say, went out. He wanted to know whither they would take the body. The policemen had already crossed the yard with their burden, and were about to walk down into a basement. Nekhlyudov wanted to walk up to them, but the sergeant stopped him. " What do you want ? " " Nothing," said Nekhlyudov. " If nothing, step aside." Nekhlyudov obeyed and went back to his cab. The driver was dozing. Nekhlyudov woke him, and again started for the railway station. He had not gone one hundred steps, when he came to a dray accompanied by a soldier with his gun, on which another prisoner, apparently dead, was lying. The pris- oner was on his back, and his shaven head, with its black beard, covered by the pancake-shaped cap, which had slipped down to his nose, shook and tossed at every jolt of the wagon. The drayman, in stout boots, guided the horse, walking at its side. Back of the wagon walked a police- man. Nekhlyudov touched his driver's shoulder. "Terrible things they are doing!" said the driver, stopping his horse. Nekhlyudov climbed down from his vehicle, and fol- lowed the dray, again past the sentry of the fire-brigade, to the yard of the police station. The firemen had finished washing the wagon, and in their place stood a tall, bony fire-captain, in a visorless cap. He stuck his hands in his pocket and was sternly looking at a fat, stout-necked dun stalhon, which a fireman was leading up and down in front of him. He was lame on his fore leg, and the fire-captain was angrily saying something to the veterinary surgeon, who was standing near him. RESUERECTION 495 The sergeant of police was there, too. Upon noticing another dead man, he walked over to the dray. " Where did you pick him up ? " he asked, disapprov- ingly shaking his head. " On the Old Gorbatovskaya," answered the policeman. " A prisoner ? " asked the fire-captain. " Yes, sir. This is the second to-day," said the sergeant of pohce. " A fine way ! And the heat ! " said the fire-captain, and, turning to the fireman, who was leading away the lame dun stalhon, he cried : " Put him in the corner stall ! I will teach you, son of a dog, how to maim horses that are worth more than you are, you rascal ! " The policemen lifted the body, just as they had the one before, and carried it to the waiting-room. Nekhlyudov followed them, as though hypnotized. " What do you wish ? " one of the policemen asked him. * He went, without answering, to the place where they were carrying the dead man. The insane man was sitting on a cot, eagerly smoking the cigarette which Nekhlyudov had given him. " Ah, you have come back," he said, laughing out loud. Upon seeing the dead man, he scowled. " Again," he said. " I am tired of them. I am not a boy, am I ? " he turned to Nekhlyudov, with a questioning smile. Nekhlyudov was, in the meantime, looking at the dead man, around whom nobody was standing, and whose face, covered by the cap before, was now plainly visible. As the first prisoner had been ugly, so this one was unusually handsome in body and face. He was a man in the full bloom of his strength. In spite of the disfigured, half- shaven head, the low, abrupt forehead, with elevations above the black, now lifeless eyes, was very beautiful, and so was the small, slightly curved nose above the thin, black moustache. The hvid lips were drawn back into a 496 RESURRECTION smile ; a small beard fringed only the lower part of the face, and on the shaven side of the skull could be seen a small, firm, and handsome ear. The face had a calm, severe, and good expression. Let alone the fact that it was evident from his face what pos- sibilities of spiritual life had been lost in this man, one could see, by the strong muscles of his well-proportioned limbs, what a handsome, strong, agile human animal he had been, — in its way a much more perfect animal than that dun stalhon, whose lameness so angered the fire- captain. And yet, he died, and no one pitied him, neither as a man, nor even as an unfortunately ruined beast of burden. The only feeling which had been evoked in people by his death was the feeling of annoyance caused by the necessity of disposing of this rapidly decaying body. The doctor, the assistant, and a captain of police entered the waiting-room. The doctor was a thick-set, stocky man, in a China silk frock coat, and narrow pantaloons of the same material, that fitted closely over his mus- cular loins. The captain was a stout little man, with a globe-shaped red face, which grew rounder still from his habit of filling his cheeks with air and slowly emitting it. The doctor sat down on the cot on which the dead man lay, and, just as the assistant had done, he touched the hands, listened for the heart-beat, and arose, adjusting his pantaloons. " They are never deader," he said. The captain filled his cheeks with air and slowly emitted it. " From what prison ? " he turned to the soldier. The soldier answered him, and reminded him of the fetters, which were on the dead man. " I shall order them to be taken off. Thank the Lord there are blacksmiths," said the captain, and, again puffing up his cheeks, he went to the door, slowly letting out the air. RESURRECTION 497 " Why is this so ? " Nekhlyiidov turned to the doctor. The doctor looked at him above his spectacles. " Why is what so ? Why do they die from sunstroke ? It is like this : they are locked up all winter, without motion or light, and suddenly they are let out in the sun, and on such a day as this ; then they walk in such crowds, where there is no breeze. And the result of it is a sunstroke." " Why, then, do they send them out ? " " You ask them ! But who are you, anyway ? " " I am a private individual." " Ah ! — My regards to you, I am busy," said the doc- tor, and, angrily pulling his trousers in shape, he walked over to the cots of the patients. " Well, how goes it with you ? " he turned to the wry- mouthed, pale man, with neck all wrapped up. The insane man, in the meantime, was sitting on his cot and spitting in the direction of the doctor, after he got through with his cigarette. Nekhlyiidov went out into the yard, and, past the fire- brigade's horses and chickens, and the sentry in a brass helmet, walked through the gate, where he seated himself in his cab, the driver of which was again asleep, and had himself driven to the railway station. XXXVIII When Nekhlyudov reached the station, the prisoners were ah-eady sitting in cars, behind grated windows. On the platform stood a number of men who were seeing off the prisoners: the soldiers of the guard did not let him walk up to the cars. The officers of the guard were very much disturbed. On the way to the station there had died from sunstroke three men besides the two which Nekhlyiidov had seen : one of these had been taken to the nearest police station, like the other two, while two more fell at the station.^ The officers of the guard were not concerned about the five men which they had lost, and who might have lived. This did not interest them. They were interested only in executing all that the law demanded of them under these circumstances : to deliver the dead persons and their papers and things where it was necessary, and to exclude them from the count of those who were to be taken to Nizhni-Novgorod, — and this was quite troublesome, especially in such hot weather. It was this which gave the men of the guard so much trouble, and it was for this reason that neither Nekh- lyiidov, nor the others, were permitted to walk up to the cars. Nekhlyiidov, however, was permitted to go up, because he bribed an under-officer of the guard. The under-officer let Nekhlyiidov pass, and only asked him to 1 In the beginning of the eiglities five prisoners died in one day from the effects of sunstroke, while being taken from the But.frski Prison to the Station of the Nfzhni-N6vgorod railway. — Authofa 498 RESURRECTION 499 say what he wished to say and walk away as soon as possible, so that the superior officer should not see him. There were eighteen cars in all, and all of them, except the car of the officers, were filled to suffocation with prisoners. Passing by the windows of the cars, Nekhlyudov Hs- tened to what was going on within. In all of them could be heard the clanking of chains, bustle, and conversation, mixed with senseless profanity, but nowhere was a word said about the sunstruck companions, which was what Nekhlyudov had expected to hear. They were talking mainly about their bags, about water to drink, and about the choice of a seat. Upon looking inside one window, Nekhlyudov saw in the middle of the car, in the passageway, some soldiers who were taking off the handcuffs from the prisoners. The prisoners extended their hands, and a soldier opened the manacles with a key, and took them off. Another gathered them up. Having walked along the whole train, Nekhlyudov walked up to the women's car. In the second one of these, he heard the even groans of a woman, interrupted by exclamations, " Oh, oh, oh ! Help me ! Oh, oh, oh ! Help me ! " Nekhlyudov went past it, and, following the indica- tion of a soldier, went up to a third car. As Nekhlyudov put his head to the window, he was stifled by a hot breath, saturated with a dense odour of human exhala- tions, and he could clearly hear squeaking feminine voices. Perspiring women, red in their faces, were sitting on all the benches, dressed in cloaks and jackets, and chattering away. Nekhlyiidov's face at the grated window attracted their attention. Those that were nearest grew silent and moved up to him. Maslova, in her bodice only and with- out a kerchief, was seated at the opposite window. Near- est to him sat white, smiling Fedosya. 600 RESUKRECTION Upon recognizing Nekhlyiidov, she nudged Maslova and indicated the window to her. Maslova arose hurriedly, threw the kerchief over her black hair, and with an animated, red, perspiring, smiling face went up to the window and held on to the iron bars. " It is hot," she said, with a smile of delight. " Did you get the things ? " " I did, thank you." " Do you need anything," asked Nekhlyudov, feeling as though the car were heated inside like a bathroom oven. . " Thank you, nothing." " If we could only get a drink," said Fedosya. " Yes, a drink," repeated Maslova. " Have you no water there ? " " They have put in some, but it has all been used up." " Directly," said Nekhlyudov, " I will ask a soldier. We sha'n't see each other before Nizhni-Novgorod." " Are you going there ? " said Maslova, as though not knowing it, and casting a joyful glance at Nekhlyudov. " I go with the next train." Maslova said nothing, and only a few seconds later drew a deep sigh. " Tell me, sir, is it true that they have killed twelve prisoners ? " said an old, rough woman, in a coarse man's voice. This was Korabl^va. " I have not heard of twelve. I saw two/' said Nekh- lyudov. " They say, twelve. Won't they be punished for it ? They are devils." " Did none of the women get ill ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " The women are tougher," said another, an undersized prisoner, smiling. " Only one has taken it into her head to have a baby. You hear her moan," she said, point- ing to the next car, from which the groans were still proceeding. KESURRECTION 501 " You ask me whether I do not want something ? " said Maslova, trying to keep her lips from a smile of joy. " Can't tliis woman be kept here ? She is suffering so much. Can't you tell the authorities ? " « Yes, I will." "Another thing. Could she not see Taras, her hus- band ? " she added, indicating smiling Fedosya with her eyes. " I understand he is travelling with you." " Mister, no talking allowed," was heard the voice of an under-officer of the guard. This was not the one who had given Nekhlyildov the permission. Nekhlyudov stepped aside and went to find the officer, in order to intercede for the lying-in woman and for Taras, but he could not find him for a long time, nor could he get any answer out of the soldiers of the guard. They were in a great turmoil : some were taking a prisoner somewhere ; others were running to buy pro- visions for themselves, or placing their things in the cars ; others again were attending to a lady who was travelling with the officer of the guard. They all answered un- willingly to Nekhlyiidov's questions. Nekhlyudov saw the guard officer after the second bell. The officer, wiping with his short hand his moustache, which concealed his mouth, and raising his shoulder, was reproaching the sergeant for something. " What is it you want ? " he asked Nekhlyudov. " There is a woman who is in labour pains in the car, so I thought she ought to — " " Let her be. We shall see then," said the officer, walking to his car, and briskly swinging his short arms. Just then the conductor, with the whistle in his hand, passed by. The last bell was rung, the whistle blown, and among those who were waiting on the platform and in the women's car were heard weeping and lamentations. Nekhlyudov was standing with Taras on the platform, and watching the cars with the grated windows, and the 602 KESURRECTION shaven heads of men behind them, pass one after another. Then the first woman's car came abreast of them, and in the window were seen the heads of several women in kerchiefs and without them ; then the second car, in which Maslova was. She was standing at the window with others and looking at Nekhlyiidov, with a pitiable smile on her face. XXXIX. There were two hours left before the passenger train, on which Nekhlyiidov was to travel, would start. At first he had intended to drive down in the meantime to his sister's, but now, under the impressions of the morning, he felt so agitated and crushed that, upon sitting down on a sofa in the waiting-room of the first class, he was suddenly so overcome by sleepiness that he turned on his side, put his hand under his cheek, and immediately fell asleep. He was awakened by a waiter in a dress coat, holding a napkin. " Mister, mister, are you not Prince Nekhlyiidov ? A lady is looking for you." Nekhlyiidov jumped up, and, rubbing his eyes, recalled where he was and all that had happened on that morning. In his recollection were the procession of the prisoners, the dead men, the cars with the grated windows, and the women shut up inside, of whom one was in the agony of lal)our, without receiving any aid, and another pitiably smiled from behind the iron bars. In reality there was something entirely different in front of him : a table, covered with bottles, vases, can- delabra, and dishes, and agile waiters bustling near it. In the back of the hall, in front of a safe, and behind some vases filled with fruit and behind bottles were the buffet-keeper and the backs of travellers at the counter. Just as Nekhlyiidov was changing his lying position for a sitting one, and slowly coming to, he noticed that those who were in the room were looking with curiosity 503 504 RESURRECTION at something that was taking place at the door. He looked in that direction, and saw a procession of people carrying a lady in a chair, her head being loosely covered with a shawl. The front bearer was a lackey and seemed familiar to Nekhlyudov. The one in the back was also a familiar porter, with galloons on his cap. Back of the chair walked an elegant chambermaid, in apron and curls, carrying a bundle, a round object in a leather case, and umbrellas. Farther behind walked Prince Korchagin in a travelling-cap, displaying his thick Kps and apoplectic neck, and expanding his chest ; after him walked Missy, Misha, a cousin, and diplomatist Osten, whom Nekh- lyudov knew, with his long neck and prominent Adam's apple, and an ever jolly expression on his face. While walking, he was proving something impressively and, apparently, jocularly, to smihng Missy. Behind them came the doctor, angrily puffing his cigarette. The Korchagins were moving from their suburban estate to the estate of the prince's sister, which was down on the Nizhui-Ndvgorod line. The procession of the bearers, of the chambermaid, and the doctor proceeded to the ladies' room, evoking the curiosity and respect of everybody present. The old prince sat down at the table, immediately called a lackey, and began to order something to eat and drink. Missy and Osten also stopped in the dining-room and were on the point of sitting down when they noticed a lady of their acquaintance in the door, whom they went up to meet. This lady was Natalya Ivanovua. Natalya Ivanovna, accompanied by Agraf^na Petrovna, looked all around her, as she entered the dining-room. She noticed Missy and her brother about the same time. She first went up to Missy, nodding her head to Nekh- lyudov. But, having kissed Missy, she at once went up to her brother. " At last I have found you," she said. RESURRECTION 505 Neklilyudov arose, greeted Missy, Misha, and 6sten, and stopped to talk to them. Missy told him of the fire on their estate which compelled them to go to her aunt's. Osten used this opportunity to tell a funny anec- dote about the fire. Nekhlyildov was not listening to Osten, but turned to his sister: "How glad I am that you have come," he said. " I have been quite awhile here," she said. " Agrafena Petr6vna is with me." She pointed to Agrafi^na Petrovna, who wore a hat and a mackintosh, and with gracious dignity was bowing confusedly to Nekhlyudov from a distance, not wishing to be in his way. " We have been looking for you everywhere." " I fell asleep in here. How glad I am you have come," repeated Nekhlyildov. " I had begun to write a letter to you," he said. " Keally ? " she said, frightened. " About what ? " Missy and the gentlemen, noticing that an intimate conversation had begun between brotlier and sister, walked aside. Nekhlyildov and his sister sat down near the window, on a velvet divan, near somebody's things, — a plaid and paper boxes. " Yesterday, after I left you, I wanted to come back and express my regrets, but I did not know how he would take it," said Nekhlyildov. " I did not treat your husband right, and this worried me," he added. " I knew, I was convinced," said his sister, " that you did not mean to. You know yourself," and tears stood in her eyes, and she touched his arm. The phrase was not clear, but he understood her quite well, and was touched by what she meant by it. These words meant that in addition to her love which had possession of her, — lier love for her husband, — her love for him, her brother, was important and dear to her, and that every misunder- standing with him was a source of great suftering to her. 506 RESURRECTION "Thank, thank you. Ah, what I have seen to-day!" he said, suddenly recalling the second dead prisoner. " Two prisoners were killed." " How do you mean killed ? " " I tell you, killed. They were taken out through this heat. Two of them died from sunstroke." " Impossible ! What ? To-day ? A little while ago ? " " Yes, a little while ago. I saw their dead bodies." " But why did they kill them ? Who killed them ? " said Natalya Ivanovna. " Those killed them who took them by force," Nekh- lyiidov said, with irritation, feeling that she looked even at this with the eyes of her husband. " Ah, my God ! " said Agraf^na Petrovna, coming up to them. " Yes, we have not the slightest idea of what is done with these unfortunates, and yet it ought to be known," added Nekhlyiidov, looking at the old prince, who, having tied a napkin around liimself, was sitting at the table at a small pitcher, and at the same time glancing at Nekh- lyiidov. " Nekhlyiidov ! " he cried. " Do you want to cool yourself off ? It is good for the journey ! " Nekhlyiidov declined, and turned away. " What are you going to do ? " proceeded Natalya Ivanovna. " Whatever I can. I do not know, but I feel that I must do something. And I will do what I can." " Yes, yes, I understand that. Well, and with these," she said, smiling and indicating the Korchagins with her eyes, " is it all absolutely ended ? " " Absolutely so, and I think that there are no regrets on either side." "A pity. I am sorry. I love her. Granted it is so. But why do you want to tie yourself ? " she added, timidly. " Why are you leaving ? " EESURRECTION 507 " I am going away because I must," Nekhlyildov said, dryly and seriously, as though wishing to interrupt the conversation, but he at once felt ashamed of his coldness to his sister. " Why can't I tell her everything I think ? " he thought. " Let Agrafena Petrdvna hear it, too," he said to himself, looking at the old chambermaid. Agrafena Petrovna's presence urged him on to repeat his decision to his sister. " Are you speaking of my intention to marry Katyu- sha ? You see, I have determined to do so, but she has definitely and firmly refused me," he said, and his voice trembled, as it always did whenever he thought of it. " She does not want my sacrifice, and herself sacrifices very much, for one in her situation, but I cannot accept that sacrifice, if that is but a whim. And so I am follow- ing her up, and will be there where she is, and will do all in my power to help her and to alleviate her lot." Natalya Ivanovna said nothing. Agrafena Petrovna looked questioningly at Natalya Ivanovna and shook her head. Just then the procession started again from the ladies' room. The same handsome lackey, Filipp, and the porter were carrying the princess. She stopped the bearers, beckoned to Nekhlyudov to come up to her, and, with an expression of pity and pining, gave him her white, ring-bedecked hand, in terror expecting a firm pressure. " EpouvantaUe ! " she said about the heat, " I can't stand it. Ce cliniat me tue." Having talked awhile about the terrors of the Russian climate, and having invited him to visit them, she gave a sign to the bearers. " Be sure and come," she added, turning her long face to him, while being carried away. Nekhlyudov went out on the platform. The procession of the princess turned to the right, to the cars of the first class. Nekhlyudov with the porter, who was carrying his things, and with Taras with his bag, went to the left. 508 RESURRECTION " This is my companion," Nekhlyudov said to his sister, pointing to Taras, whose history he had told her before. " You don't mean to say you will travel third class," said Natalya Ivanovua, when Nekhlyudov stopped in front of a car of the third class, and the porter with the things and Taras entered it. " It is more comfortable for me, and Taras and I will be together," he said. " By the way," he added, " I have not yet given the Kuzmiuskoe land to the peasants, so, in case of my death, your children will inherit it." " Dmitri, stop," said Natalya Ivanovna. " And if I should give it to them, I must tell you that everything else will be theirs, because there is little chance of my marrying, and if I should, there will be no children — so that — " " Dmitri, please don't say that," said Natalya Ivanovna, but Nekhlyudov saw that she was glad to hear that which he told her. Ahead, in front of the first class, stood a small throng of people, still looking at the car into which Princess Korchagin had been carried. All the other people had already taken their seats. Belated passengers, hurrying, clattered on the boards of the platform ; the conductors slammed the doors and asked the passengers to be seated and their friends to leave. Nekhlyudov walked into a sunny, hot, and malodorous car, and immediately stepped out on the brake platform. Natalya Ivanovna stood opposite the car, in her fashion- able hat and wrap, by the side of Agraf^na Petrovna, and apparently was trying to find a subject for conversation, but was unable to discover any. It was not even possible to say, " Ecrivez," because her brother and she had long ago been making fun of this habitual phrase of parting people. That short conversation about money matters and inheritance had at once destroyed all their tender relations of brother and sister, — they now felt estranged RESURRECTION 509 from each other. Consequently, Natalya Ivanovna was glad when the train started, and it was possible only to nod, and, with a sad and kindly face, to say, " Good-bye, Dmitri, good-bye ! " The moment the car had left, she began to think how to tell her husband of her conversation with her brother, and her face looked solemn and troubled. Although Nekhlyudov had none but tlie very kindest feelings for his sister, and never concealed anything from her, he now felt awkward and oppressed in her presence, and wished to get away from her as soon as possible. He felt that there was no longer that Natalya, who once had been so near to him, but only the slave of a stranger and a disagreeable, swarthy, and hirsute man. He saw this because her face ht up with especial animation only when he said something which interested her husband, — that is, when he spoke about giving away the land to the peasants and about the inheritance, — and that pained him. XL. The heat in the large ear of the third class, into which the sun had been shining all day long, and which now was tilled with people, was so stitliug that Nekhlyiidov did not enter the car, but remained on the brake platform. Even here it was not possible to breathe, and Nekhlyudov drew a deep breath only when the cars came out of the rows of houses, and a fresh breeze began to blow. " Yes, they have killed them," he repeated the words which he had said to his sister. In his imagination arose, through all the impressions of that day, with especial vividness, the handsome face of the second dead prisoner, with the smiling expression of his lips, the severe aspect of his forehead, and the small, firm ear beneath the shaven, hvid skull. " The most terrible thing of this all is that he has been killed, and nobody knows who it is that has killed him. There is no doubt about his having been killed. He was led, like all the prisoners, by order of Masl^nnikov. Masl^unikov, no doubt, sent forth his habitual order, with his stupid flourish signed a paper with a printed headiug, and, of course, in no way will regard himself as guilty. Still less can the prison doctor, who examined the prisoners, consider himself to be guilty. He accurately executed his duty, segregated the weak, and in no way could foresee this terrible heat, nor that they would be taken away so late and in such a throng. The superintendent ? — but the superintendent only executed the order to send out on such and such a day so many enforced labour and deportation convicts, men and women. Nor can the officer of the guard be 510 RESURKECTION 51 1 guilty, whose duty consisted in receiving a certain number of prisoners and delivering the same to such and such a place. He led the party according to the regulation, and he could not foresee that such strong men as those two whom Nekhlyudov had seen would not hold out and would die. Nobody is guilty, — but the people have been killed, and they have been killed by these very men who are innocent of their deaths. " All this was done," thought Nekhlyudov, " because all these people, governors, superintendents, sergeants, pohcemen, think that there are regulations in the world, in which the relations of man to man are not obHgatory. If all these people — Masl^nnikov, the superintendent, the officer of the guard — were not governors, superin- tendents, and officers, they would have considered twenty times whether they ought to take out the prisoners in such a heat and in such large crowds ; they would have stopped twenty times during the march, in order to take out such men as were weakening and falhng ill ; they would have taken them into the shade, would have given them water to drink, would have allowed them to rest, and, if a misfortune had happened, would have expressed their compassion. They have not done it, and have even interfered with others who would have done it, because they saw . before them, not men and their obligations to them, but their own service and its demands, which they placed higher than the demands of human relations. That is where the trouble is," thought Nekhlyudov. " If it is possible to acknowledge that anything is more important than the feeling of humanity, even for one hour and in any one exceptional case, then any crime may be com- mitted against men without a feeling of guilt." Nekhlyudov fell to musing, and did not notice how the weather had in the meantime changed : the sun had dis- appeared behind a low, tattered, advance cloud, and from the western horizon moved a solid, light gray cloud, which 512 RESURRECTION somewhere far away was already pouring forth its slanting, abundant rain over fields and woods. A damp, rain-fed breeze was wafted from the storm-cloud. Now and then lightnings crossed the cloud, and the rumble of thunder ever more frequently mingled with the rumble of the car- wheels. The cloud came nearer and nearer, and slanting drops of rain, driven by the wind, began to wet the brake platform and Nekhlyudov's overcoat. He went over to the other side, and, iuhaling the moist air and the odour of growing corn from the thirsty earth, looked at the passing gardens, forests, yellowiug fields of rye, the still green strips of oats and the black furrows of the dark green, flowering potato-beds. Everything looked as though covered with lacquer ; that which was green be- came greener, that which was yellow grew yellower, and that which was black, blacker. " More, more," said Nekhlyiidov, rejoicing at the sight of fields, gardens, and orchards, which were reviving under the influence of the beneficent rain. The heavy rain did not come down long. The storm- cloud was partly exhausted and partly carried beyond, and only the last, straight, abundant, and tiny drops fell on the damp earth. The sun again peeped out; every- thing sparkled, and in the west there was arched above the horizon a low, but bright rainbow, with prominent violet hue, discontinuous at one end only, " What was it I was thinking about ? " Nekhlyudov asked himself, when all these changes in Nature had taken place, and the train was passing over a road-bed that was raised high above the lower ground. " Yes, I was thinking that all these people, — the super- intendent, the soldiers of the guard, — that all serving people, — most of them meek, kindly people, — have become bad only through service." He recalled Masl^nnikov's indifference, when he told him of what was going on in the prison, the severity of RESURRECTION 613 the superintendent, the cruelty of the officer of the guard, when he did not permit the men to get into the drays, and when he paid no attention to the woman who was in labour in the car. x\ll these people were apparently im- mune and impervious to the simplest sense of compassion only because they served. They, as serving people, were impervious to the feeling of humanity, " as tliis paved earth is to rain," thought Nekhlyudov, looking at the incliue of the embankment which was paved with many- coloured stones, over which the rain-water flowed down in runlets, without soaking into the earth. " It may be necessary to pave the embankments with stones, but it is sad to see the earth deprived of vegetation, whereas it could have brought forth grain, grass, shrubs, trees, like the land which is to be seen above the ravine. It is just so with men," thought Nekhlyudov. " It may be that these governors, superintendents, policemen, are nec- essary, but it is terrible to see people deprived of their chief human quality, — of love and pity for their fellow men. "The trouble is," thought Nekhlyudov, "that these men accept as law that which is not the law, and do not acknowledge as law that which is an eternal, unchange- able, inalienable law, written by God Himself in the hearts of men. It is this which makes it so hard for me to be with these men," thought Nekhlyudov. " I am simply afraid of them. Indeed, they are terrible people, — more terrible than robbers. A robber may have pity, — these never can ; they are ensured against pity, as these stones are against vegetation. It is this which makes them so terrible. They say Pugach^v and Razin are terrible. These are a thousand times more terrible ! " he continued to think. " If a psychological problem were given, — what is to be done in order that people of our time, humane Christians, simply good people, should commit the most atrocious deeds without feeling themselves guilty ? — only 514 RESURRECTION one solution would present itself : it is necessary to do tliat which actually is being done ; it is necessary for these people to be governors, superintendents, officers, policemen, that is, they must, in the first place, be con- vinced that there is a thing called government service where one may treat people as objects, without any human, fraternal relation to them, and, in the second, that the people of this government service must be so interrelated that the responsibility for their treatment of people should fall on no one separately. Outside of these couditions, it is impossible in our day to commit such atrocious deeds as those which I have seen to-day. " The trouble is that people think that there are con- ditions under which one may treat men without love, whereas there are no such conditions. Things may be treated without love: one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron, without love ; but people cannot be treated without love, just as one cannot handle bees without care. Such is the property of the bees. If they are care- lessly handled by a person, they hurt both themselves and him. Just so it is with people. This cannot be otherwise, because mutual love between men is the fun- damental law of human existence. It is true, a man cannot make himself love as he can make himself work, but from this it does not follow that people may be treated without love, especially if something is demanded from them. If you feel no love for men, — keep your peace," Nekhlyudov thought, addressing himself. " Busy yourself with your- self, with things, only not with men. Just as one can eat without harm and profitably only when one is hungry, so one may profitably and harmlessly make use of men only as long as one loves them. Permit yourself to treat people without love, just as you yesterday treated your brother-in-law, and there is no hmit to cruelty and besti- ality in regard to other people, just as I have observed to-day, and there is no limit to suffering, as I have dis- EESURRECTION 515 covered iu my own life. Yes, yes, that is so," thought Nekhlyiidov. " It is good, it is good ! " he repeated to himself, experiencing the double pleasure of refreshment after the sweltering heat, and of having become conscious of the highest degree of clearness in a question which had been interesting him for a long time. XLI. The car, in which Nekhlyiidov's seat was, was half- filled with people. There were here servants, artisans, factory hands, butchers, Jews, clerks, women, wives of labourers, and there were a soldier, and two ladies, — one young, the other of middle age, with bracelets on her bare wrist, — and a stern-looking gentleman with a cockade in his black cap. All these people, having fixed them- selves in their seats, were sitting in orderly fashion, some of them cracking pumpkin seeds, some smoking cigarettes, while others were carrying on animated conversations with their neighbours. Taras, with happy mien, was sitting to the right of the aisle, keeping a place for Nekhlyildov, and was chatting away with a muscular man in an unbuttoned, sleeveless, cloth coat, sitting opposite him ; Nekhlyudov later learned that he was a gardener travelling to tak . a job. Before walking up to Taras, Nokhlyiidov stopped in the aisle near a respectable-looking old man with a white beard, in a nankeen coat, who was conversing with a young woman in village attire. At the woman's side sat a seven-year- old girl, in a new sleeveless coat, with a braid of almost white hair. Her feet dangled way above the floor, and she cracked seeds all the time. Upon noticing Nekhlyudov, the old man pushed aside the fold of his coat from the shining bench, on which he was sitting, and said, in a kind voice : " Please be seated." Nekhlyudov thanked him and took the indicated seat, 616 RESURRECTION 517 When he had done that, the woman continued her inter- rupted story. She was telling how her husband, from whom she was returning now, had received her in the city. " I was there in Butter-week, and now God has granted that I should be there again," she said. " And now, if God shall permit it, I shall see him again at Christmas." " That is good," said the old man, looking at Nekhlyu- dov. " You must watch him, or else a young man, living in the city, will soon get spoiled." " No, grandfather, mine is not that kind of a man. He not only does not do anything foolish, he is like a maiden. He sends all his money home, to the last cent. And he was so glad to see the girl, — I can hardly tell you how happy he was," said the woman, smiling. The little girl, who was spitting out the shells and listening to her mother, looked with quiet, intelligent eyes at the faces of the old man and of Nekhlyudov. " If he is clever, so much the better," said the old man. " And does he busy himself with this ? " he added, with his eyes indicating a pair, man and wife, apparently factory hands, who were sitting on the other side of the aisle. The man had put a brandy bottle to his mouth, and, throwing his head back, was taking some swallows from it, while his wife was holding a bag in her hand, from which the bottle had been taken, and looking fixedly at her husband. " No, mine neither drinks nor smokes," said the woman, the old man's interlocutrice, using the opportunity to praise up her husband once more. " The earth brings forth few such men as he is. That's the kind of a man he is," she said, turning to Nekhlyudov. " Nothing better," repeated the old man, who was watch- ing the drinking factory workman. The workman, having had his fill, handed the bottle to his wife. She took it and, smiling and shaking her head, put it to her mouth. 618 RESURRECTION Upon noticing Nekhlyudov's and the old man's glances, the workman turned to them. " Ah, sir, you are wondering why we are drinking ? When we work, no one sees us, but when we drink, all watch us. When I earn money, I drink and treat my spouse, and nobody else." " Yes, yes," said Nekhlyiidov, not knowing what to answer. " Is it right, sir ? My spouse is a firm woman ! I am satisfied with my spouse, because she knows how to pity. Do I say right, Mavra ? " " Take it ; I do not want any more," said his wife, giv- ing him the bottle. "Don't prattle senselessly," she added. " That's it," continued the workman, " she is all right, but she squeaks like an ungreased wagon. Mavra, do I say right ? " Mavra, laughing, with a drunken gesture waved her hand. " You are frisky — " " That's it, she is all right, as long as she is all right, but when the reins get under her tail, she carries on awfully — I am telling the truth. You must excuse me, sir. I have drunk some, — well, what is to be done ? " said the workman. He put his head into his wife's lap and was getting ready to fall asleep. Nekhlyiidov sat awhile with the old man, who told him about himself. He said that he was a stove-builder, that he had worked for fifty-three years, putting up an endless number of stoves in his lifetime, and that he was now trying to take a rest, but could not get the time for it. He had been in the city, where he had put the boys to work, and now he was on his way to the village, to see how his people were getting on. After having listened to the old man's story, Nekhlyiidov arose and went over to the place which Taras had reserved for him. RESURRECTION 519 " Well, sir, take a seat. I shall take the sack over here," kiudly remarked the gardener, who was sitting opposite Taras, looking up at Nekhlyiidov's face. " Though it is crowded, no offence is meant," smiling Taras said, in a chanting voice, lifting up his seventy- pound bag like a feather in his powerful hands and carry- ing it over to the window. " There is plenty of room here, and we can stand, or go down under the bench. It is quiet there. What nonsense I am saying ! " he said, beaming with good nature and kindness. Taras said of himself that when he did not drink he could not find words, but that liquor gave him good words, and he could express himself well. Indeed, when sober, Taras was generally silent ; but when he took some liquor, which happened rarely and only on special occasions, he became unusually communicative. He then spoke a great deal, and he spoke well, with great simplicity, truthfulness, and, above everything else, with gentleness, which shone in his kindly blue eyes, and with a pleasing smile, which did not leave his lips. He was in such a state now. Nekhlyiidov's arrival for a moment stopped his narrative. But, having found a place for his bag, he sat down in his old place, and put- ting his strong working hands on his knees, and looking straight into the gardener's eyes, continued his story. He was telhug his new acquaintance all the details of his wife's story, why she was being deported, and why he followed her up to Siberia. Nekhlyudov had never heard all the details of this story, and so he listened with interest. The story had reached the point where the poisoning had been done, and the family found out that Fedosya had done it. " I am telling about my sorrow," said Taras, turning to Nekhlyudov, with an expression of friendly intimacy. " I have fallen in with a nice man, and so I am telling him my story." 520 KESURRECTION " Yes, yes," said Nekhlyudov. "So, my friend, the affair was discovered in this manner. Mother took that very cake and said, * I am going to the officer.' — My father, who is a wise old man, said, * Wait, old woman ! She is a mere child ; she does not know herself what she has done, and you ought to pity her. She may regret her deed.' — No, she would not listen to his words. — ' While we are keeping her, she will destroy us like cockroaches.' — So she went to the officer. He immediately made for our house, and brought the constables with him." " And how was it with you ? " asked the gardener. "My friend, I was tossing about, with a pain in my belly, and vomiting. It turned all my inside out, — it was worse than I can tell you. Father at once hitched the horses to the wagon, put Fedosya in it, and took her to the village office, and thence to the examining magis- trate. And just as she had at first confessed her guilt, so she now told the magistrate everything, — where she got the arsenic, and how she had made the cake. — ' Why,' says he, ' did you do it ? ' — ' Because,' says she, ' I am tired of him. In Siberia,' says she, ' I shall be better off than with him,' — that's me, you see," Taras said, smil- ing. — "She confessed everything. Of course, she was sent to jail. Father came back alone. And there came working time, and all the women we had was mother, and she was not strong. We wondered whether we could not get her out on bail. Father went to see some officer, but nothing came of it ; then father went to see another. He saw five men that way, but all in vain. He had just about given up trying, when he fell in with a clerk. He was sleek, — a rare man. — ' Give me,' says he, ' a five, and I will help you.' — They made a bargain at three roubles. My friend, I had to pawn her linen to get the money. And so he wrote a document," Taras stretched out his arm, as though he were spealdng of a shot, " and RESURRECTION 521 it came out all at once. By that time I was already up from bed, and I myself went to town for her. " And so, my friend, I came to town. I left my mare at a hostelry, took my document, and went to the prison. — * What do you want ? ' — 'So and so,' says I, ' my wife is locked up here.' — * Have you a document ? ' says he. — I gave it to him. He looked at it. * Wait,' says he. I sat down on a bench. The sun was past noon. Comes in the chief. ' Are you,' says he, ' Vargushov ? ' — 'I am.' — ' Take her,' says he. — They opened the gate. They brought her out in her garb, as is proper. — ' Come, let us go.' — ' Are you on foot ? ' — ' No, I have brought the horse with me.' — We went to the hostelry ; I paid my bill, harnessed the mare, and put what hay there was left under the mat. She took her seat, wrapped herself in her kerchief, and off we went. She was silent, and so was I. As we were getting near the house, she said : ' Is mother alive ? ' — ' She is.' — ' Forgive me, Taras, my stupidity. I did not know myself what I was doing.' — But I said : ' Whatever you may say, you will make very little change, because I have forgiven you long ago.' — She did not say another word. When we came home, she fell down at mother's feet. Says mother : ' What is the use recalling the past ? Do the best you can. Now,' says she, ' there is no time, — we have to reap the field. Back of Skorodnoe,' says she, * on the manured plot, God has given us such a crop of rye that you can't get at it with a hook ; it is all tangled up and lying flat. It has to be reaped. So you go there with Taras to-morrow, and reap it.' — And so she went and began to work. It was a sight to see her work. We had then three rented desyatinas, and God had given us a rare crop of rye and oats. I would cut with the sickle, and she would bind, or we would both cut with the scythe. I am a good hand at work, but she is better still at anything she may do. She is a quick worker and young. And she grew so 522 EESUliKECTlON industrious that I had to hold her back. When we came to the house, our fingers would be swollen, and our hands would smart, so that we ought to have taken a rest, but she would run to the barn, without eating supper, in order to get the sheaf-cords ready for the morrow. It was just dreadful ! " " And was she kind to you ? " asked the gardener. " You would not believe me how she stuck to me, — she just became one soul with me. I would barely think of a thing, when she would understand me. Even my mother, who is a cross woman, used to say : * Fedosya acts as though she were somebody else, — she is a dif- ferent woman.' — Once we were both going for sheaves, and we were sitting both together. So I said to her: ' What made you do it, Fedosya ? ' — 'I just did it,' says she, ' because I did not want to live with you. I would rather die, thought I, than live with you.' — ' Well, and now ? ' says I. — ' And now,' says she, ' you are deep in my heart.' " Taras stopped and, smiling joyfully, shook his head in surprise. " We had returned from the field, and I had gone to soak some hemp ; just as I came home," he said, after a moment's silence, " behold, a sum- mons : the trial was on. We had in the meantime for- gotten that there was to be a trial." " This was no other but the unclean one," said the gardener. " No man would have thought of ruining a soul. There was once a man in our village — " and the gardener began to tell a story, but the train stopped. "Here is a station," he said, "I must go and get a drink." The conversation was interrupted, and Nekhlyiidov followed the gardener out of the car, upon the wet planks of the platform. XLII. Even before comiug out of the car, Nekhlyudov had noticed several elegant carriages, drawn by sets of three and of four well-fed horses tinkling with their bells. When he came out on the wet platform, which looked black from the rain, he saw a gathering of people in front of the first class. Among them was most prominent a tall, stout lady in a mackintosh, with a hat of expensive feathers, and a lank young man with thin legs, in bicycle costume, with an immense well-fed dog with an expensive collar. Back of them stood lackeys with wraps and um- brellas, and a coachman, who had come to meet somebody. On all that crowd, from the stout lady to the coachman, who with one hand was supporting the skirts of his long caftan, lay the seal of quiet self-confidence and super- abundance. About this point soon was formed a circle of curious men, servilely admiring wealth : they were the chief of the station, a gendarme, a haggard maid in a native costume, with glass beads, always present in the summer at the arrival of trains, the despatcher, and pas- sengers, men and women. In the young man with the dog, Nekhlyudov recog- nized a gymnasiast, young Korchagin. The stout lady was the princess's sister, to whose estate the Korchagins were going. The chief conductor, in shining galloons and boots, opened the door of the car and held the door, in token of respect, while Filipp and a labourer in a white apron carefully carried out the long-faced princess in her folding chair. The sisters greeted each other ; there were heard French phrases about whether the princess would 623 524 RESUKKECTION travel in a carriage or in a barouche ; and the procession, which was ended by the chambermaid with the curls, carrying the umbrellas and the box, moved to the door of the station. Nekhlyiidov, who did not wish to meet them, because he did not wish to bid them farewell again, did not walk up as far as the door, but waited for the procession to pass. The princess with her son, Missy, the doctor, and the chambermaid went first, while the prince stopped to talk to his sister-in-law, and Nekhlyiidov, who did not walk up close, caught only broken sentences of their conversation, which was in French. One of these phrases, as frequently is the case, impressed itself deeply on Nekhlyiidov's memory, with all its intonations and sounds. "Oh, il est dih vrai grand monde, du vrai grand monde," the prince was saying of some one, in his loud, self-confi- dent voice. He passed with his sister-in-law through the station door, accompanied by the respectful conductors and porters. Just then a throng of workingmen in bast shoes and short fur coats, with bags over their shoulders, made their appearance on the platform from somewhere around the corner of the station. The workingmen with firm, soft steps walked up to the first car and wanted to enter, but were driven off by the conductor. They did not stop, but, hastening, and stepping on each other's feet, went to the next car, and, catching with their bags in the corners and doors of the car, were making their way in, when a conductor standing in the door of the station noticed their intention and angrily called out to them. The workingmen hastily retreated, and with the same soft steps went on to the next car, the one Nekhlyiidov was in. Again a conductor stopped them. They stopped, intending to move on, but Nekhlyiidov told them that there were unoccupied seats in the car, and that they should go in. They did so, and Nekhlyiidov went in RESUiiKECTION 525 after them. The workingmen were on the point of seat- ing themselves, but the gentleman with the cockade and the two ladies, taking their attempt to seat themselves in this car as a personal affront, resolutely opposed them and began to drive them out. The workingmen, — there were about twenty of them, — both old and young men, with tired, sunburnt, lean faces, catching with their bags against the benches, walls, and doors, apparently feeling themselves absolutely guilty, passed on through the car, evidently ready to walk to the end of the world, and to sit down anywhere they should be permitted to, even on nails. • " Where are you going, devils ? Sit down," cried another conductor, who came from the opposite direction. " Voild. encore des nouvclles" said the younger of the two ladies, quite convinced that she would attract Nekh- lyiidov's attention with her good French. The lady with the bracelets kept sniffing and frown- ing, saying something about the pleasure of sitting in the same car with stinking peasants. The workingmen, experiencing joy and peace, such as people experience who have passed a great peril, stopped and began to seat themselves, with a motion of their shoulders throwing down the heavy bags from their shoulders and pushing them under the benches. The gardener who had been speaking with Taras went back to his seat, which was not the one he had occupied, and so, near Taras and opposite him, three places were free. Three workingmen sat down on these seats, but when Nekhlyiidov came up to them, the sight of his fine clothes so confused them that they got up ; Nekhlyiidov asked them to keep their seats, and himself sat down on the arm of the bench, near the aisle. One of two workingmen, a man of about fifty years of age, in dismay and fright looked at the younger man. They were very much surprised and baffled to see a 526 RESURRECTION gentleman give up his seat to them, instead of calling them names and driving them away, as gentlemen gen- erally do. They were even afraid lest something bad should come from it. Seeing, however, that there was no trickery in it, and that Nekhlyudov conversed in a simple manner with Taras, they quieted down, told a youngster to sit down on a bag, and insisted on Nekh- lyiidov's taking the seat. At first the elderly working- man, w^lio was seated opposite Nekhlyudov, pressed himself in the corner, and carefully drew back his feet, which were clad in bast shoes, in order not to push the gentleman, but later he entered into such a friendly chat with Nekhlyudov and Taras that he even struck Nekh- lyildov's knee with the back of his hand, whenever he wished to attract his attention to some particular point in his story. He was telling about all his affairs, and about his work in the peat-bogs, from which they were now returning, having worked there for two months and a half. They were taking home about ten roubles each, as part of the wages had been given them when they were hired. Their work, as he told it, was done in water which stood knee-deep, and lasted from daybreak until night, with two hours intermission at dinner. " Those who are not used to it naturally find it hard," he said, " but if you are used to it, it is not bad. If only the grub were good. At first it was bad. But the work- ingmen objected, and then the grub was better, and it was easier to work." Then he told how he had been working out for twenty- eight years, and how he gave his earnings, first to his father, then to his elder brother, and now to his nephew, who was in charge of the farm, while he himself ^«pent, out of the fifty or sixty roubles which he earned a year, two or three roubles on foolishness, — on tobacco and matches. RESURRECTION 527 " I, sinful man, sometimes take a drink of brandy, when work stops," he added, smiling a guilty smile. He also told how the women looked after things at home ; how the contractor had treated them before their journey to half a bucket ; how one had died ; and how they were taking one sick .man home. The sick man, of whom he spoke, was sitting in the same car, in a corner. He was a young boy, grayish pale in his face, with blue lips. He was apparently suffering with the ague. Nekhlyudov went up to him, but the boy looked with such a stern, suffering glance at him, that Nekhlyudov did not trouble him with questions, but only advised an elder man to buy quinine, and wrote out the name of the medicine on a piece of paper for him. He wanted to give him money, but the old workingman said that it was not necessary, that he would give his. "As much as I have travelled, I have not seen such gentlemen. He not only did not kick me, but even gave me his seat. Apparently there are all kinds of gentle- men," he concluded, addressing Taras. " Yes, it is a new, a different and a new, world," thought Nekhlyudov, looking at these drawn, muscular limbs, these coarse, home-made garments, and these sun- burnt, kindly, and exhausted faces, and feeling himself surrounded on all sides by entirely new men, with their serious interests, joys, and sufferings of a real, busy, and human life. " Here it is, le vrai grand monde" thought Nekhlyudov, recalling the phrase which had been used by Prince Korchagin, and all that empty, luxurious world of the Korchagins, with their petty, miserable interests. And he experienced the sensation of a traveller who has dis- covered a new, unknown, and beautiful world. CONTENTS PAGE RESURRECTION Part the Third 3 What Is Art? 135 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING Part the First. The Ancient Religions and the New Concept of Life 365 Part the Second. Of Sins 377 Part the Third. Of Offences 395 Part the Fourth. The Deceptions of Faith and the Liberation from It ..... 407 Part the Fifth. Liberation from the Offences . 423 Part the Sixth. The Struggle with Sins . . 431 Part the Seventh. Of Prayer 451 Part the Eighth. Conclusion 457 Help! 465 Letter to the Chief of the Irkutsk Disciplinary Battalion 475 How to Read the Gospel, and What Is Its Es- sence? 481 The Approach of the End 489 Famine or No Famine ? 503 V VI CONTENTS PAGE ON THE RELATION OF THE STATE Letter to Eugen Heinrich Schmitt .... 525 Letter to the Liberals ...... 529 Letter to the Editor of the Daily Chronicle . 544 RESURRECTION 1899 Part III. RESURRECTION PART THE THIRD I. The party to which Maslova belonged travelled about five thousand versts. As far as Perm, Maslova travelled by rail and water with the criminals ; but here Nekh- lyiidov succeeded in getting her transferred among the politicals, as Vy^ra Bogodiikhovski, who was of the party, had advised him to do. The journey to Perm was very hard for Maslova, both physically and morally. Physically, on account of the close quarters, the uncleanliness, and the disgusting ver- min, which did not give her any rest ; and morally, on account of the not less disgusting men who, just hke the vermin, though they changed at every stopping-place, were always equally persistent and annoying, and gave her no rest. Between the prisoners, the warders, and the guards the habit of a cynical debauch was so firmly established that every woman, especially if she was young, had to be eternally on the lookout, if she did not wish to make use of her position as a woman. This continuous condition of fear and struggle was very hard to bear. Maslova was more especially subject to these attacks on account of the attractiveness of her looks and 3 4 RESUKRECTION her well-known past. The positive opposition to the men who annoyed her with their attentions presented itself to them as a personal affront, and provoked, in addition, their mahce toward her. Her position in this respect was alle- viated by her nearness to Fedosya and Taras, who, having heard of the attacks to which liis wife was subjected, had himself arrested, in order to protect her, and travelled from Nizhni-Novgorod as a prisoner with the convicts. The transfer to the division of the politicals improved Maslova's condition in every respect. Not only were the politicals better housed and fed, and subject to less bru- tahty, but also by Maslova's transfer to the pohticals her condition was further improved because all the persecu- tions of the men at once stopped, and she was able to live without being reminded every moment of her past, wliich she was trying to forget. The chief advantage of this transfer, however, lay in the fact that she became ac- quainted with certain people who had a most decided and beneficent influence upon her. At the halting-places, Maslova was permitted to be housed with the politicals, but, being a strong woman, she had to travel with the criminals. Thus she journeyed all the way from Tomsk. With her went, also on foot, two politicals : Marya Pavlovna Shchetiuin, that pretty girl with the sheep eyes, who had so impressed Nekh- lyudov during his interview with Vyera Bogodukhovski, and a certain Simonson, who was being deported to the Yakutsk Territory, — that swarthy, shaggy man with far retreating eyes, whom Nekhlyudov had noticed during the same interview. Marya Pavlovna went on foot, be- cause she had given up her place on the cart to a preg- nant criminal; Simonson did so because he regarded it unjust to make use of his class privilege. All the other politicals left later in the day on carts, but these three started early in the morning with the criminals. Thus it was also at the last halting-place, before a large city, RESURRECTION 5 where a new officer of the guard took charge of the prisoners. It was an early stormy September morning. There was now snow and now rain, with gusts of a chill wind. All the prisoners of the party — four hundred men and about fifty women — were already in the yard of the halting-place ; some of them were crowding around the commissary of the guard, who was distributing pro- vision money among the foremen for two days ; others were purchasing victuals from the hawking women, who had been admitted in the courtyard of the halting-place. There was heard the din of the prisoners' voices, of counting money and buying provisions, and the squeaky voices of the hucksters. Katyvlsha and Marya Pavlovna — both in long boots and short fur coats, and wrapped in kerchiefs — came out from the building of the stopping-place and walked toward the hucksters, who, sitting at the north wall of the palisade, to protect themselves against the wind, were vying with each other in offering their wares : fresh white cakes, fish, noodle, grits, liver, beef, eggs, milk ; one of them had even a roast pig. Simonson, in a rubber jacket and overshoes, tied over his woollen stockings by means of twine (he was a vege- tarian and did not use the skin of dead animals), was also in the yard, waiting for the party to start. He was standing near the porch and noting down in his diary a thought which had occurred to him. His thought was like this : " If a bacteria were to observe and investigate a man's nail, it would come to the conclusion that it was inorganic matter. Similarly we, who have observed the rind of the earth, have declared the terrestrial globe to be inorganic matter. This is not correct." Having purchased some eggs, pretzels, fish, and fresh wheat bread, Maslova put all these things into her bag, and Marya Pavlovna was settling her biU with the huck- b KESURRECTION sters, when the prisoners suddenly came into motion. Everything grew silent, and the prisoners began to range themselves. The officer came out and made his last arrangements before the start. Everything went as usual : the prisoners were counted ; the fetters were examined ; and the pairs that walked together were being handcuffed. But suddenly were heard the imperious and angry voice of the officer, blows on a body, and the cries of a child. Everything grew silent for a moment, and then a dull murmur ran through the throng. Maslova and Marya Pavlovna moved up to the place whence the noise proceeded. n. Upon reaching the spot, Marya Pavlovna and Katyusha saw this : the officer, a stout man with a long, blond moustache, was frowning and with his left hand rubbing the palm of his right, which he had hurt in boxing a prisoner's ears. He did not stop uttering coarse, indecent curses. In front of him stood a lean, haggard prisoner, in a short cloak and still shorter trousers, one-half of whose head was shaven. With one hand he was rubbing his mauled and bleeding face, while with the other he held a little girl who was wrapped in a kerchief and whined piercingly. " I will teach you " (an indecent curse) " to talk ! " (Again a curse.) " Give her to the women ! " cried the officer. " Put them on ! " The officer demanded that the communal prisoner be handcuffed. He was being deported, and had all the way been carrying a little girl left him by his wife, who had died at Tomsk of the typhus, as the prisoners said. The prisoner's remark that he could not carry his girl while handcuffed had excited the officer, who was out of sorts, whereupon he dealt blows to a prisoner, who did not submit at once.^ In front of the beaten prisoner stood a soldier of the guard and a thick-set, black-bearded prisoner with a handcuff on one hand, gloomily looking up, now at the officer, and now at the beaten prisoner and the girl. The officer repeated his command to the soldier to take ^This fact is described in D. A. Lfuev's work, By Etape- — Author's Note. 7 8 EESUREECTION away the girl. Among the prisoners the murmuring became ever more audible. " He had no handcuffs on him all the way from Tomsk," was heard a hoarse voice in the back ranks. " It is not a pup, but a child." " What is he to do with the child ? This is against the law," said somebody else. " Who has said that ? " the officer shouted, as though stung, rushing at the prisoners. " I will show you the law. Who said it ? You ? You ? " " All say it, because — " said a broad-shouldered, stocky man. He did not finish his sentence. The officer began to strike his face with both his hands. " You mean to riot ? I will teach you how to riot ! I will shoot you down like dogs, and the authorities will only thank me for it. Take the girl ! " The throng grew silent. A soldier tore away the des- perately crying girl ; another began to manacle the prisoner who submissively offered his hand. " Take her to the women," the officer cried to the soldier, adjusting the sword-hanger. The httle girl tried to free her hands from the kerchief and, with flushed face, whined without intermission. Marya Pavlovna stepped out from the crowd and walked over to the soldier. " Mr. Officer, permit me to carry the girl ! " " Who are you ? " asked the officer. " I am a political." Apparently, Marya P^vlovna's pretty face, with her beautiful bulging eyes (he had noticed her before, when receiving the prisoners), had an effect upon the officer. He looked in silence at her, as though considering something. " It makes no difference to me. Carry her, if you want to. It is easy enough for you to pity him ; but who will be responsible, if he runs away ? " KESURRECTION 9 " How can he run away with the girl ? " said Mdrya Pavlovna. " I have no time to discuss with you. Take her, if you want to." " May I give the child to her ? " asked the soldier. " Yes." " Come to me," said Marya Pavlovna, trying to win the girl over. But the girl, who, in the soldier's arms, stretched her hands toward her father, continued to whine and did not want to go to Marya Pavlovna. " Wait, Marya Pavlovna ! She will come to me," said Maslova, taking a pretzel out of her bag. The girl knew Maslova, and, seeing her face and the pretzel, readily went to her. Everything grew quiet. The gate was opened and the party walked out and drew up in rows ; the soldiers counted them once more ; the bags were tied up and put away, and the feeble were put on the carts. Maslova, with the girl in her arms, stood with the women, at Fedosya's side. Simonsdn, who had all the time watched the proceeding, with large determined steps went up to the officer, who had made all the arrangements and was seating himself in his tarantas. " You have acted badly, Mr. Officer," said Simonson. " Go back to your place ! It is none of your business ! " " It is my business to tell you that you have done wrong," said Simonson, fixedly looking upwards at the officer, through his thick eyebrows. " Eeady ? The party — march ! " cried the officer, paying no attention to Simonson, and helping himself into the tarantas by taking hold of the shoulder of the soldier coachman. The party started, and, spreading out, walked into the muddy, rutted road, which was ditched on both sides and ran through a dense forest. IIL After the debauched, luxurious, and effeminate life of the last six years in the city, and after the two months in the prison with the criminals, the life with the polit- icals, notwithstanding all the difficult conditions under which they were living, seemed very pleasant to Katyusha. Marches of from twenty to thirty versts a day, with good food, and a day's rest after every two days on the road, physically braced her ; while her daily intercourse with her new companions opened up new interests of life to her, such as she had never known before Such charming people, as she expressed herself, as those were with whom she was now marching, she had never known, and could not even have imagined. " How I wept at being sentenced ! " she said. " But I ought to thank God : I have learned things I should not have known in a lifetime." She very easily and without effort understood the motives which guided these people, and, belonging herself to the lower masses, she fully sympathized with them. She comprehended that these people were with the masses against the masters ; and what particularly made her esteem them and admire them was the fact that they themselves belonged to the better classes and yet sacrificed their privileges, their liberty, and their lives for the people. She was delighted with all her new companions ; but more than all she admired Marya Pavlovna. She not only admired her, but loved her with a special, respectful, and rapturous love. She was surprised to see this beauti- ful girl, the daughter of a rich general, who could speak 10 RESURRECTION 11 three languages, conducting herself like the simplest working woman, giving away everything which her rich brother sent her, and dressing herself not only simply, but even poorly, paying not the least attention to her looks. This trait — the complete absence of coquetry — particularly impressed and enchanted Maslova. Maslova saw that Marya Pavlovna knew, and that it even was pleasant for her to know, that she was beautiful, and yet that she did not in the least enjoy the impression wbich her looks produced on men, but that she was afraid of it and experienced loathing and terror of falling in love. Her male companions, knowing this, did not permit them- selves to show any preference for her, if they felt them- selves attracted to her, and treated her as an equal ; but strangers frequently annoyed her, and from these, she said, she was saved by her great physical strength, of which she was especially proud. " Once," she laughingly told Katyusha, " a certain gen- tleman annoyed me in the street, and would not go away, I then gave him such a shaking that he was frightened and ran away." She became a revolutionist, she said, because ever since her childhood she had taken a dislike to the life the masters led and liked that of the simple people, being always scolded for preferring the maids' rooms, the kitchen, the stable, to the drawing-room. " I always felt happy with the cooks and coachmen, but dull with our gentlemen and ladies," she said. " Later, when I began to comprehend things, I saw that our Ufe was very bad. I had no mother, my father I did not love, and when I w^as nineteen years old I went away from home with a friend of mine and became a factory girl." After working in the factory she lived in the country ; then she came to the city and lived in lodgings where there was a secret printing office, and there she was arrested 12 KEStJRKECTION and sentenced to hard labour. Marya Pdvlovna never told this herself, but Katyusha found out from others that she was sentenced to hard labour for claiming to have fired a shot, which had, in reality, been fired by a revolutionist in the dark. Ever since Katyusha knew her, she saw that wherever she was, and under whatsoever circumstances, she never thought of herself, but was concerned about serving and aiding others, in large and in small things. One of her companions of the party, Novodvorov by name, jestingly remarked of her that she was addicted to the sport of beneficence. And that was the truth. Just as the hunter is bent on finding game, so all the interests of her life consisted in finding an occasion to do some one a good turn. This sport became a habit with her and the business of her hfe. She did all this so naturally that those who knew her no longer valued it, but demanded it as a matter of course. When Maslova joined them, Marya Pavlovna experi- enced a disgust and loathing for her. Katyusha noticed it ; but she also saw later that Marya Pavlovna made an effort over herself and began to treat her with exceeding kindness. The kindness from so unusual a being so touched Maslova that she surrendered herself to her with all her soul, unconsciously adopting Marya Pavlovna's views, and involuntarily imitating her in everything. This devotion of Katyusha touched Marya Pavlovna, and she, in her turn, began to love Katyusha. These two women were also drawn to each other by that loath- ing which both experienced for sexual love. One of them despised this love because she had experienced all its horrors ; the other, who had not experienced it, — because she looked upon it as something incomprehen- sible aud at the same time disgusting and insulting to human dignity. IV. Katyusha submitted to the influence which Marya Pavlovna exerted over her. It was due to the fact that Maslova loved Marya Pavlovna. There was also Simon- son's influence over her. This originated in the fact that Simonson loved Katyusha. All people hve and act partly under the influence of their own thoughts, and partly under the influence of the thoughts of others. One of t^e chief distinctions between people is determined by how much they live according to their own ideas or according to those of others : some people, in the majority of cases, make use of their own thoughts as a mental toy, and treat their reason as a fly- wheel from which the driving-belt has been taken off, while in their acts they submit to thoughts of others, — to custom, tradition, law; others again, regarding their own ideas as the prime movers of all their acti\dties, nearly always listen to the promptings of their own rea- son and submit to it, following only in exceptional cases — and that, too, after due critical consideration — the decisions of others. Simonson was such a man. He weighed and tested everything by reason, and what he decided upon he did. Having, while a student at the gymnasium, decided that the property acquired by his father, an ex-officer of the commissariat, had been wrongfully obtained, he informed his father that he ought to give up his wealth to the people. When his father not only paid no atten- tion to him but even scolded him, he left his home and stopped availing himself of his father's means. Having 13 14 RESURRECTION decided that all existing evil was due to the ignorance of the people, he, upon leaving the university, fell in with the Populists, accepted a teacher's place in a village, and boldly preached to his pupils and to the peasants every- thing which he thought right, and denied everything which he considered false. He was arrested and tried. During his trial, he decided that the judges had no right to judge him, and he so told the judges. When they did not agree with him and continued the trial, he decided not to answer any questions, and remained silent all the time. He was deported to the Government of Arkhangelsk. There he formulated a religious doctrine for himself, and this formed the basis of his whole activ- ity. According to this doctt-ine everything in the world is alive ; there is no inert body, but all the objects which we regard as dead and inorganic are only parts of an enormous organic body, which we cannot comprehend, and therefore the problem of man, as a particle of this huge organism, consists in sustaining the hfe of this or- ganism and all its living parts. Therefore he considered it a crime to destroy animal life : he was opposed to war, capital punishment, and all kinds of murder, not only of men, but of animals as well. He had also a theory of his own in regard to marriage, which was to the effect that the increase of the human race was only a lower function, and that a hit^her function consisted in serving all exist- iufj life. He found a confirmation of this idea in the jiresence of the phagocytes in the blood. Unmarried people, according to his theory, were just such phagocytes, whose purpose was to aid the weak and ailing parts of the organism. From the moment he had decided this, he began to live accordingly, though in his early youth he had been dissipated. He regarded himself, as also Marya Pavlovna, as world phagocytes. His love for Katyusha did not impair tliis theory, RESURRECTION 15 since he loved her platonically, assuming that such a love not only did not interfere with his phagocyte activ- ity of social help, but even spurred him on to it. He not only decided moral questions in his own way, but also a great number of practical questions. He had his owTi theories for all practical af!airs. He had his rules about the number of hours he had to work, to rest, to eat, to dress, how to make a fire in the stove, and how to light a Ian] p. At the same time, Simonson was exceedingly timid with people and modest. But when he made up his mind for something, nothing could keep him back. It was this man who had a decisive influence on Maslova by dint of his love for her. Maslova, with her feminine sense, soon became aware of it, and the con- sciousness of being able to provoke love in so unusual a man raised her in her own estimation. Nekhlyudov proposed to marry her as an act of magnanimity and on account of what had happened ; but Simonson loved her for what she was, and loved her just because he did. Besides, she felt that Simonson considered her an unusual woman, differing from all the rest and having certain special, highly moral qualities. She did not exactly know what qualities he ascribed to her, but, in order not to deceive him, slie tried to rouse in herself all the best qualities of which she could think. This caused her to endeavour to become as good as she was capable of being. This had begun even in the prison, when, at the gen- eral interview of the politicals, she had noticed the pecul- iarly stubborn look of his innocent, kindly, dark blue eyes underneath his overhanging forehead and eyebrows. She had noticed even that he was a peculiar man and that he looked in a peculiar way at her ; she had remarked the strange and striking combination in one face of sever- ity, produced by his towering hair and frowning eye- brows, of childlike kindness, and of the innocence of his 16 RESURRECTION glance. In Tomsk she was transferred to the politicals, and she saw him again. Although not a word had been said between them, there was in the look, which they exchanged, an acknowledgment of their remembering each other and of their mutual importance. There never was any long conversation between them even after that, but Maslova felt that whenever he spoke in her presence, his speech was meant for her, and that he was speaking in such a way as to be as intelligible as possible to her. Their closer friendship began at the time when he marched with the criminals. V. From Nizhni-Novgorod to Perm, Nekhlyudov succeeded only twice in seeing Katyusha : once in Nizhni-Novgorod, before the prisoners were placed on a screened barge, and the next time in Perm, in the prison office. At either meeting he found her secretive and ill-cUsposed. To his question whether she was comfortable and whether she did not need anything, she replied evasively, in an em- barrassed and what to him seemed hostile, reproachful way which he had noticed in her before. This gloomy mood, which in reality proceeded from the persecutions of the men, to which she was subjected at that time, vexed Nekhlyudov. He was afraid that under the influence of the heavy and demoralizing conditions under which she lived during her transportation, she might again fall into her old discontentment and despair, when she was pro- voked against him and smoked more heavily and drank hquor in order to forget herself. He was quite unable to assist her because he had no chance, during this first part of her journey, of seeing her. Only after she was trans- ferred to the poKticals, he not only convinced himself of the groundlessness of his fears, but, on the contrary, at every meeting with her noticed the ever more clearly defined internal change, which he had been so anxious to see in her. At their first meeting in Tomsk, she was again such as she had been before her departure. She did not pout nor become embarrassed upon seeing him, but, on the contrary, met him joyfully and simply, and thanked him for what he had done for her, especially for 17 18 RESURRECTION having brought her in contact with the people with whom she now was. After two months with the marching party, the change which had taken place in her was also manifested in her looks. She grew thinner and sunburnt, and looked aged ; on her temples and around her mouth wrinkles appeared ; she did not let her hair hang over her brow, but covered it with her kerchief, and neither in her dress, nor in the manner of arranging her hair, nor in her address were there left the previous signs of coquetry. This change which had taken place and was still in progress con- stantly roused an exceedingly pleasurable sensation in Nekhlyudov. He now experienced a feeling toward her that he had never experienced before. It had nothing in common with his first poetical rapture, and still less with that sensual love which he had experienced later, nor even with that consciousness of a duty performed, united with egotism, which had led him after the trial to decide to marry her. This feeling was the simplest sensation of pity and contrition, which had come over him for the first time during his interview with her in the prison, and later, with renewed strength, after the hospital, when he, curbing his disgust, forgave her for the supposed incident with the assistant, which was later cleared up ; it was the same feeling, but with the difference that then it had been temporary, while now it became constant. What- ever he now thought or did, his general mood now was a feeling of pity and humility, not only in respect to her, but to all people. This feeling seemed to have revealed in Nekhlyiidov's soul a stream of love, which formerly had had no issue, but now was directed toward all men with whom he came in contact. Nekhlyudov was during his whole journey conscious of that agitated condition when he involuntarily became RESURRECTION 19 affable and attentive to all people, from the driver and soldier of the guard up to the chief of the prison and the governor, with whom he had any business. During this time, Nekhlyudov, by Maslova's transfer to the politicals, had occasion to become acquainted with many politicals, at first in Ekaterinbvirg, where they en- joyed great liberty, being all kept together iu a large hall, and later on the road, with the five men and four women, to whom Maslova was added. This acquaintance of Nekhlyudov with the deported politicals entirely changed his view of them. From the very beginning of the revolutionary move- ment in Eussia, but especially after March 1st, Nekh- lyudov was animated by a hostile and contemptuous feeling for the revolutionists. He had been repelled above everything else by the cruelty and secrecy of the means used by them in their struggle with the govern- ment, more especially by the cruelty of the murders committed by them ; then again, their common feature of self-conceit was disgusting to him. But, upon seeing them at close range and discovering that they frequently suffered innocently from the government, he perceived that they could not be anything else than what they were. No matter how dreadfully senseless the torments were to which the so-called criminals were subjected, a certain semblance of lawful procedure was observed toward them, even after their judicial sentence ; but in respect to the politicals there was not even that semblance, as Nekh- lyudov had noticed it in the case of Miss Shustov, and, later, in the case of very many of his new acquaintances. These people were treated as fish are when caught with a seine : the whole catch is thrown out on the shore ; then all the large fish that can be used are picked out, and the small fry are left to die and dry up on the land. Just so, hundreds of men who, apparently, were not only inno- 20 feESURRECTlOl? cent, but who could in no way be dangerous to the gov- ernment, were arrested and frequently held for years in prisons, where they became infected with consumption, or grew insane, or committed suicide. They were kept in these prisons only because there was no special reason for releasing them, whereas, by keeping them ia jail, they might be of use in order to clear up certain questions at the iuquest. The fate of all these people, who frequently were innocent even from the government's standpoint, de- pended on the arbitrariness, leisure, and mood of the officer of gendarmery or police, of the spy, prosecutor, examining magistrate, governor, miuister. If such an official got tired and wanted to distinguish himself, he made arrests and held the people in prison or released them, according to the mood he or the authorities happened to be in. The higher officer again, according to whether he must distinguish himself, or in what relations he was with the minister, sent them to the end of the world, or kept them in solitary confinement, or sentenced them to deportation, hard labour, or capital punishment, or released them, if a lady asked him to do so. They were treated as men are in war, and they, natu- rally, employed the same means which were used against them. And just as the military always hve in an at- mosphere of pubhc opinion which not only conceals the criminality of the deeds committed by them, but even represents them as heroic, — so there existed for the politicals a favourable atmosphere of public opinion in their own circle, by dint of wdiich the cruel acts com- mitted by them, at the risk of losing liberty, life, and all that is dear to man, presented themselves to them not as bad deeds but as acts of bravery. Only thus could Nekh- lyiidov explain the remarkable phenomenon that the meekest people, who were not able to cause a living being any pain, or even to look at it, calmly prepared themselves to kill people, and that nearly all considered KESURRECTIOIsr 21 in certain cases murder, as a means of self-defence and of obtaining the highest degree of public good, both lawful and just. The high esteem in which they held their work and, consequently, themselves naturally flowed from the importance which the government ascribed to them, and from the cruelty of the punishments to which they were subjected. They had to have a high opinion of themselves in order to be able to bear all they had to bear. Upon knowing them better, Nekhlyiidov convinced himself that they were neither the unconditional villains, as which they presented themselves to some, nor the unconditional heroes, such as others held them to be, but ordinary people, among whom there were, as everywhere else, good and bad and mediocre individuals. There were among them some who held themselves in duty bound to struggle against the existing evil ; there were also others who had selected this activity from selfish, vainglorious motives ; but the majority were attracted to revolution by a desire for danger, risk, and enjoyment of playing with their own lives, — feelings which are common to all ener- getic youth, and which were familiar to Nekhlyiidov from his military hfe. They differed from other people, and that, too, was in their favour, in that their requirements of morality were higher than those current in the circle of common people. They regarded as obligatory not only moderation and severity of life, truthfulness, and unself- ishness, but also readiness to sacrifice everything, even their lives, for the common good. Therefore those of them who were above their average stood very high above it and represented rare examples of moral excellence ; while those who were below the average stood much lower, representing a class of people that were untruthful, hypocritical, and, at the same time, self-confident and haughty. Consequently Nekhlyiidov not only respected, but even loved, some of his new acquaintances, while to others he remained more than indifferent. VI. Nekhlyudov took a special liking to a consumptive young man, Kryltsov, who was being deported to hard labour and was travelling with the party that Katyusha had joined. Nekhlyiidov had met him for the first time at Ekaterinburg, and later he had seen him several times on the road, and had conversed with him. Once, in summer, when they halted for a day, Nekhlyiidov passed nearly all that day with him, and Kryltsov, becoming communicative, told him his whole history, how he had turned revolutionist. His story previous to the prison was very simple. His father, a rich landowner of the southern Governments, had died while he was still a child. He was an only son, and his mother brought him up. He learned well both in the gymnasium and in the university, and graduated at the head of the list in the mathematical department. He was offered a place at the university and was to receive a travelling fellow- ship. He hesitated. There was a girl whom he loved, and he was considering marriage and retirement to the country. He wanted everything and could not make up his mind for anything in particular. Just then his schoolmates asked him for a contribution to the common good. He knew that this common good meant the revo- lutionary party, in which he was not at all interested at the time, but he gave them money from a feeling of com- radeship and vanity, lest they should think he was afraid. Those who had collected the money were caught ; a note was found, by which it was discovered that the money 22 RESURRECTION 23 had been contributed by Kryltsov. He was arrested and confined, at first in the police jail, and then in prison. " In the prison, where I was locked up," Kryltsov told Nekhlyildov (he was sittiug with his sunken chest on a high sleeping-bench, leaning on his knees, and now and then looked at Nekhlyiidov with his sparkling, feverish, beautiful eyes), " there was no especial severity. We not only conversed with each other by means of knocks, but met in the corridors, talked to each other, shared our provisions and tobacco, and at evening even sang in choirs. I had a good voice. Yes. If it had not been for my mother, — she pined away for me, — I should have been satisfied in prison, — everything was pleasant and very interesting. Here I became acquainted, arnong others, with the famous Petrov (he later cut his throat with a piece of glass in the fortress) and with others. I was not a revolutionist. I also became acquainted with two neigh- bours to my cell. They were caught in the same affair, with some Polish proclamations, and were under trial for having tried to escape from the guard as they were being led to the railroad station. One of them was a Pole, Lo- zinski, and the other a Jew, Eozovski by name. Yes. Kozovski was nothing but a boy. He said he was seven- teen, but he did not look more than fifteen. He was small and lean, with sparkling eyes, lively, and, like all Jews, very musical. His voice was still unformed, but he sang beautifully. Yes. They were led off to court while I was in prison. They left in the morning. In the evening they returned and said that they had been condemned to capital punishment. Nobody had ex- pected it. Their case was so unimportant : they had merely tried to get away from the guard, and had not hurt anybody. And then it seemed so unnatural to execute such a boy as Eozovski was. All of us in the prison decided that this was only to frighten them, but that the decree would never be confirmed. At first all 24 KESURRECTION were stirred, but later they quieted down, and life went on as of old. Yes. " One evening an attendant came to my door and mys- teriously informed me that the carpenters had come to put up the gallows. At first I did not understand what he meant, what gallows he was talking about. But the old attendant was so agitated that when I looked at him I understood that it was for our two men. I wanted to converse by taps with my companions, but was afraid that they might hear it. My companions were silent, too. Apparently everybody knew of it. There was a dead silence in the corridor and in the cells all the evening. We did not tap nor sing. At about nine o'clock the attend- ant again came up to my door, and informed me that the hangman had been brought down from Moscow. He said this and went away. I began to call to him to come back. Suddenly I heard Eozovski call to me across the corridor from his cell : ' What is the matter ? Why do you call him ? ' I told him that he had brought me some tobacco, but he seemed to guess what it was, and con- tinued asking me why we did not sing, and why we did not tap. I do not remember what I told him ; I went away as soon as I could, so as not to talk to him. Yes. It was a terrible night. I listened all night long to every sound. Suddenly, toward morning, I heard them open the door of the corridor, and a number. of people walking in. I stood at the window of my door. " A lamp was burning in the corridor. First came the superintendent. He was a stout man, and seemed to be self-confident and determined. He was out of counte- nance : he looked pale and gloomy, as though frightened. After him came his assistant, scowling, with a deter- mined look ; then followed the guards. They passed by my door and stopped at the one next to me. I heard the assistant calling out in a strange voice : ' Lozinski, get up and put on clean linen ! ' Yes. Then I heard the RESURRECTION 25 door creak, and they passed in. Then I heard Lozinski's steps, and he went over on the other side of the corridor. I could see only the superintendent. He stood pale, and was buttoning and unbuttoning his coat, and shruggiug his shoulders. Yes. Suddenly he acted as though some- thing had frightened him. It was Lozinski, who went past him and stopped at my door. He was a fine-looking youth, of that exquisite Polish type: broad-chested, a straight forehead with a head of blond, wavy, fine hair, aud beautiful blue eyes. He was such a blooming, healthy, vigorous young man. He stood in front of my door so that I could see his whole face. It was a terribly drawn, gray face. " ' Kryltsov, have you any cigarettes ? ' I wanted to give him some, but the assistant, as though fearing to be late, took out his cigarette-holder and offered it to him. He took a cigarette, and the assistant hghted a match for him. He began to smoke, and seemed to be musing. Then he looked as though he had recalled something, and he began to speak : ' It is cruel and unjust. I have com- mitted no crime. I — ' Something quivered iu his youthful, white throat, from which I could not tear my eyes away, and he stopped. Yes. Just then I heard Kozovski calling out something in the corridor in his thin, Jewish voice. Lozinski threw away the stump of his cigarette and went away from the door. Then Eozovski could be seen through the window. His child- ish face, with its moist, black eyes, was red and sweaty. He, too, was clad in white linen, and his trousers were too wide for him, and he kept pulling them up with both his hands, and was trembUng aU the while. He put his pitiful face to my window : " ' Anatoli Petrovich, is it not so ? the doctor has ordered me to drink pectoral tea. I am not well, and I will drink some.' Nobody answered him, and he looked questioningly now at me, and now at the inspector. I 26 RESURRECTION did not understand what he meant by his words. Yes. Suddenly the assistant looked stern, and again he called out, in a wheezy voice : ' Don't be jesting ! Come ! ' Eozovski was appareutlj^ unable to understand what was awaiting him, and went hurriedly along the corridor, ahead of them all, almost on a run. But later he stood back, and I heard his piercing voice and weeping. They were busy about him and a thud of steps was heard. He was crying and whining in a penetrating manner. Then farther and farther away, — the door of the corridor rang out, and all was quiet. Yes. They hanged them. They choked their lives out of them with ropes. " Another attendant saw the hanging, and he told me that Lozinski offered no resistance, but that Rozovski struggled for a long while, so that he had to be dragged to the gallows and his head had to be stuck through the noose. Yes. That attendant was a stupid fellow. ' I was told, sir, that it was terrible. But it is not. When they were hanged, they moved their shoulders only twice,' — he showed me how the shoulders were raised convul- sively and fell. * Then the hangman jerked the rope so that the noose should He more tightly on their necks, and that was all : they did not stir again. It is not at all terrible,' " Kryltsov repeated the attendant's words, and wanted to smile, but instead burst out into sobs. He was for a long time silent after this recital, breathing heavily and swallowing the sobs that rose to his throat. "Since then I have been a revolutionist. Yes," he said, calming down, and then he finished his story in a few words. He belonged to the party of the Popular Will, and was the head of a disorganizing group, whose purpose it was to terrorize the government, so that it might itself abdi- cate its power and call the people to assume it. For this purpose he travelled, now to St. Petersburg, now abroad, or to Kiev, to Oddssa, and he was everywhere successful. RESURRECTION 27 A man on whom he fully relied l»etrayed him. He was arrested, tried, kept two years in prison, and sentenced to capital punishment, which was commuted to hard labour for life. In prison he developed consumption, and now, under the conditions of his life, he had evidently but a few months left to Hve. He knew this, and did not regret what he had done, but said that if he had a life to live over he would use it for the same purpose, — for the destruction of the order of things which made possible what he had seen. This man's history and the companionship with him made many things intelligiljle to Nekhlyudov which heretofore he had not understood. VII. On the day when, at the start from the halting-place, the conflict over the child had taken place between the officer of the guard and the prisoners, Nekhlyudov, who had passed the night at an inn, awoke late, and for a long time wrote letters, which he was getting ready to mail from the capital of the Government ; he consequently left the inn later than usual, and did not catch up with the marching party on the road, as he had done on previous days, but arrived at evening twilight at the village, near which a half-stop was made. Having changed his wet clothing in the inn, which was kept by an elderly widow with a white neck of extraordinary size, Nekhlyildov drank tea in the clean guest-room, which was adorned by a large number of images and pictures, and hastened to the halting-place to ask the officer's permission for an interview. At the six preceding halting-places the officers of the guard, although several changes had been made, all without exception had refused Nekhlyudov's admission to the prison enclosure, so that he had not seen Katyusha for more than a week. This severity was caused by an expected visit from an important prison chief. Now the chief had passed, without as much as looking at the halt- ing-place, and Nekhlyildov hoped that the officer who had in the morning taken charge of the party would, like the previous officers, permit him to see the prisoners. The hostess offered Nekhlyildov a tarantas to take him to the halting-place, which was at the other end of the village, but Nekhlyildov preferred to walk. A young, 28 RESURRECTION 29 broad-chested, powerful-looking lad, in immense boots freshly smeared with tar, offered himself to take him there. It was misting, and it was so dark that whenever the lad separated himself from him for three steps, in places where the light did not fall through the windows, Nekhlyudov could not see him, but only heard the smack- ing of the boots in the deep, sticky mud. After passing the square with the church and a long street with brightly illumined windows, Nekhlyiidov followed his guide into complete darkness, at the edge of the village. Soon, how- ever, they saw, melting in the fog, the beams of light from the lamps which were burning near the halting-place. The reddish spots of light became larger and brighter ; they could see the posts of the enclosure, the black figure of the sentry moving about, the striped pole, and the sentry booth. The sentinel met the approaching men with his usual " Who goes there ? " and, finding that they were not familiar persons, became so stern that he would not allow them to wait near the enclosure. But Nekhlyudov's guide was not disconcerted by the severity of the sentry. " What an angry fellow you are ! " he said to him. " You call the under-officer, and we will wait." The sentry did not answer, but called out something through the small gate, and stopped to watch intently the broad-shouldered lad as in the lamplight he cleaned off with a chip the mud that was sticking to Nekhlyiidov's boots. Beyond the posts of the enclosure was heard the din of men's and women's voices. About three minutes later there was a clanking of iron, the door of the gate was opened, and out of the darkness emerged into the lamplight the under-oflficer, wearing his overcoat over his shoulders. He asked them what they wanted. Nekhlyii- dov handed him his previously written card, asking the officer to admit him on some private matter, and begged him to take it in. The under-officer was less severe than the sentry, but more inquisitive. He insisted upon know- 30 RESURKECTION ing what business Nekhlyildov had with the officer, and who he was, apparently scenting a prey, and not wishing to miss it. Neklilyiidov said that it was a special busi- ness, and asked him to take the note to the officer. The under-officer took it, and, shaking his head, went away. A little while after his disappearance the door clanked again, and there came out women with baskets, with birch- bark boxes, clay vessels, and bags. They stepped across the threshold of the door, sonorously babbling in their peculiar Siberian dialect. They were all dressed not in village but in city fashion, wearing overcoats and fur coats ; their skirts were tucked high, and their heads were wrapped in kerchiefs. They eyed with curiosity Neklyii- dov and his guide, who were standing in the lamplight. One of these women, obviously happy to meet the broad- shouldered lad, immediately began to banter him with Siberian curses. " You wood-spirit, the plague take you, what are you doing here ? " she turned to him. " I brought a stranger here," replied the lad. " What have you been carrying here ? " " Meats, — and they want me to come back in the morning." " Did they not let you stay there overnight ? " asked the lad. " May they squash you, you fibber," she cried, laughing. " Won't you take us all back to the village ? " The guide said something else to her, which made laugh not only the women, but also the sentry, and turned to Nekhlyudov : " Well, can you find your way back by yourself ? Won't you lose your way ? " ""I shall find it, I shall." " Beyond the church, the second house after the one of two stories. Here you have a staff," he said, giving Nekh- lyudov a long stick, which was taller than his stature, RESURRECTION 31 and which he had been carrying, and, splashing with his immense boots, disappeared in the darkness with the women. His voice, interrupted by that of the women, could be heard through the mist, when the door clanked again, and the under-officer came out, inviting Nekhlyiidov to follow him to the officer. VIII. The half-stop was situated like all the other half-stops and full stops along the Siberian road : in the yard, which was surrounded by pomted pales, there were three one- story buildings. In one of these, the largest, with lat- ticed windows, the prisoners were placed ; in another, the guards of the guard ; and in the third, the officer and the chancery. In all three houses fires were burning, wliich, as always, especially here, illusively promised something good and cosy within the lighted walls. In front of the entrance steps of the houses lamps were burning, and there were five other lamps along the wall, illuminating the yard. The under-officer took Nekh- lyudov over a board walk to the steps of the smallest building. Having mounted three steps, he let him pass in front of him into an antechamber which was lighted by a small lamp emitting stifling fumes. At the stove stood a soldier, in a coarse shirt and tie and black trou- sers ; he had on only one boot, with a yellow bootleg, and, bending over, was fanning the samovar with the other boot. Upon seeing Nekhlyudov, the soldier went away from the samovar, took off Nekhlyiidov's leather coat, and went into the inner room. " He has arrived, your Honour ! " " Well, call him in," was heard an angry voice. " Go through the door," said the soldier, and immediately began to busy himself about the samovar. In the next room, which was lighted by a hanging lamp, an officer, with long blond moustache and a very red face, dressed in an Austrian jacket, which closely 32 RESURRECTION 33 fitted over his broad chest and shoulders, was sitting at a table covered with remnants of a dinner and two bottles. The warm room smelled not only of tobacco smoke but also of some strong, vile perfume. Upon noticing Nekh- lyiidov, the officer half-raised himself and almost scorn- fully and suspiciously fixed his eyes upon the stranger. " What do you wish ? " he said, and, without awaiting a reply, called through the door: " B^rnov, will you ever get the samovar ready ? " " Right away ! " "I will give you such a right of way that you will remember me," cried the officer, his eyes sparkling. " I am bringing it ! " cried the soldier, and entered with the samovar. Nekhlyiidov waited until the soldier had put down the samovar (the officer followed him with his small, mean eyes, as though choosing a spot on which to hit him). When the samovar was down, the officer began to steep the tea, then he took out of a lunch-basket a four- cornered decanter and Albert cracknels. After he had placed everythiug on the table, he again addressed Nekh- lyudov. " So what can I do for you ? " " I should like to have an interview with a lady pris- oner," said Nekhlyiidov, still standing. " A political ? That is prohibited by law," said the officer. " She is not a political," said ISTekhlyudov. " But please be seated," said the officer. Nekhlyiidov sat down. " She is not a poHtical," he repeated, " but at my re- quest she has been permitted by the higher authorities to go with the politicals — " " Ah, I know," the officer interrupted him. " A small brunette ? Yes, you may. Won't you have a ciga- rette ? " 34 RESURRECTION He handed Nekhlyiidov a box with cigarettes, and, properly filling two glasses of tea, put one down before Nekhlyiidov. " If you please," he said. " I thank you. I should like to see — " " The night is long. You will have plenty of time. I will have her called out." " Could I not be admitted to their room, without call- ing her out ? " said Nekhlyiidov. " To the pohticals ? That is against the law." " I have been admitted several times. If there is any fear that I might transmit something to them, — then you must not forget that I could do so even through her." " No, not at all. She will be examined," said the officer, with an unpleasant laugh. " Well, you may examine me." " Oh, we will get along without doing so," said the officer, taking the uncorked decanter to Nekhlyiidov's glass. " May I pour in some ? Well, as you please. One feels so happy to meet an educated man here in Siberia. Our fate, you know yourself, is a very sad one. It is hard when a man is used to something else. There is an opinion abroad that an officer of the guard must be a coarse man, without any education. They never consider that a man may have been born for something quite different." The red face of this officer, his perfume, his ring, but more especially his disagreeable laugh, were quite repul- sive to Nekhlyiidov ; but on that day, as during his whole journey, he was in that attentive and serious mood when he did not allow himself to treat any person frivo- lously or contemptuously, and when he considered it necessary to " let himself loose," as he defined this rela- tion of his to other people. Having listened to the officer's words and considering his mood, he remarked, seriously : RESUKKECTION 35 " I think that in your occupation you can find consola- tion by alleviating the suffering of the people," he said. " What suffering ? They are a terrible lot." " Not at all terrible," said Nekhlyiidov. '• They arc just like the rest. There are even some innocent people among them." " Of course, there are all kinds. Of course, I pity them. Others would not be less rigorous for anything, but I try to make it easier for them whenever I can. 1 prefer to suffer in their places. Others will invoke the law on every occasion, and are even ready to shoot them, but I pity them. Will you have another glass ? Please," he said, filling his glass again. " What kind of a woman is the one you want to see ? " he asked. " It is an unfortunate woman who found her way into a house of prostitution, and there she was accused of poi- soning, — but she is a good woman," said Nekhlyudov. The officer shook his head. " Yes, these things happen. In Kazan, let me teU you, there was one, — they called her Emma. She was a Hun- garian by birth, but her eyes looked like those of a Persian woman," he continued, unable to repress a smile at the recollection. " She was as elegant as any countess — " Nekhlyudov interrupted the officer and returned to his former conversation : " I think you can alleviate the condition of these peo- ple while they are in your power. I am sure that if you did so, you would experience great joy," said Nekhlyudov, trying to speak as distinctly as possible, just as one speaks to a stranger or a child. The ofticer looked at Nekhlyudov with sparkling eyes, and apparently was impatiently waiting for him to get through, so as to give him a chance to continue his story about the Hungarian woman with the Persian eyes, who, evidently, stood out vividly before his imagination and absorbed his whole attention. 36 RESURRECTION " Yes, that is so, I will admit," he said. " I am sorry for them ; but let me finish my story about this Emma. So this is what she did — " " This does not interest me," said Xekhlyiidov, " and let me tell you outright that, although I formerly was differ- ent, I now despise such relations with women." The officer looked in a terrified way at Nekhlyiidov. " Won't you take another glass ? " he said. " No, thank you." " B^rnov ! " cried the officer, " take the gentleman to Bakiilov and tell him to admit him to the special room of the poHticals ; the gentleman may stay there until roll- call." IX. Accompanied by the orderly, Nekhly^dov again went out into the dark yard which was dimly lighted by the red- burning lamps. " Where are you going ? " a guard, whom they met, asked the one who was guiding Nekhlyiidov. " To the special room, — Number 5." " You can't go through here : it is locked. You will have to go through that porch." " Why is it locked ? " " The under-officer has locked it, and himself has gone down to the village." " Well, then, let us go this way ! " The soldier took Nekhlyiidov to the other steps, and went over a board walk to another entrance. Even from the yard could be heard the din of voices and the motion within, such as one hears in a good beehive which is get- ting ready to swarm, but when Nekhlyiidov came nearer and the door was opened, this din was increased aud passed into a noise of scolding, cursing, laughing voices. There was heard the metalHc sound of the chains, and the familiar oppressive odour was wafted against him. These two impressions — the din of the voices combined with the clanking of the chains, and that terrible odour — always united in Nekhlyiidov in one agonizing feeling of moral nausea passing into physical nausea. Both im- pressions mingled and intensified each other. Upon entering the vestibule of the half-stop, where stood an immense stink-vat, Nekhlyiidov noticed a woman sitting on the edge of this vat, while opposite her stood a 37 38 RESURRECTION man, with his pancake-shaped cap poised sidewise on liis shaven head. They were talking about something. When the prisoner noticed Nekhlyudov, he winked and said : " Even the Tsar could not retain his water." The woman pulled down the skirt of her • cloak and looked abashed. From the vestibule ran a corridor, into which opened the doors of cells. The first was the family cell ; then followed a large cell for unmarried persons, and at the end of the corridor, two small rooms were reserved for the politicals. The interior of the halting-place, which, although intended for 150 prisoners, held 450, was so crowded that, not being able to find places in the cells, they filled the corridor. Some sat or lay on the floor, while others moved up and down, carrying full or empty teapots. Among the latter was Taras. He ran up to Nekhlyudov and exchanged a pleasant greeting with him. Taras's kindly face was disfigured by purple discolorations ou his nose and under his eyes. " What is the matter with you ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " We had a fight," said Taras, smihng. " They are fighting all the time," the guard said, con- temptuously. " On account of the woman," added a prisoner, who was walking behind them. " He had a set-to with F^dka the bhnd." " How is Fedosya ? " asked Nekhlyudov. "All right. She is well. I am taking this boihng water to her for tea," said Taras, entermg the family cell. Nekhlyudov looked into the door. The whole cell was full of women and men, both on the sleeping-benches and underneath them. The room was filled with the evapora- tions of wet clothes getting dry, and there was heard the incessant squeak of feminine voices. The next door led RESURRECTION 39 into the cell of the single persons. This room was even fuller, and even in the door and out in the doorway stood a noisy crowd of prisoners in wet clothes, dividing or de- ciding something. The guard explained to Nekhlyiidov that the foreman was paying out to a gambler the pro- vision money which had been lost or won before by means of small tickets made out of playing-cards. Upon noticing the under-officer and the gentleman, those who stood nearest grew silent, hostilely eyeing them. Among those who were dividing up, Nekhlyiidov noticed Feddrov, the hard labour convict of his acquaintance, who always kept at his side a miserable-looking, pale, bloated lad with arching eyebrows, and a repulsive, pockmarked, noseless vagabond, of whom it was said that during an escape into the Tayga he had killed his companion and eaten his flesh. The vagabond stood in the corridor, with his wet cloak thrown over one shoulder, and scornfully and boldly looked at Nekhlyiidov, without getting out of his way. Nekhlyudov went around him. Although this spectacle was not new to Nekhlyiidov, although he had, in the last three months, frequently seen these four hundred criminals in all kinds of situa- tions, — in heat, in a cloud of dust which they raised with their feet dragging the chains, and on the stops along the road, and in the yards of the halting-places during warm weather, where appalling scenes of open immorality took place, — he experienced an agonizing feeRng of shame and a consciousness of guilt before them every time he went in among them and felt their atten- tion directed to himself. Most oppressive for him was the fact that an irrepressible feehng of loathing and terror mingled with this sensation of shame and guilt. He knew that, under the conditions in which they were placed, they could not be anything else than what they were, and yet he could not suppress his feeling of loath- ing for them. 40 RESURRECTION " They have an easy time, these hangers-on," Nekhlyii- dov, as he approached the door of the politicals, heard a hoarse voice say, adding an indecent curse. There was heard a hostile, scornful laughter. X. As they passed the cell of the unmarried prisoners, the under-officer, who accompanied Nekhlyiidov, said to him that he would come for him before the roll-call, and went back. The under-officer had barely left when a prisoner, holding up his chains over his bare feet, rapidly walked up close to Nekhlyiidov, waftiDg an oppressive and acid smell of sweat upon him, and said to him, in a mysterious whisper : " Sir, please intercede ! They have roped in the lad by giving him to drink. He called himself Karmanov to-day at the roll-call. Please intercede, for I cannot, — • I shall be killed," said the prisoner, looking restlessly about, and immediately walking away from Nekhlyudov. What this man informed Nekhlyiidov of was that prisoner Karmanov had persuaded a lad who resembled him, and who was being deported for settlement in Siberia, to exchange places with him, so that the one who was to go to hard labour was to be deported, while the lad would go to hard labour. Nekhlyudov knew of this affair, since this very pris- oner had informed him of the exchange a week before. Nekhlyudov nodded in token of having understood him and of his willingness to do what he could, and, without looking around, passed on. Nekhlyudov had known this prisoner all the way from Ekaterinburg, where he had asked him to get the per- mission for his wife to follow him, and his act surprised him. He was of medium size, about thirty years of age, and in no way differed from an ordinary peasant. He 41 42 RESURRECTION was being deported to hard labour for attempted rob- bery and murder. His name was Makar Dy^vkin. His crime was a singular one. He told Nekhlyudov that the crime was not his, Makar's, but his, the evil one's. He said that a traveller stopped at his father's, from whom he hired a sleigh for two roubles to take him to a village forty versts distant. His father told him to take the traveller there. Makar harnessed the horse, dressed himself, and drank tea with the traveller. The traveller told him at tea that he was on his way to get married and that he had with him five hundred roubles, which he had earued in Moscow. When Makar heard this, he went into the yard and put his axe in the straw of the sleigh. " I do not know myself why I took the axe along," he told Nekhlyudov. " Something told me to take the axe with me, and so I did. We seated ourselves, and off we went. I entirely forgot about the axe. There were about six versts left to the village. From the cross-road to the highway the road went up-hill. I climbed down and walked back of the sleigh, but he kept whispering to me : • What is the matter with you ? When you get into the highway, there will be people, and then comes the village. He will get away with the money. If anything is to be done, it must be done now.' I bent down to the sleigh, as though to fix the straw, and the axe handle seemed to jump into my hand. He looked around. 'What do you mean ? ' says he. I swung my axe and wanted to bang at him, but he was quick, and so he jumped down from the sleigh and caught me by the hand. ' What are you doing, you villain ? ' He threw me down on the snow, and I did not even struggle, but gave myself up. He tied my arms with the belt and threw me into the sleigh. He took me straight to the rural oftice. I was locked in jail and tried. The Comnume testified to my good record, aud that nothing bad had been noticed in me. The people with whom I was living said the same. I had no RESURRECTION 43 money to hire a lawyer," said Makar, " and so I was sen- tenced to four years." It was this man who was trying to save his country- man, although he knew full w^ell that he was risking his life in the attempt. If the prisoners had found out that he had given away the secret to Nekhlyudov, they would certainly have strangled him. XL The accommodation of the politicals consisted of two small cells, the doors from which opened into a barred-off part of the corridor. Upon entering this part of the corridor, the first person noticed by Nekhlyudov was Simonson, dressed in his jacket, and squatting with a billet of pine wood, in front of the quiveriog stove door, which was drawn in by the current in the brightly burn- ing stove. Upon seeing Nekhlyudov, he looked up through his overhanging eyebrows, without rising from his squatting position, and gave him his hand. " I am glad that you have come. I have something to say to you," he said, with a significant look, gazing straight at Nekhlyudov. " What is it ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " Later. Now I am busy." Simonson again began to attend to the stove, which he fired according to his own theory of the minimum waste of heat energy. Nekhlyudov was on the point of going into the first door, when Maslova came out of the other, bending down and holding a bath-broom in her hand, moving up with it a large mass of dirt and dust toward the stove. She had on a white bodice, a tucked-up skirt, and stockings. Her head was wrapped against the dust with a kerchief, which reached down to her brows. Upon noticing Nekh- lyudov, she unbent herself, and, all red and agitated, put down the broom and, wiping off her hands with her skirt, stopped straight in front of him. 44 EESURRECTION 45 " Are you fixing up your apartment ? " Nekhlyudov asked, giving her his hand. " Yes, my old occupation," she said, smiling. " There is incredible dirt in there. We have been doing nothing but cleaning." " Well, is your plaid dry ? " she turned to Simonson. " Almost," said Simonson, looking at her with a pecul- iar glance, which surprised Nekhlyudov. " Then 1 will come for it, and will bring out the furs to get dry. Our people are all there," she said to Nekh- lyudov, going into the farther door, and pointing to the nearer. Nekhlyudov opened the door and went into a small cell which was dimly lighted up by a metallic lamp stand- ing low on a sleeping-bench. The room was cold and smelled of unsettled dust, dampness, and tobacco. The tin lamp brightly illuminated those who were around it, but the benches were in the dark, and quivering shadows were also on the walls. In the small room were all, with the exception of two men who were in charge of the provisions, and who had gone off to fetch boiling water and victuals. Here was Nekhlyudov's old acquaintance, Vyera Efr^movua, grown more thin and yellow, with her immense frightened eyes and the swollen vein on her forehead, dressed in a gray bodice, and wearing short hair. She was sitting over a piece of newspaper with tobacco upon it, and, with a jerky motion, was filling cigarette wads. Here was also Emiliya Rantsev, who, so Nekhlyudov thought, was one of the most charming politicals. She had charge of the external housekeeping, to which she managed to give a feminine cosiness and charm, even under the most trying circumstances. She was seated near the lamp and, while her sleeves were rolled up over her sunburnt beautiful arms, with agile hands was clean- ing cups and saucers and placing them on a towel which 46 RESURRECTION was spread on a bench. Emiliya Kantsev was a plain- looking woman, with an intelligent and gentle expression of her face, which possessed the property of suddenly, dur- ing a smile, transforming itself and becoming merry, lively, and enchanting; she even now met Nekhlyvidov with such a smile. "We thought you had gone back to Kussia," she said. Here also, in a distant corner and in the shade, was Marya Pavlovna, who was doing something to the flaxen- haired httle girl who kept lisping in her sweet childish voice. " How good of you to have come ! Have you seen Katyusha ? " she asked Nekhlyiidov. " See what a guest we have ! " She showed him the girl. Here also was Anatoli Kryltsov. Haggard and pale, with his legs, wrapped in felt boots, bent under him, he sat, stooping and trembling, in a farther corner of the sleeping-benches, and, putting his hands in the sleeves of his short fur coat, he looked at Nekhlyiidov with feverish oyes. Nekhlyiidov wanted to go up to him, but on the right of the door sat a curly-headed, red-haired man in spectacles and a rubber jacket, conversing with pretty, smilmg Miss Grab(^ts. This was the famous revolution- ist Novodvorov, and Nekhlyiidov hastened to exchange greetings with him. He was particularly in a hurry to do this because of all the politicals of this party this one man was disagreeable to him. Novodvorov flashed his blue eyes through his glasses upon Nekhlyiidov and, frowning, gave him his narrow hand. " Well, are you having a pleasant journey ? " he said, apparently with irony. "Yes, there are many interesting things," replied Nekhlyiidov, looking as though he did not see the irony, Imt received it as a pleasantry, and went up to Kryltsov. Nekhlyiidov's appearance expressed indifference, but RESURRECTION 47 in his heart he was far from being indifferent to Novo- dvorov. These words of Novodvorov, his obvious desire to say and do something unpleasant, disturbed the soul- ful mood in which Nekhlyiidov was. He felt gloomy and sad. " Well, how is your health ? " he said, pressing Kryltsov's cold and trembling hand. " So so. Only I can't get warm, — I got so wet," said Kryltsov, hastening to conceal his hand in the sleeve of the short fur coat. " It is as cold here as in a kennel. The windows are broken." He pointed to broken win- dows in two places behind the iron bars. " What was the matter with you ? Why did you not come ? " " They would not admit me, — the authorities were so strict. Only the officer of to-day proved to be obliging." " Well, ]ie is obliging ! " said Kryltsov. " Ask Marya what he did this morning." Marya Pavlovna, without rising from her place, told what had happened with the little girl in the morning at the departure from the halting-place. " In my opinion, it is necessary to make a collective protest," Vy^ra Efr^movna said, in a determined voice, looking now at this person, now at that, with an un- decided and frightened look. " Vladimir has made a protest, but that is not enough." " What protest ? " Kryltsov muttered, with an angry scowl. Apparently the lack of simplicity, the artificial- ity of the tone, and the nervousness of Vy^ra Efr^movna had long been irritating him. " Are you looking for Katyusha ? " he turned to Nekhlyiidov. " She has been working, — cleaning up. They have been cleaning out this room, — ours, the men's ; now they are working in the women's room. But they won't get rid of the fleas : they will eat us up alive. — What is Marya doing there ? " he asked, with his head indicating the corner in which Marya Pavlovna was. 48 RESURRECTION " She is combing her adopted daughter," said EmiHya Eantsev. " And won't she let loose her vermin on us ? " asked Kryltsdv. " No, no, I am regular with her. She is clean now," said Marya Pavlovna. " Take her," she turned to Emiliya Eantsev. " I will go and help Katyusha. And I will bring him the plaid." Emiliya Eantsev took the girl, and, with maternal ten- derness pressing to herself the bare, plump little hands of the child, placed her on her knees and gave her a piece of sugar. Marya Pavlovna went out, and, immediately after, two men stepped into the room with boiling water and victuals. XII. One of those who entered was an undersized, lean young man in a covered short fur coat and tall boots. He walked with a light, rapid gait, carrying two large steaming teapots with boiling water and holding under his arm bread wrapped in a cloth. " Here our prince has made his appearance," he said, placing a teapot amidst the cups and giving the bread to Maslova. " We have bought some fine things," he said, throwing off his fur coat and flinging it over the heads to the corner of the benches. " Mark^l has bought milk and eggs ; we will simply have a party this evening. Kiril- lovna, I see, is again busy with her aesthetic cleanliness," he said, looking with a smile at Emiliya Eantsev. " Now, please, get the tea ready," he turned to her. The whole exterior of this man, his movements, the sound of his voice, his look, breathed vivacity and merri- ment. The other of the new arrivals, — also a short, bony man, with an ashen-gray face that had very pro- truding cheek-bones and puffed-up cheeks, with beautiful, greenish, widely placed eyes and thin lips, was, on the contrary, gloomy and melancholy. He wore an old wadded coat and boots with overshoes. He was carry- ing two pots and two birch-bark boxes. Having placed his burden in front of Emiliya Eantsev, he bowed with his neck to Nekhlyudov in such a way that he kept his eyes on him all the time. Then, unwillingly giving him his clammy hand, he immediately began to unload the provi- sions from the basket. 49 50 RESURRECTION These two political prisoners were men of the people : the first was Peasant Nabatov, the other was the factory workman, Marlv(51 Kondratev. Markcil had found his way among the revolutionists at the advanced age of thirty-five, while Nabatov had joined them at eighteen. Having, through his conspicuous ability, found his way from the village school to the gymnasium, Nabatov maintained himself all the while by giving lessons. He graduated with a gold medal, but did not proceed to the university, because he had decided, while in the seventh form, to go among the people from whom he had come, in order to enlighten his forgotten brothers. And thus he did : at first he accepted a position as scribe in a large village, but he was soon arrested for reading books to the peasants and forming among them a Consumers' Coopera- tive League. The first time he was kept eight months in prison, after which he was released and placed under secret surveillance. After his liberation, he immediately went to another village, in another Government, and there established himself as a teacher, contmumg his old activity. He was again arrested, and this time he was kept a year and two months in prison, and there he was only strengthened in his convictions. After his second imprisonment, he was sent to the Government of P^nza. He ran away from there. He was again arrested, and, having been incarcerated for seven months, was sent to the Government of Arkhan- gelsk. From there he ran away again, and was again caught ; he was sentenced to deportation to the Yakutsk Territory ; thus he had passed half of his youth in prison and in exile. All these adventures did not in the least sour him; nor did they weaken his energy, — on the contrary, they only fanned it. He was a mobile man, with an excellent digestion, always equally active, cheer- ful, and vivacious. He never regretted anything, and never looked far into the future, but with all the powers RESURRECTION 61 of his mind, of his agility, and of his practical good sense worked only in the present. When he was at liberty, he worked for the goal which he had set for himself, namely, the enlightenment and organization of the working classes, especially of the peasants ; but when he was imprisoned, he just as energetically and practically worked for inter- course with the external world, and for the arrangement of the best possible' life, under the given conditions, not only for himself, but for his circle. Above everything else he was a social man. It seemed to him that he did not need anything for himself personally, and he was sat- isfied with anything, but for the society of his friends he was exacting ; he could do all kinds of physical and men- tal work, without laying down his hands, without sleeping or eating. As a peasant, he was industrious, quick to see, agile in his work, naturally temperate, polite without effort, and respectful not only to the feelings, but also to the opinions of others. His old mother, an illiterate widow, full of supersti- tions, was alive, and Nabatov helped her, and, whenever he was at large, came to see her. During his stays at home he entered into the details of Hfe, aided her in her work, and did not break his relations with his companions, the peasant lads : he smoked with them paper cigarettes bent in the shape of a dog's leg, wrestled with them, and pointed out to them how they were all deceived, and how they must free themselves from the deceptions in which they were held. Whenever he thought and spoke of what the revolution would give to the masses, he always represented to himself the same people from which he had issued, only with land and without masters and officers. The revolution was, according to him, not to change the fundamental forms of the people's life, — in this he differed from Novodvorov and Novodvorov's fol- lower, Mark^l Kondratev, — the revolution, in his opinion, was not to tear down the whole structure, but was only to 52 RESUREECTION arrange differently the apartments of this beautiful, solid, immense, old building which he loved so fervently. In respect to religion, he was also a typical peasant : he never thought of metaphysical subjects, of the begin- ning of all things, of the life after the grave. God was for him, as He had been for Arago, a hypothesis, the need of which he did not feel as yet. He was not in the least concerned about the origin of the wiorld, whether it had its begiuning according to Moses or to Darwin, and Dar- winism, which seemed to be of such importance to his comrades, was for him just such a play of imagination as the creation of the world in six days. He was not interested in the question of how the world was formed, because the question how to live best in this world was paramount to him. Nor did he ever think of the future life, bearing in the depth of his soul that firm and quiet conviction, common to all toilers of the soil, which he had also inherited from his ancestors, that, as in the world of animals and plants nothing ever comes to an end, but is eternally transformed from one shape into another, — the manure into a grain, the grain into a chicken, the tadpole into a frog, the caterpillar into a but- terfly, the acorn into an oak, — so man is not destroyed, but only changed into something else. This he believed, and therefore he boldly and even cheerfully looked into the eyes of death and courageously bore all suffering which led to it, but did not like and did not know how to speak of it. He liked to work, and w^as always occupied with practical labours, and urged his comrades on to practical labours. The other political prisoner in this party, who originated from the people, Mark^l Kondratev, was a man of a different type. He started to work at fifteen, and began .smoking and drinking in order to drown his dim consciousness of offence. This offence he became conscious of for the first time when he, with other boys, was called in to look at a RESURRECTION 63 Christmas tree, which had been fixed up by the manu- facturer's wife, and received as a present a penny whistle, an apple, a gilt walnut, and a fig, while the manufacturer's chil- dren received toys which to him appeared as fairy gifts, and which, as he later found out, cost more than fifty roubles. He was thirty years old when a famous revolutionary woman began to work in the factory. She noticed Kon- dratev's marked abihty, began to give him books and pamphlets, and to speak with him, explaining to him his position and its causes, and the means for improving it. When the possibility of freeing himself and others from the position of oppression in which he was was clearly presented to him, the injustice of this position seemed even more cruel and terrible than before, and he not only passionately wished for his liberation, but also for the punishment of those who had arranged and sustained this cruel injustice. This possibility, so he was told, could be got through knowledge, and so Kondratev devoted himself ardently to the acquisition of knowledge. It was not clear to him how the realization of the socialistic ideal was to come about through science, but he believed that, as knowledge had manifested to him the injustice of his position, so it would also remedy this injustice. Besides, knowledge raised him in his opinion above other people. Therefore he quit smoking and drinking, and employed all his spare time, of which he had now more, having been made a material-man, in study. The revolutionary lady taught him ; she marvelled at the wonderful abihty with which he eagerly devoured all kind of knowledge. In two years he had learned algebra, geometry, and history, of which he was especially fond, and had read all the artistic critical hterature, and especially all socialistic works. The revolutionist was arrested, and Kondratev with her, for having interdicted books in his room. He was put in prison, and later deported to the Government of 54 RESURRECTION Vologda. There he became acquainted with Novodvdrov, read more revolutionary books, memorized everything, and was even more confirmed in his socialistic views. After his exile he became the leader of a large strike, which ended in the storming of the factory and the death of its director. He was arrested and sentenced to loss of his civil rights and exile. He assumed the same negative attitude toward religion as toward the existing economic order of things. Having become convinced of the insipidity of the faith in which he had been brought up, and having with difficulty freed himself from it, at first experiencing terror and later trans- port in this liberation, he, in retribution for the deception which had been practised upon him and his ancestors, never ceased venomously and maliciously to ridicule the popes and the religious dogmas. He was by habit an ascetic ; he was satisfied with the smallest allowance, and, like all people who are early used to work and who have well-developed muscles, could easily and well perform all kinds of physical labour ; but he esteemed leisure more than anything, because it gave him in prisons and at the halting-places a chance to continue his studies. He now pored over the first volume of Marx, which book he kept with great care in his bag, like a very precious thing. He treated all his companions with reserve and indifference, except Novodvdrov, to whom he was par- ticularly devoted, and whose opinions in regard to all subjects he accepted as incontrovertible truths. For women, on whom he looked as a hindrance in all important matters, he had an unconquerable contempt. However, he pitied Maslova, and was kind to her, seeing in her an example of the exploitation of the lower classes by the higher. For the same reason he did not like Nekh- lyudov, was incommunicative with him, and did not press his hand, but only offered his to be pressed, whenever Nekhlyiidov, exchanged greetings with him^ xiii The stove burnt up brightly and warmed up the room ; the tea was steeped and poured out in the glasses and cups, and whitened with milk ; there were spread out cracknels, fresh rye and wheat bread, hard-boiled eggs, butter, and a head and legs of veal. All moved up to the place on the benches, which was used as a table, and ate, and drank, and conversed. Emiliya Rantsev sat on a box, pouring out the tea. Around her stood in a crowd all the others, except Kryitsov, who had taken off his short fur coat and, wrapping himself in the dry plaid, was lying in his place on the benches and talking with Nekhlyudov. After the cold and dampness during the march, after the dirt and disorder which they had found here, after all the labours they had to expend to get things into shape, after taking food and hot tea, — all were in a most happy and cheerful frame of mind. The feeling of comfort was increased by the very fact that beyond the wall were heard the thumping, the cries, and the curses of the criminals, as though to remind them of their surroundings. Just as at a halt in the sea, these people for a time did not feel themselves overwhelmed by all the humiliations and all the suffering which surrounded them, and so they found themselves in an elated and ani- mated mood. They spoke of everything, except of their situation and of what awaited them. Besides, as is always the case with young men and women, especially when they are forcibly brought together, as were those collected there, there had arisen among them all kinds of concordant, and 55 56 RESURRECTION discordant, and variously interfering attractions to each other. They were nearly all of them in love. Novodvorov was in love with pretty, sniihng Miss Grab^ts. Miss Grab^ts was a young student of the Courses for Women, who was exceedingly httle given to thinking and who was quite indifferent to the questions of the revolution ; but she submitted to the influence of the time, in some way was compromised, and thus deported. As when at large the chief interests of her hfe consisted in having success with men, she continued the same methods at the inquest, in prison, in exile. Now, during the journey, she found consolation in Novodvorov's in- fatuation for her, and herself fell in love with him. Vy^ra Efr^movna, who was prone to fall in love but did not incite love to herself, though she always hoped for reciprocation, was in love now with Nabatov, and now with Novodvorov. There was something in the nature of love which Kryltsov felt for Marya Pavlovna. He loved her as men love women, but, knowing her attitude toward love, he artfully concealed his feeling under the cloak of friendship and gratitude for the tender care which she bestowed upon him. Nabatov and Emiliya Eantsev were united by very complex love relations. As Marya Pav- lovna was an absolutely chaste girl, so Emiliya Eantsev was an absolutely chaste wife. At sixteen years of age, while still in the gymna- sium, she fell in love with Eantsev, a student of the St. Petersburg University, and, when nineteen years old, she married him, while he was still attending the uni- versity. In his senior year he was mixed up in some university affair, for which he was expelled from St. Petersburg, aud became a revolutionist. She left her medical courses, which she was attending, followed him, and herself turned revolutionist. If her husband had not been the man he was — she considered him the best and cleverest of all men — she would not have fallen in RESURRECTION 57 love with him, and, not loving him, she would not have married him. But having once fallen in love with and married the best and cleverest man in the world, as she thought, she naturally understood life and its aims pre- cisely as they were understood by the best and cleverest man in the world. At first he conceived life to be for study, and so she understood life in the same sense. He became a revolutionist, and so she became one. She could prove very well that the existing order was impos- sible, and that it was the duty of every man to struggle with this order and to endeavour to establish that polit- ical and economic structure in which personality could develop freely, and so forth. She thought that those were actually her ideas and feelings, but in reality she only thought that everything which her husband thought was the real truth, and she sought- only for a complete concord, a merging with the soul of her husband, which alone gave her moral satisfaction. Her parting from her husband and from her child, whom her mother took, was hard for her. But she bore this separation bravely and calmly, knowing that she bore it all for her husljand and for the cause which was unquestionably the true one, because he served it. She was always in thought with her husband, and, as she had before been unable to love anybody, so she now was unable to love any one but her husband. But IsTabatov's pure and devoted love touched and disturbed her. He, a moral and firm man, the friend of her husband, tried to treat her as a sister, but in his relations with her there appeared something greater, and this something gi^eater frightened them both and, at the same time, beautified their hard life. Thus, the only ones who were completely free from any infatuation were Marya Pavlovna and Kondratev. XIV. Counting on a separate conversation with Katyusha after the common tea and supper, such as he had had on previous occasions, Nekhlyudov sat near Kryltsov and talked with him. Among other things, he told him of Makar's request and of the story of his crime. Kryltsov hstened attentively, fixing his beaming eyes on Nekh- lyiidov's face. " Yes," he suddenly said, " I have frequently been thinking that we are going with them, side by side with them, — with what ' them ' ? with the same people for whom we are going into exile. And yet, we not only do not know them, but even do not wish to know them. And they are even worse : they hate us and regard us as their enemies. This is terrible." " There is nothing terrible in this," said Novodvorov, who was listening to the conversation. " The masses always worship power," he said, in his clattering voice. " The government is in power, — and they worship it and hate us ; to-morrow we shall be in power, — and they will worship us — " Just then an outburst of curses was heard beyond the wall, and the thud of people hurled against the wall, the clanking of chwns, whining, and shouts. Somebody was being beaten. &vi-i somebody cried " Help ! " " There they arC; the beasts ! What communion can there be between them and us ? " quietly remarked Novodvorov. "You say beasts? And here l^ekhlyudov -has just told me of an act," Krylts6v said, irritated, and told the 58 RESURRECTION 59 story of how Makar had risked his life in order to save a couutryman of his. " This is not bestiality, but a heroic deed." " Sentimentality ! " ironically said Novodvdrov. " It is hard for us to understand the emotions of these people and the motives of their acts. You see mag- nanimity in it, whereas it may only be envy for that convict." " You never want to see anything good in others," Marya Pavlovna suddenly remarked, in excitement. " It is impossible to see that which is not." " How can you say there is not, when a man risks a terrible death ? " " I think," said Novodvorov, " that if we want to do our work, the first condition for it is " (Koudratev left the book which he was reading at the lamp, and atten- tively listened to his teacher) " not to be given to fancies, but to look at things as they are. Everything is to be done for the masses, and nothing to be expected from them. The masses are the object of our activity, but they cannot be our colabourers, as long as they are as inert as they are," he began, as though giving a lecture. " Therefore it is quite illusory to expect aid from them before the process of development has taken place, — that process of development for which we are preparing them." " What process of development ? " Kryltsov exclaimed, growing red in his face. " We say that we are against arbitrariness and despotism, and is not this the most appalling despotism ? " " There is no despotism about it," Novodvorov calmly replied. " All I say is that I know the path over which the people must travel, and I can indicate this road." " But why are you convinced that the path which you indicate is the true one ? Is this not despotism, from which have resulted the Inquisition and the executions of 60 RESURRECTION the great Revolution ? They, too, knew from science the only true path." " The fact that they were mistaken does not prove that I am, too. Besides, there is a great difi'erence between the raving of ideologists and the data of positive economic science." Novodvdrov's voice filled the cell. He alone was speaking, and everybody else was silent. " They always dispute," said Marya Pavlovna, when he grew silent for a moment. " What do you yourself think about it ? " Nekhlyudov asked Marya Pavlovna. " I thiuk that Anatoli is right, that it is impossible to obtrude our views on the people." " Well, and you, Katyusha ? " Nekhlyudov asked, smil- ing, timidly waiting for her answer, with misgivings lest she say something wrong, " I think that the common people are maltreated," she said, flaming up ; " they are dreadfully maltreated." " Correct, ]\Iikhaylovna, correct," cried Nabatov. " The people are dreadfully maltreated. They must not be, and it is our business to see that they are not." " A strange conception about the problems of the rev- olution," said Novodvorov, growing silent and angrily smoking a cigarette. " I cannot speak with him," Kryltsdv said, in a whis- per, and grew silent. " It is much better not to speak," said Nekhlyudov. XV. Although Novodvorov was very much respected by all the revolutionists and passed for a very clever man, Nekhlyudov counted him among those revolutionists who, standing by their moral qualities below the average, were very much below it. The mental powers of this man — his numerator — were very great ; but his own opinion about himself — his denominator — was unbounded and had long ago outgrown his mental powers. He was a man of a diametrically different composition of spiritual hfe from Simonson. Simonson was one of those men, of a preeminently masculine turn, whose acts flow from the activity of their minds, and are determined by them. But Novodvorov belonged to the category of men, of a preeminently feminine turn, whose activity of mind is directed partly to the realization of the aims posited by their feelings, and partly to the justification of their deeds evoked by their feelings. Novodvorov's whole revolutionary activity, in spite of his ability eloquently to explain it by conclusive proofs, presented itself to Nekhlyudov as based only on vanity, on a desire to be a leader among men. Thanks to his ability to appropriate the ideas of others and correctly to transmit them, he was at first a leader, during the period of his studies, among his teachers and fellow students, where this ability is highly valued, — in the gymnasium, in the university, and while working for his master's degree, — and he was satisfied. But when he received his diploma and stopped studying, and this leadership came to an end, he suddenly, so Kryltsov, who did not 61 62 RESURRECTION like Novodvdrov, told Nekhlyudov, completely changed his views, and from a progressive liberal became a rabid adherent of the Popular Will. Thanks to the absence in his character of moral and aesthetic qualities, which call forth doubts and wavering, he soon occupied in the revo- lutionary world the position of a leader of the party, which satisfied his egotism. Having once and for all chosen his direction, he never doubted nor wavered, and therefore he was convinced that he was never in error. Everything seemed unusu- ally simple, clear, incontrovertible. And, in reality, with the narrowness and one-sidedness of his views, every- thing was simple and clear, and all that was necessary, as he said, was to be logical. His self-confidence was so great that it could only repel people or subdue them. And as his activity was displayed among very young peo- ple, who accepted his boundless self-confidence for depth of thought and wisdom, he had a great success in revolu- tionary circles. His activity consisted in preparing for an uprising, when he would take the government in his hand, and would call a popular parliament. To tliis par- liament was to be submitted a programme which he had composed. He was absolutely convinced that this pro- gramme exhausted all the questions, and that it had to be carried out without fail. His companions respected him for his boldness and determination, but did not love him. He himself did not love anybody, and looked upon all prominent people as his rivals ; he would gladly have treated them as male monkeys treat the young ones, if he could. He would have torn out all the mind, all the ability from other peo- ple, so that they might not interfere with the manifesta- tion of his own ability. He was in good relations with only such people as bowed down before him. In such a manner he bore himself, on the road, toward the workman Kondratev, who had been gained for the propa- RESURRECTION 63 ganda by him, and toward Vy^ra Efremovna and pretty Miss Grab^ts, both of whom were in love with him. Though by principle he was for the woman question, yet, in the depth of his soul, he regarded all women as stupid and insignificant, with the exception of those with whom he frequently was sentimentally in love, as now with Miss Grab^ts, and in that ease he considered them to be unusual women, whose worth he alone was capable of appreciating. The question about the relation of the sexes, like all other questions, seemed very simple and clear to him, and was fully solved by free love. He had one fictitious and one real wife : he had sepa- rated from the latter, having become convinced that there was no real love between them, and now he intended to enter into a new free marriage with Miss Grabets. He despised ISTekhlyildov for being " finical " with Mas- lova, as he called it, and especially for allowing himself to think about the faults of the existing order and about the means for its improvement, not only not word for word as he himself did, but even in a special, prmcely, that is, stupid, manner. Nekhlyudov knew that Novodvorov had this feeling toward him, and, to his own sorrow, he felt that, in spite of the benevolent mood in which he was during his journey, he paid him with the same coin, and he was quite unable to suppress his strong antipathy for that man. XVI. In the neighbouring cell were heard voices of the authorities. Everything grew quiet, and immediately afterward the under-officer entered with two guards. This was the roll-call. The under-ofRcer counted all, pointing his finger at each jjerson. When it came to Nekhlyudov's turn, he said, with good-hearted familiarity : " Now, prince, after the roll-call you can't remain here any longer. You must leave." Nekhlyudov knew what this meant, and so he went up to him and put three roubles, which he had held ready, into his hand. " Well, what can I do with you ? Stay awhile longer ! " The under-officer wanted to leave, when another under- officer entered, and after him a tall, lean prisoner with a black eye and scant beard. " I come to see about the girl," said the prisoner. " Here is father," was suddenly heard a melodious child's voice, and a blond-haired little head rose back of Mrs. Eantsev, who, with Marya Pavlovna and Katyusha was sewing a new dress for the child from a skirt which she herself had offered for the purpose. " I, daughter, I," tenderly said Kuzovkin. " She is comfortable here," said Marya Pavlovna, com- passionately looking into Buzovkin's mauled face. " Leave her here with us ! " " The ladies are sewing a new garment for me," said the girl, showing her father Mrs. Ilantsev's work. " It is nice, — a red one," she lisped. 64 RESURRECTION 65 " Do you want to stay overnight with us ? " asked Mrs. Rantsev, stroking the girl. " Yes. And father, too." Mrs. Eantsev beamed with a smile. " Father can't," she said. " So leave her here," she turned to her father. " Please leave her," said the roll-call under-officer, stopping in the door and going away with the other under-officer. The moment the guards left, Nabatov went up to Buzovkin and, touching his shoulder, said : " Say, friend, is it true that Karmanov wants to change places ? " Buzovkin's good-natured, kindly face suddenly became sad, and his eyes were covered by films. " We have not heard. Hardly," he said, and, without losing the films over his eyes, he added : " Well, Aksyutka, have a good time with the ladies," and hastened to go out. " He knows everything, and it is true that they have exchanged," said Nabatov. " What are you going to do about it ? " " I will tell the authorities in town. I know them both by sight," said Nekhlyiidov. Everybody was silent, apparently fearing the renewal of the dispute. Simonson, who had all the time been lying in silence in a corner of the benches, with his arms thrown back of his head, rose with determination and, carefully walking around those who were sitting up, went up to Nekh- lyiidov. " Can you listen to me now ? " " Of course," said Nekhlyiidov, getting up in order to follow him. Looking at Nekhlyiidov, as he was getting up, and her eyes meeting his, Katyusha grew red in her face and shook her head, as though in doubt. 66 RESURRECTIOK " This is what I have to say," began Siraonson, when he had reached the corridor with Nekhlyiidov. In the corridor the din and the explosions of the prisoners' voices were quite audible. Nekhlyudov frowned at them, but Simon son was evidently not disturbed by them. "Knowing of your relations with Katerina Mikhay- lovna," he began, looking with his kindly eyes straight at Nekhlyiidov's countenance, " I consider it my duty," he continued, but was compelled to stop, because near the door two voices were quarrelling about something, shouting both together. " I am telHng you, dummy, it is not mine," cried one voice. " Choke yourself, devil," the other exclaimed, hoarsely. Just then Marya Pavlovna came out into the corridor. "How can you talk here," she said. "Go in here. There is none but Vy^ra there." And she walked ahead into the adjoining door of a tiny single cell, which was now turned over to the use of the political women. On the benches, covering up her head, lay Vy^ra Efr^movna. " She has megrim. She is asleep and does not hear ; and I will go out," said Marya Pavlovna. " On the contrary, you may stay," said Simonson. " I have no secrets from anybody, least of all from you." "All right," said Marya Pavlovna, and in childish fashion moving her whole body from side to side, and with this motion receding farther and farther on the benches, she got ready to listen, looking with her beautiful sheep eyes somewhere into the distance. " So this is what I have to say," repeated Simonson. « Knowing your relations with Katerina Mikhaylovna, I consider it my duty to inform you of my relations with her." " Well, what is it ? " asked Nekhlyildov, involuntarily admiring the simplicity and truthfulness with which Simonson spoke to him. " I should like to marry Katerina Mikhayloyna — " RESURRECTION 67 "Wonderful," said Mary a Pavlovna, resting her eyes upon Simonson. " — and I have decided to ask her about it, — to become my wife," continued Simonson. " What can I do here ? This depends upon her," said Nekhlyudov. " Yes, but she will not decide this question without you." " Why ? " " Because, as long as the question of your relations with her is not definitely solved, she cannot choose any- thing." " From my side the question is definitely solved. I wished to do that which I regarded as my duty, and, besides, I wanted to alleviate her condition, but under no consideration do I wish to exert any pressure." " Yes, but she does not wish your sacrifice." " There is no sacrifice whatsoever." " But I know that this decision of hers is unshakable." " Why, then, should you speak with me ? " said Nekh- lyudov. " She must be sure that you accept the same view." " How can I say that I must not do that which I con- sider my duty to do ? All I can say is that I am not free to do as I please, but she is." Simonson was silent for awhile, lost in thought. " Very well, I will tell her so. Don't imagine that I am in love with her," he continued. " I love her as a beautiful, rare person who has suffered much. I want nothing from her, but I am very anxious to help her, to alleviate her con — " Nekhlyudov was surprised to hear Simonson's voice quiver. " — to alleviate her condition," continued Simonson. " If she does not want to accept your aid, let her accept mine. If she consented to it, I should petition to be sent into exile with her. Four years are not an eternity. I 68 RESURRECTION should be living near her, and might be able to ease her fate — " He again stopped from agitation. " What shall I say ? " said Nekhlyiidov. " I am glad she has found such a protector in you — " " It is this which I wanted to find out," continued Simonson. "I wanted to know whether, in loving her and wishing her good, you would regard as good her mar- rying me ? " " Why, yes," Nekhlyudov said, with determination. " I am concerned only about her. I want to see this suffering soul at rest," said Simonson, looking at Nekhlyu- dov with childish tenderness, such as could hardly have been expected from a man of such gloomy aspect. Simonson arose and, taking Nekhlyudov by the hand, drew his face toward him, smiled shamefacedly, and kissed him. " I will tell her so," he said, going out. XVII. " Well, I declare," said Marya Pavlovna. " He is in love, just in love. I should never have expected Vladi- mir Simonson to fall in love in such a stupid and boyish way. Wonderful ! To tell you the truth, it pains me," she concluded, with a sigh. " How about Katyusha ? How do you think she looks upon it ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " She ? " Mdrya Pavlovna stopped, apparently wishing to reply to the question as precisely as possible. " She ? You see, notwithstanding her past, she is by nature one of the most moral persons — and her feelings are refined — She loves you, loves you well, and is happy to be able to do you at least the negative good of not getting you entangled through herself. For her, marrying you would be a terrible fall, worse than her former fall, and so she will never consent to it. At the same time your presence agitates her." " Well, then I had better disappear ? " said Nekhlyu- dov. Marya Pavlovna smiled her sweet, childlike smile. " Yes, partly." " How can I disappear partly ? " " I have told you nonsense. But I wanted to tell you about her that, no doubt, she sees the absurdity of his so- called ecstatic love (he does not tell her anything), and she is flattered and afraid of it. You know, I am not competent in these matters, but it seems to me that on his side it is nothing but the common male sentiment, even though it be masked. He says that this love increases his 69 70 RESURRECTION energy, and that it is a platonic love. But I know this much, that if it is an exceptional love, at the base of it lies the same nastiness, — as with Novodvorov and Lyubochka." Marya Pavlovna was departing from the question, hav- ing struck her favourite theme. " But what am I to do ? " asked Nekhlyiidov. " I think you ought to tell her. It is always better to have everything clear. Talk with her ! I will call her. Do you want me to ? " said Marya Pavlovna. " If you please," said Nekhlyiidov, and Marya Pavlovna went out. A strange feeling came over Nekhlyiidov, when he was left alone in the small cell, listening to the quiet breath- ing, now and then interrupted by the groans of Vy^ra Efr^movna, and the din of the criminals, which was heard without interruption beyond two doors. What Simonson had told him freed him from the obli- gation which he had assumed and which, in moments of weakness, had appeared hard and strange to him, and yet he not only had an unpleasant, but even a painful, sensa- tion. This feeling was united with another, which re- minded him that Simonsdu's proposition destroyed the singularity of his deed, and diminished in his own eyes and in those of others the value of the sacrifice which he was bringing : if a man, such a good man, who was not bound to her by any ties, wished to unite his fate with hers, his sacrifice was not so important, after all. There was also, no doubt, the simple feeling of jealousy : he was so used to her love for him that he could not admit the possi- bility of her loving anybody else. There was also the destruction of the plan which he had formed, — to live by her side as long as she had to suffer punishment. If she was to marry Simonson, his presence would become super- fluous, and he would have to form a new plan for his life. RESURRECTION 71 He had not yet succeeded in disentangling all his feel- ings, when through the opened door broke the intensified din of the criminals (there was something special going on there), and Katyusha entered the cell. She walked over to him with rapid steps. " Marya Pavlovna has sent me to you," she said, stopping close to him. " Yes, I must speak with you. Sit down ! Vladimir Ivanovich has been speaking with me." She sat down, folding her hands on her knees, and seemed to be calm, but the moment Nekhlyudov pro- nounced Simonson's name, she flushed red. " What did he tell you ? " she asked. " He told me that he wanted to marry you." Her face suddenly became wrinkled, expressing suffer- ing. She said nothing, and only lowered her eyes. " He asks for my consent or advice. I told him that everything depended upon you, — that you must decide." " Ah, what is this ? What for ? " she muttered, look- ing into Nekhlyudov's eyes with that strange, squinting glance, which had a peculiar, strong effect upon him. They looked into each other's eyes in silence for a few seconds. This glance spoke much to both of them. " You nmst decide," repeated Nekhlyudov. " Wliat am I to decide ? " she said. " Everything has been decided long ago." " No, you must decide whether you accept Vladimir Ivanovich's proposition," said Nekhlyudov. " What kind of a wife can I, a convict, make ? Why should I ruin Vladimir Ivanovich's life, also ? " she said, frowning. " But, suppose you should be pardoned ? " said Nekh- lyudov. " Oh, leave me in peace ! There is nothing else to say," she said, and, rising, went out of the room. XVIII. When Nekhlyildov followed Katyusha to the male cell, all were in great agitation. Nabatov, who walked about everywhere, who entered into relations with everybody, who observed everything, had brought a piece of news which stirred them all. This news was that he had found a note on the wall, written by revolutionist Petlin, who had been sentenced to hard labour. Everybody had sup- posed that Petlin had long been at Kara, and now it appeared that he had but lately passed over this road, along with the criminals. " On August 17th," so ran the note, " I was sent out all alone with the criminals. Nevy^rov was with me, but he hanged himself at Kazan, in the insane asylum. I am well and in good spirits, and hope for the best." Everybody discussed Petlin's condition and the causes of ]Srevy(5rov's suicide. Kryltsov, however, kept silent, with a concentrated look, glancing ahead of him with his arrested, sparkling eyes. " My husband told me that Nevy^rov had had a vision while locked up at Petropavlovsk," said Mrs. Piantsev. " Yes, a poet, a visionary, — such people cannot stand solitary confinement," said Novodvorov. " Whenever I was kept in solitary confinement, I did not allow my imagination to work, but arranged my time in the most systematic manner. For this reason I bore it well." " Why not bear it ? I used to be so happy when I was locked up," said Nabatov, with vivacity, apparently wish- ing to dispel gloomy thoughts. " I used to be afraid that I should be caught, that I should get others mixed up, 72 RESURRECTION 7B and that I should spoil the cause ; but the moment I was locked up, all responsibility stopped : I could take a rest. All I had to do was to sit and smoke." " Did you know him well ? " asked Marya Pavlovna, looking restlessly at the suddenly changed, drawn face of Kryltsov. " Nevy(5rov a visionary ? " suddenly said Kryltsov, chok- ing, as though he had been crying or singing long. " Nevyerov was a man such as the earth does not bear often, as our porter used to say. Yes. He was a man of crystal, — you could see through him. Yes. He not only could not tell a lie, he did not even know how to feign. He was more than thiu-skiuned : he was all lacer- ated, so to speak, and his nerves were exposed to view. Yes. A complex, a rich nature, not such — Well, what is the use of talking ? " He was silent for a moment. " We would be discussing what was better," he said, with a scowl, " first to educate the people, and then change the forms of life, or first to change the forms of life, and then how to struggle, whether by peaceful propaganda, or by terrorism. We would be discussing. Yes. But they did not discuss matters. They knew their business. For them it was all the same whether dozens and hundreds of men, and what men, would perish. Yes, Herzen has said that when the Decembrists were removed from the circulation, the level was lowered. How could they help lowering it ! Then they took Herzen and his contempo- raries out of circulation. And nov/ the Nevyerovs — " " They will not destroy all of them," said Nabatov, in his vivacious voice. " There will be enough left to breed anew." " No, there will not be, if we pity them" said Kryltsov, raising his voice and not allowing himself to be inter- rupted. " Give me a cigarette ! " " It is not good for you, Anatdh," said Marya Pavlovna, " Please, don't smoke I " 74 EESURRECTION " Oh, leave me in peace," he said, angrily, lighting a cigarette. He soon began to cough, and he looked as though he were going to vomit. He spit out and con- tinued : " We did not do the right thing. We ought not to have been discussing, but banding together to destroy them." " But they are men, too," said Nekhlyudov. " No, they are not men, — those who can do what they are doing. They say they have invented bombs and balloons. We ought to rise in the air in these balloons and pour down bombs on them as on bedbugs, until not one of them is left. Yes. Because — "he began, but he grew red in his face and coughed even more than before, and the blood rushed out of his mouth. Nabatov ran out for some snow. Marya Pavlovna took out some valerian drops and offered them to him, but he, with closed eyes, pushed her away with his white, lean hand, and breathed heavily and rapidly. When the snow and cold water had given him some relief, and he was put to bed for the night, Nekhlyudov bade everybody good-bye and went toward the door with the under-ofificer, who had come for him and had been waiting for him quite awhile. The criminals were now quieted down, and most of them were asleep. Although the people in the ceUs were lying on the benches and beneath the benches and in the aisles, they could not all find a place, and some of them lay on the floor of the corridor, having placed their bags under their heads and their damp cloaks over them. Through the doors of the cells and in the corridor could be heard snoring, groans, and sleepy conversation. Every- where could be seen masses of human figures, covered with their cloaks. A few men in the bachelor criminal cell were not asleep: they were seated around a dip, which they extinguished when they saw the soldier. Iii RESURRECTION 75 the corridor, under the lamp, an old man was sittiDg up, naked, and picking oflF the vermin from his shirt. The foul air of the quarters of the politicals seemed fresh in comparison with the close stench which was spread here. The smoking lamp appeared as though through a fog, and it was hard to breathe. In order to make one's way through tlie corridor, without stepping on any of the sleepers or tripping up, it was necessary first to find a clear spot ahead and, having placed the foot there, to find a similar spot for the next step. Three people, who apparently had been unable to find a place even in the corridor, had located themselves in the vestibule near the stink-vat, where the foul water moistened their very clothing. One of these was a foohsh old man, whom Nekhlyiidov had frequently seen on the marches ; another was a ten-year-old boy : he lay between the two pris- oners, and, putting his hand under his chin, was sleeping over the leg of one of them. Upon coming out of the gate, Nekhlyudov stopped and, expanding his chest to the full capacity of his lungs, for a long time intensely inhaled the frosty air. XIX. The stars had come out. Over the crusted mud, which ouly in spots broke through, Nekhlyiidov returned to his inn. He knocked at the dark window, and the broad-shouldered servant in his bare feet opened the door for him and let him into the vestibule. On the right hand of the vestibule could be heard the snoring of the drivers in the servant-room ; in front, beyond the door, was heard the chewing of oats by a large number of horses in the yard. On the left, a door led to the clean guest-room. The clean guest-room smelled of wormwood and sweat, and beyond a partition was heard the even sucking snore of some miglity lungs, and in a red glass burnt a lamp in front of the images. Nekhlyudov un- dressed himself, spread his plaid on the wax-cloth sofa, adjusted Ms leather pillow, and lay down, mentally run- ning over all he had heard and seen on that day. Of everything he had seen, the most terrible appeared to him the sight of the boy sleeping in the foul puddle formed by the stink- vat, by placing his head on the leg of the prisoner. In spite of the unexpectedness and importance of his evening conversation with Simonson and Katyusha, he did not dwell on that event : his relation to it was too complex and, besides, too indefinite, and therefore he kept all thought of it away from himself. But so much the more vividly he thought of the spectacle of those unfor- tunate beings, who were strangling in the foul atmosphere and who were wallowing in the liquid which oozed out from the stink-vat, and, especially, of the boy with the innocent face, who was sleeping on the prisoner's leg, which did not leave his mind. RESURRECTION 77 To know that somewhere far away one set of people torture another, subjecting them to all kinds of debauches, inhuman humiliations, and suffering, or for the period of three months continually to see that debauch and the torture practised by one class of people on another, is quite a different thing. Nekhlyudov was experiencing this. During these three months he had asked himself more than once : " Am I insane because I see that which others do not see, or are those insane who produce that which I see ? " But the people (and there were so many of them) produced that which so bewildered and terrified him with such quiet conviction that it must be so, and that that which they were doing was an important and useful work, that it was hard to pronounce all these people insane ; nor could he pronounce himself insane, because he was conscious of the clearness of his thoughts. Con- sequently he was in continuous doubt. What Nekhlyudov had seen during these three months presented itself to him in this form : from all people who are living at large, by means of the courts and the admin- istration, are selected the most nervous, ardent, excitable, gifted, and strong individuals, who are less cunning and cautious than the rest, and these people, not more guilty or more dangerous to society than those who are at liberty, are locked up in prisons, halting-places, and mines, where they are kept for months and years in complete idleness and material security, and removed from Nature, family, and labour, that is, they are forced outside all the conditions of a natural and moral human existence. So much in the first place. In the second place, these people are in these establishments subjected to all kinds of unnecessary humihation, — to chains, shaven heads, and disgracing attire, that is, they are deprived of what is, for weak people, the chief motor of a good hfe, — of the care of human opinion, of shame, of the consciousness of human dignity. In the third place, being continually 78 RESURRECTION subject to the perils of life, — not to mention the excep- tional cases of sunstroke, drowning, fires, of the ever- present contagious diseases in the places of confinement, of exhaustion, and of beatings, — these people are all the time in that condition, when the best and most moral man, from a feeling of self-preservation, commits and condones the most terrible and cruel acts. In the fourth place, these people are forced to have exclusive intercourse with dissolute people who have been corrupted by life, and especially by these very institutions, — with mur- derers and villains, who, as a leaven on the dough, act on all the others who have not yet been completely corrupted by the means employed against them. And, at last, in the fifth place, all the people who are subjected to these influences are, in the most persuasive manner, encouraged, by means of all kinds of inhuman acts com- mitted in regard to themselves, — by means of the torture of children, women, and old men, of beating and flogging with rods and straps, of offering rewards to those who will give up alive or dead a fugitive, of separating men from their wives and connecting for cohabitation strange men with strange women, of shooting and hanging, — they are encouraged in the most persuasive manner to believe that all kinds of violence, cruelty, bestiality, are not only not forbidden but even permitted by the government, when it derives any advantage from them, and that there- fore they are especially permissible to those who are under duress, in misery and want. All these institutions seemed to him to have been specially invented in order to produce the compactest possible debauch and vice, such as could not be attained under any other conditions, with the further purpose in view later to disseminate the compact debauch and vices in their broadest extent among the people. " It looks as though a problem had been put how to corrupt the largest possible number in the best and surest manner," thought RESURRECTION 79 Nekhlyiidov, as he tried to get at the essence of jails and prisons. Hundreds of thousands of people were every year brou^^ht to the highest degree of corruption, and when they were thus completely debauched, they were let loose to carry the corruption, which they had acquired in continement, among the masses. Nekhlyiidov saw how this aim, which society had in view, was successfully reached in the prisons of Tyumen, Ekaterinburg, and Tomsk, and at the halting-places. People, simple, common people, brought up in the tenets of Eussian social. Christian, peasant morality, abandoned these conceptions and acquired new prison ideas, which consisted mainly in the conviction that every outrage and violation of the human personality, every destruction of the same, was permissible whenever it was advantageous. People, who had lived in the prisons, with all their being came to see that, to judge from what was being done to them, all the moral laws of respect and compassion for man, which had been preached by rehgious and moral teachers, were, in reality, removed, and that, therefore, there was no need for holding on to them. Nekhlyudov saw this process in all the prisoners whom he knew : in F^dorov, in ]\Iakar, and even in Taras, who, having passed two months with the convicts, impressed Nekhlyudov by the immorality of his judgments. On his way, Nekhlyudov learned that vagabonds, who run away to the Tayga, persuade their comrades to run with them, and then kill them and feed on their flesh. He saw a living man who was accused of it, and who acknowledged this to be true. Most terrible was the fact that these were not isolated cases, but of common occurrence. Only by a special cultivation of vice, such as is carried on in these institutions, could a Eussian be brought to that condition to which the vagabonds are brousrht, who have anticipated Nietzsche's doctrine and consider nothing forbidden, and who spread this doctrine, at 80 KESURRECTION first among the prisoners, and later among the people at large. The only explanation of all that which was going on was that it was intended as an abatement of evil, as a threat, correction, and legal retribution. But, in reahty, there was not any semblance of any of these things. In- stead of abatement, there was only dissemination of crimes. Instead of threat, there was only encouragement of criminals, many of whom, as, for example, the vagabonds, vokintarily entered the prisons. Instead of correction, there was a systematic spreading of aU the vices, while the need of retribution was not only not lessened by govern- mental punishment, but was even nurtured among the masses, where it did not exist before. " Why, then, do they do all these things ? " Nekhlyiidov asked himself, and found no answer. What surprised him most was that all this was not done at haphazard, by mistake, incidentally, but contin- uously, in the course of centuries, with this distinction only, that in former days they had their noses sht and their ears cut off, then, later, they were branded and beaten with rods, and now they were manacled and transported by steam, instead of carts. The reflection that that which provoked him originated, as those serving in these institutions told him, in the imperfection of the arrangements at the places of confine- ment and deportation, and that all this could be remedied, did not satisfy Nekhlyudov, because he felt that that which provoked him had nothing to do with the more or less perfect arrangements of the places of confinement. He had read about perfected prisons with electric bells, of electrocutions, recommended by Tarde, and this perfected violence offended him only more. What provoked Nekhlyudov was, mainly, because there were people in the courts and ministries, who received large salaries, collected from the masses, for consulting RESURKECTION 81 books written by just such officials, with just such aims, for classifying the acts of men who had violated the laws which were written by them, according to certain articles, and for sending these people, in accordance with these articles, to places where they would never see them again, and where these people, under full control of cruel, hard- ened superintendents, wardens, and guards, perished mentally and bodily by the million. Having become closely acquainted with the prisons and halting-places, Nekhlyudov noticed that aU the vices which are developed among the prisoners, drunkenness, gambling, cruelty, and all those terrible crimes which are committed by the inmates of the prisons, and even canni- balism itself, are not accidents or phenomena of degenera- tion, criminalism, and cretinism, as dull savants explain it, playing into the hands of the governments, but the inevitable result of the incredible error that people may punish others. Nekhlyudov saw that the cannibalism did not begin in the Tayga, but in the ministries, com- mittees, and departments, and was only accomplished in the Tayga ; that his brother - in - law, for example, and all the court members and officials, beginning with the captain of police and ending with the minister, were not in the least concerned about justice or the people's weal, of which they spoke; and that they all wanted only those roubles which they were paid for doing that from which originated this corruption and suffering. That was quite evident. " Is it possible all this has been done by mistake ? Could there not be invented a means for securing a salary for these officials, and even offering them a premium, pro- vided that they should abstain from doing all that they are doing ? " thought Nekhlyudov. With this thought, after the second cock-crow, he fell into a heavy sleep, in spite of the fleas which spirted around him as from a fountain, every time he stirred. XX. When Nekhlyudov awoke, the drivers had left long ago, the hostess had had her tea, and, wiping her stout, sweaty neck with her kerchief, she came to inform him that a soldier from the halting-place had brought him a note. The note was from Marya Pavlovna. She wrote that Kryltsov's attack was more serious than they had thought. "At one time we wanted to leave him and stay with him, but that we were not allowed to do, and so we will take him along, but we fear the worst. Try to arrange it so in the city that, if he is to be left behind, one of us may stay with him. If, in order to accom- plish this, it is necessary for me to marry him, I am, of course, ready to do so." Nekhlyudov sent the lad to the station for the horses and at once began to pack. He had not finished his second glass of tea, when the stage troyka, tinkling with its little bells and rattling with its wheels on the frozen mud as on a pavement, drove up to the steps. Nekhlyudov paid his bill to the stout-necked hostess. He hastened to go out, and, seating himself in the wicker body of the cart, ordered the driver to go as fast as possible, in order to catch up with the party. Not far from the gate of the herding enclosure he fell in wdth the carts which were loaded with bags and sick people, and which rattled over the tufty, frozen mud. The officer was not there, — he had driven ahead. The soldiers, who had evidently had some liquor, were chatting merrily, walking behind and on the sides of the road. There were many carts. In each of the front carts sat, closelv huddled together, about six feeble criminals ; in 82 RESURRECTION 83 the hind vehicles rode the politicals, three in each. In the very last sat Novodvdrov, Miss Grabi^ts, and Kondratev ; in the one before it, Mrs. Rantsev, Nabatov, and that weak, rheumatic woman to whom Marya Pavlovna had given up her place ; in front of this was the vehicle in which Kryltsdv lay on hay and pillows. Marya Pav- lovna sat on a box, near him. Nekhlyudov stopped his driver near Kryltsov's vehicle, and went up to him. An intoxicated guard waved his hand to him, but Nekhlyu- dov paid no attention to him. He walked over to the cart, and, holding on to a round, walked alongside. Kryltsov, in sheepskin coat and a lamb-fur cap, his mouth wrapped up in a kerchief, looked even more haggard and pale than the day before. His beautiful eyes seemed to be particularly large and sparkling. Swaying feebly from the jolts of the cart, he did not take his eyes off Nekh- lyudov, and, in response to his question about his health, he only closed his eyes and angrily shook his head. His whole energy was apparently employed in bearing the jolts. Marya Pavlovna was sitting at the farther end of the cart. She cast a significant glance at Nekhlyudov, which expressed all her anxiety about Kryltsov's condi- tion, and then she spoke in a merry voice. " Evidently the officer was ashamed," she shouted, so that Nekhlyudov might hear her through the rumble of the wheels. " They have taken off Buzovkin's man- acles. He is carrying the girl himself, and with them walk Katyusha and Simonson, and Vydra, in my place." Kryltsov said something which could not be heard, pointing to Marya Pavlovna, and, frowning, in an effort to repress a cough, shook his head. Then Kryltsov raised the handkerchief from his mouth and whispered: " Now I am much better. If only I won't catch any cold ! " Nekhlyudov nodded his head affirmatively and ex- changed glances with Mdrya Pavlovna. 84 RESURRECTION " Well, how is the problem of the three bodies ? " Krylt- sov whispered and smiled a heavy, painful smile. "Is the solution hard ? " Nekhlyudov did not understand him, but Mary a Pdv- lovna explained to him that it was a famous mathemat- ical problem about the determination of the relation of three bodies, of the sun, moon, and earth, and that Krylt- sov had jestingly applied this comparison in relation to Nekhlyudov, Katyusha, and Simonson. Kryltsov shook his head, in token of Marya Pavlovna's correct explana- tion of his jest. " It is not for me to solve it," said Nekhlyudov. " Did you get my note ? Will you do it ? " Matya Pavlovna asked. " By all means," said Nekhlyudov, and, noticing dis- satisfaction in Kryltsov's face, he went back to his vehicle, climbed into its sunken wicker body, and, hold- ing on to the sides of the cart, which jolted him over the clumps of the uneven road, he drove fast ahead along the party of prisoners in gray cloaks and of chained and manacled men in short fur coats, which stretched out for a whole verst. On the opposite side of the road he rec- ognized Katyusha's blue kerchief, Vy^ra Efremovna's black wrap, and Simonson's jacket and knit cap, his white woollen stockings, which were tied up by straps in the shape of sandals. He was walking by the women's side, and discussing something excitedly. Upon noticing Nekhlyudov, the women bowed to him, and Simonson solemnly raised his cap. Nekhlyudov did not have anything to say to them, so he did not stop his driver, but drove past them. When the driver rode out on the smooth road, he went even faster, but he was all the time compelled to get off the road in order to avoid the loaded wagons which were going on both sides of the highway. The road, which was all cut up by deep ruts, ran RESURRECTION 85 through a dark pine forest, which on both sides was inter- spersed with the bright sand-yellow autumn leafage of birches and other trees. About half-way between the stations the forest came to an end, and there appeared fields and the crosses and cupolas of a monastery. Day was now out in all its glory ; the clouds were dispersed ; the sun had risen above the forest ; and the damp leaves, and the puddles, and the cupolas, and the crosses of the church shone brightly in the suu. In front and toward the right, the grayish -blue mountains could be seen in the far distance. The troyka drove into a large suburban village. The street was full of people, both Russians and natives in their strange caps and cloaks. Drunken and sober men and women swarmed and chattered near the shops, inns, taverns, and wagons. One could feel the nearness of the city. Giving the right horse the whip and pulling in the rein, the driver sat down sidewise on his box, so that the reins were on his right, and, apparently trying to appear dashing, flew down the wide street, and, without checking in his horses, drove down to the river's bank, which was to be crossed by means of a ferry. The ferry was in the middle of the swift river and was comins toward them. On this side about ten wagons were wait- ing for it. Nekhlyiidov did not have to wait long. The ferry, which, to stem the current, was going a long dis- tance above them, carried down by the water, soon landed near the boards of the landing-place. The tall, broad-chested, muscular, and silent ferrymen, in short fur coats and Siberian boots, threw up the cables and fastened them to posts and, opening the bars, let out the wagons which were standing on the ferry, and again began to load the ferry with the wagons on the shore, putting them close together, and beside them the horses, which shied from the water. The swift and broad river washed the sides of the boats of the ferry, straining the 86 RESURRECTION cables. When the ferry was full and Nekhlyudov's vehicle, with its horses detached, pressed in on all sides, stood at one end, the ferrymen put up the bars, paying DO attention to those who had failed to find a place on the ferry, took off the cables, and started across. On the ferry everything was quiet, except for the thud of the ferrymen's steps and the tramp of the hoofs of the horses on the boards, as they changed their position. XXL Nekhlyudov stood at the edge of the ferry, looking at the broad, rapid river. In his imagination, one after another, rose two pictures : the angry head of dying Kryltsov, shaking from the jolting, and Katyusha's form, briskly walking with Simonson at the edge of the road. The one impression, that of the dying Kryltsov, who was unprepared for death, was oppressive and sad. The other impression, that of vivacious Katyusha, who had found the love of such a man as Simonson, and who now was standing on the firm and secure path of goodness, ought to have been cheerful, but to Nekhlyudov it, too, was oppressive, and he was not able to overcome this oppres- sive feeling. From the citv was borne over the water the din and the metallic tremor of a large church bell. The driver, who was standing near Nekhlyudov, and all the other drivers one after another took off their caps and made the sign of the cross. But a shaggy-haired old man, who was standing nearest to the balustrade, and whom Nekhlyudov had not noticed before, did not cross himself, but, raising his head, stared at Nekhlyudov. This old man was clad in a long patched coat, cloth trousers, and worn out, patched boots. On his back was a small wallet, and on his head a tall, liairless fur cap. " Old man, why do you not pray ? " said Nekhlyildov's driver, putting on and adjusting his cap. " Are you not a Christian ? " " To whom shall I pray ? " said the shaggy -haired old 87 88 RESURRECTION man, in a firm, provoking tone, and rapidly pronouncing one syllable after another. " Of course, to God ! " the driver retorted, ironically. " You show me where He is ! I mean God ! " There was something serious and firm in the expression of the old man, so that the driver, who felt that he had to do with a strong man, was a little confused ; however, he did not show it, and, trying not to be silenced and shamed before the public present, he rapidly answered : " Where ? Of course, in heaven ! " " Have you been there ? " " No, I have not, but everybody knows that we must pray to God." " Nobody has ever seen God. The only begotten Son, who is in His Father's lap, He has appeared," said the old man, with a stern frown and speaking just as fast. " You are evidently an infidel, and you pray to a hole in the ground," said the driver, sticking the whip-handle in his belt and fixing the off-horse's crupper. Somebody laughed out. " Grandfather, what is your faith ? " asked a middle- aged man, who was standing with a wagon at the edge of the ferry. " I have no faith whatever. I do not believe in any- body but myself," the old man answered just as fast and with the same determination. " How can you believe in yourself ? " said Nekhlyudov, taking part in the conversation. " You might make a mistake." " Not on my life," the old man replied, with determina- tion, shaking his head. " Why, then, are there different religions ? " asked Nekhlyudov. " There are different religions, because people will be- lieve others, but not themselves. I used to believe others, and I wandered about, as in the Tayga ; I got so .RESURRECTION 89 entangled that I thought I would never get out from it. There are Old-believers and N"ew-])elievers, Sabbatarians, Flagellants, the Popish, the Popeless, Austrians, Milkers, and Eunuchs. Every faith praises itself up. And so they have all crawled apart like blind pups. There are many faiths, but the spirit is one, — in you, in me, and in him. Consequently, let everybody believe in Ms spirit, and all will be connected ! Let each be for himself, and all will be united ! " The old man spoke loud and looked around all the time, apparently wishing to be heard by as many people as possible. " Well, have you believed so for a long time ? " Nekh- lyiidov asked him. " I ? For a long time. They have been persecuting me these twenty-three years." " How, persecuting ? " " As they persecuted Christ, so they persecute me. They grab me, and take me to courts and to priests, — they take me to the scribes and to the Pharisees. They have had me in the insane asylum. But they can't do anything with me, and so I am free. — ' What is your name?' they say. They think that I will accept some caUing, but I do not. I have renounced everything : I have neither name, nor place, nor country, — I have nothing. I am myself. How do they call me ? Man. — ' How old are you ? ' — I do not count my years, I say, because it is impossible to count them : I have always been, and I shall always be. — 'Who is your father and mother ? ' — No, I say, I have no father, nor mother, except God and earth. God is my father, and the earth my mother. — 'And do you acknowledge the Tsar?' — Why not acknowledge him ? He is a tsar, and so am I. — ' What good does it do to talk w^th you ? ' they say. And I answer : I do not even ask you to talk with me. And so they torment me." 90 RESURRECTION. " Where are you going now ? " asked Nekhlyuclov. " Whither God will take me. I work, and when I have no work, I beg," ended the old man, noticing that the ferry was approaching the other side. He cast a victori- ous glance upon all those who had been listening to him. The ferry landed at the other shore. Nekhlyiidov drew out his purse and offered the old man some money. The old man refused it. " I do not take this. I take bread," he said. " Well, forgive me." " There is nothing to forgive. You have not offended me. It is impossible to offend me," said the old man, shouldering the wallet, which he had taken off. In the meantime the stage vehicle was taken ashore and hitched up again. " What good, sir, does it do you to talk with him ? " said the driver, when Nekhlyiidov, having feed the pow- erful ferrymen, climbed into the cart. " He is a senseless vagabond.* XXII. Upon arriving at the summit of a hill, the driver turned back. " To what hotel shall I take you ? " " Which is the best ? " " Nothing better than ' Siberia.' It is nice at Due's, too." The driver again sat down sidewise and gave the horses the reins. The town was like all towns : the same houses with the mezzanines and green roofs ; the same cathedral, the same small and large shops, and even the same police- men. The only difference was that nearly all the houses were frame buildings, and the streets not paved. In one of the most animated streets the driver stopped the vehicle in front of a hotel. There were no rooms to be had in that hotel, and so he had to drive to another. In this one an unoccupied room was found, and Nekhlyiidov, for the first time in two months, found himself under the customary conditions of comparative cleanliness and comfort. The room which was given to Nekhlyiidov was not very lux- urious, but he experienced a great relief after the stage, the inns, and the halting-places. Above everything else, he had to clean himself from the lice, of which he never could completely rid himself after his visits at the halting-places. He unpacked his things, and at once drove to the bath- house ; then, having donned his city clothes, a starched shirt, creased trousers, a black coat, and an overcoat, he made for the chief of the district. The large, well-fed Kirghiz horse of a quivering light vehicle, which the 91 92 RESURRECTION porter of the hotel had called up for him. took him to a large, handsome building, before which stood sentries and a policeman. In front of the house and back of it was a garden, in which, amidst bared aspens and birches, with their towering branches, could be seen the thick, dark green fohage of pines, firs, and spruces. The general w^as not well and did not receive. Nekh- lyiidov, nevertheless, asked the lackey to take in his card, and the lackey returned with a favourable answer. " Please come in ! " The antechamber, the lackey, the orderly, the staircase, the parlour with the shining, waxed parquetry, — all that was like St. Petersburg, only more dirty and majestic. Nekhlyiidov was taken to the cabinet. The general, a puffed-up man, with a potato-shaped nose, protruding bumps on his forehead and closely cropped skull, and skin-bags under his eyes, a man of a sanguine temperament, was sitting in a silk Tartar morning-gown, and, with a cigarette in his hand, was drinking tea from a glass in a silver saucer. " Good morning, sir ! Excuse me for receiving you in my morning-gown. It is certainly better than not to receive you at all," he said, covering with his gown the stout, wrinkled nape of his neck. " I am not very well, and do not go out. What has brought you here, to our out-of-the-way realm ? " " I have been accompanying a party of prisoners, in which there is a person near to me," said Kekhlyudov, "and I have come to ask your Excellency something, partly in respect to this person, and partly in another matter." The general puffed at his cigarette, sipped some tea, put out the cigarette against a malachite ash-tray, and, without taking his narrow, swimming, sparkling eyes off Nekh- lyudov, hstened to what he had to say. He interrupted him only to ask him whether he did not want to smoke. RESURRECTION 93 The general belonged to the type of learned military men who regarded hberalism and humanitarianism as compatible with their caUing. But, being by nature an intelligent and good man, he soon convinced himself of the impossibility of such a union, and, in order not to see the internal contradiction, in which he was continually moving, he more and more became addicted to the habit of drinking wine, so wide-spread among military men, and grew to be such a victim of this habit that, after thirty- five years of service, he was what physicians denominate an alcoholic. He was all saturated with wine. It was enough for him to drink any liquid in order to feel intoxicated. Drinking wine had become such a necessity with him that he could not live without it ; in the evening he was almost always quite drunk, but he had become so used to this condition that he did not stagger or speak foolishly. Or, if he did, he occupied such an important and leading position that, whatever insipidity he might utter, it was taken for wisdom. Only in the morning, just as when Nekhlyiidov met him, he resembled a sensi- ble man and was able to comprehend what was said to him, and more or less successfully to verify the problem, which he was fond of repeating: Drunk and clever, — two advantages ever. The higher authorities knew that he was a drunkard, but he was more educated than the rest, — although he had stopped in his education there where drunkenness overtook him, — that he was bold, agile, representative, that he could carry himself tactfully even though drunk, and so he was appointed to and kept in that prominent and responsible position which he was occupying. Nekhlyiidov told him that the person who interested him was a woman, that she was unjustly condemned, and that the emperor had been appealed to. " Yes, sir. Well, sir ? " said the general. " I was promised in St. Petersburg that the information 94 RESURRECTION about this woman's fate would reach me in a month, at latest, and in this place — " Without taking his eyes off Nekhlyudov, the general extended his short-fingered hand, rang the bell, and con- tinued to hsten in silence, puffing at the cigarette, and coughing quite loudly. " So I should like to ask you whether it would not be possible to keep this woman here until an answer is re- ceived to my petition." A lackey, dressed in military attire and serving as orderly, entered. " Go and ask whether Anna Vasilevna is up," the gen- eral said to the orderly, " and bring me some more tea. — Aud the other thing?" the general again turned to Nekhlyudov. " My other request," continued Nekhlyudov, " is in re- gard to a political prisoner, who is travelling with this party." " Indeed ! " said the general, significantly shaking his head. " He is very sick, — he is a dying man. No doubt, he will be left here in the hospital. One of the political women would like to remain with him." " Is she a stranger to him ? " " Yes, but she is willing to marry him, if this would give her a chance of staying with him." The general looked fixedly at him with his beaming eyes and kept silent, while listening and smoking. Ap- parently he wished to embarrass his interlocutor by his glance. When Nekhlyudov had finished, he took a book from the table, and, rapidly thumbing it, as he turned the leaves, found the article on marriage and read it. " What is she sentenced to ? " he asked, raising his head from his book. " To hard labour." KESUKRECTION 95 " Well, then the situation of the sick man cannot be improved by such a marriage." " But — " " Excuse me ! Even if a free man were to marry her, she would have to serve out her punishment. The ques- tion is who pays the greater penalty, he or she." " They are both condemned to hard labour." " Well, they are quits, then," said the general, with a smile. " She gets what he does. He can be left here, if he is sick," he continued, " and, of course, everything will be done to alleviate his condition ; but she, even if she married him, could not be left here — " " Her Excellency is drinking coffee," the lackey an- nounced. The general nodded his head and continued : " However, I will think it over. What are their names ? Write them down, here ! " Nekhlyudov wrote them down. " Nor can I do this," the general said to Nekhlyudov, in reply to his request to be admitted to the sick man. " Of course, I do not suspect you," he said, " but you are interested in him and in others, and you have money. Here, with us, everything is venal. I am told to uproot bribery. But how am I to abolish it, when all are bribe- takers ? The lower in rank, the worse. How can I watch them five thousand versts away ? He is there just such a little king as I am here," and he smiled. " You have, no doubt, seen the politicals, — you have given money, and you have been admitted ? " he said, smiling. " Am I right ? " " Yes, it is so." " I know that you must act like that. You want to see a political, and you are sorry for him. The superintendent or a guard will accept a bribe, because he gets about two dimes of salary, and he has a family, and cannot help accepting the bribe. I, in your place or in his, would act 96 EESURRECTION just like you or him. But in my own place, I do not permit myself to deviate from the strictest letter of the law, for the very reason that I am a man and might be moved by compassion. I am an executor. I have been trusted under certain conditions, and I must justify this trust. Well, this question is settled. Now, tell me what is going on there, in the metropolis." The general began to ask questions and to tell things, obviously wishing at the same time to hear the news, and to show his importance and humanity. XXIII. " Well, so where do you stay ? At Due's ? Well, it is not particularly good there, either. You come to dinner," said the general, seeing Nekhlyudov off, " at five o'clock. Do you speak English ? " . " Yes, I do." " That is nice. There is an English traveller here. He is making a study of deportation and prisons in Siberia. He will be at dinner to-day, and you come, too. We dine at five, and my wife demands promptness. I will give you an answer then, as to what can be done with that woman, and about the sick man. Maybe it will be possible to leave somebody with him." Bowing to the general, Nekhlyudov went out, and, feeling himself agitatedly active, drove to the post- office. The post-office was a low, vaulted building. Back of the counter sat some officials, who were handing out letters to a crowd of people. One official, bending his head toward one side, kept stamping envelopes, which he handled with great facihty. Nekhlyudov was not made to wait long. Upon hearing his name, they handed out a sufficiently large correspondence. Here was money, a few letters and books, and the last number of the Mes- senger of Europe. Having received his letters, Nekhlyudov went up to a wooden bench, on which a soldier, holding a small book, was sitting and waiting for something, and sat down near him, to look over his letters. Among them 97 98 RESURRECTION was a registered letter, a beautiful envelope with a clean impression on the bright red sealing-wax. He opened the envelope, and, upon seeing a letter from Selenin, together with an official document, he felt that the blood had rushed to his face, and his heart was compressed. It was the decree in Katyusha's case. What was this decree ? Could it possibly be a refusal ? Nekhiyudov hurriedly ran over the letter, which was written in a small, illegible, firm, abrupt hand, and he gave a sigh of relief. The decree was favourable. " Dear friend ! " wrote Sel^niu. " Our last conversa- tion has left a deep impression on me. You were right in regard to Maslova. I carefully looked through the case, and I saw that a shocking injustice had been done her. The only place where this could be remedied was the Petition Commission, where you have handed your appeal. I was fortunate enough to influence the decision in the case, and I send a copy of the pardon to you at the address given me by Countess Ekaterina Ivanovna. The original was sent to the place of her confinement during her trial, and, no doubt, will soon be transmitted to the Siberian Central Office. I hasten to inform you of this pleasant news. I give you a friendly hand-shake. Yours, Selenin." The contents of the document ran as follows : " The Chancery of his Imperial Majesty for the reception of petitions directed to the Sovereign. Such and such a case. Such and such a division. Such and such a date and year. By order of the Chief of the Chancery of his Imperial Majesty for the reception of petitions directed to the Sovereign, Burgess Ekaterina Maslova is herewith informed that his Imperial Majesty, in conformity with the most humble report made to him, condescending to Maslova's prayer, has deigned to command to commute her hard labour penalty to deportation to less remote regions of Siberia." RESURRECTION 99 The information was cheerful and important : every- thing Nekhlyiidov could have expected for Katyusha and for himself had happened. It is true, this change in her condition presented new complications in respect to her. As long as she remained a convict, the marriage which he had proposed to her could be ouly fictitious and might serve merely to alleviate her position. Now, nothing interfered with their living together. For this Nekh- lyiidov was not ready. Besides, there were her relations with Simonson. What did her words of the day before mean ? And if she should agree to be united to Simon- sou, would it be well or ill ? He was completely unable to straighten out his thoughts, and so stopped thinking of the matter entirely. " All this will properly arrange itself in the future," he thought, "and now I must see her as soon as possible, and inform her of the joyful news and free her." He thought that the copy which he had in his hands was sufficient for that. Upon leaving the post-office, he ordered the driver to take him to the prison. Although the general had not given him in the morn- ing permission to visit the prison, Nekhlyiidov knew from experience that frequently it was possible to obtain from the lower authorities that which it was impossible to get from the higher, and so he decided to endeavour to penetrate into the prison in order to announce the joyful news to Katyusha, and, if possible, to liberate her, and, at the same time, to find out about Kryltsov's health, and to transmit to him and to Marya Pavlovna that which the general had said. The superintendent of the prison was a very tall and stout, majestic-looking man, with a moustache and side- whiskers bending toward the edge of his mouth. He received Nekhlyiidov with great severity, and at once informed him that he could not admit strangers for inter- views without a permit from the chief. To Nekhlyiidov's 100 RESURRECTION remark that he had been admitted even in the capitals, the superintendent answered : *' Very hkely so, only I shall not admit you." His tone seemed to say : *' You gentlemen from the capital think that you will puzzle us the moment you see us ; but we, in Eastern Siberia, are firmly grounded in the regulations, and we can teach you a thing." The copy from the Private Chancery of his Imperial Majesty had no effect on the superintendent. He abso- lutely refused to admit Nekhlyudov within the walls of the prison. To Nekhlyiidov's naive supposition that Maslova might be liberated upon the presentation of this copy, he only smiled contemptuously, remarking that in order to set any one free he had to have the order from his direct authorities. All he promised to do was to announce to Maslova that she was pardoned, and that he would not keep her a single hour after the moment he received the papers from his authorities. He also refused to give him any information about Kryltsov's health, saying that he could not even tell him whether there was any such prisoner. Thus, without having obtained anything, Nekhlyudov seated himself in the vehicle and had himself taken back to his hotel. The severity of the superintendent was mainly due to the fact that in the prison, which was crowded to double its capacity, typhus was raging at the time. The cabman who was driving Nekhlyudov told him on the way that " in the prison the people are dying awfully. A certain disease has fallen upon them. They bury about twenty people a day." XXIV. Notwithstanding his failure at the prison, Nekhlyu- dov, still in the same cheerful, agitatedly active frame of mind, drove to the governor's office to find out whether the document in regard to Maslova's pardon had been received. There was no such document, and so Nekh- lyudov, immediately upon his return to the hotel, hastened to write about it to Sel^nin and to the lawyer. Having finished his letters, he looked at his watch and saw that it was time to drive to the governor's for dinner. On his way, he was again troubled by the thought how Katyusha would receive her pardon. Where would they deport her ? How would he live with her ? What would Simonson do ? What was her relation to him ? He recalled the change which had taken place in her. And, with this, he recalled her past. " That must be forgotten and wiped out," he said, hastening to drive away all thoughts of her. " That vnW appear later," he said to himself. He began to think of what he ought to say to the general. The dinner at the general's, circumstanced with all the luxury of rich people and important officials, such as Nekhlyudov had been used to, was, after the long priva- tion not only of luxury, but even of the most primitive comforts, especially agreeable to him. The hostess was a grand St. Petersburg lady of the old style, a former lady of honour at the court of Nicholas, who spoke French naturally and Eussian unnaturally. She held herself remarkably straight and, in moving her hands, did not take her elbows away from her waist. 101 102 RESUREECTION She was calm and somewhat sadly respectful to her husband, and exceedingly gracious to her guests, though with different shades of attention, according to the persons. She received Nekhlyiidov like one of her own, with that peculiar, refined, imperceptible flattery, which brought back to Nekhlyiidov the consciousness of all his worth and gave him a pleasurable satisfaction. She made him feel that she knew his honest, though original, act, which had brought him to Siberia, and that she regarded him as an exceptional man. This fine flattery and all the artis- tically luxurious appointments in the house of the general had the effect of making Nekhlyudov surrender himself to the pleasure of the beautiful surroundings and the appetizing food, and to the ease and charm of relations with well-brought-up people of his famihar circle, as though everything, amidst which he had lived heretofore, had been a dream, from which he had awakened to the present reality. At dinner there were, besides the home people, — the general's daughter with her husband, and the adjutant, — an Englishman, a rich gold miner, and the governor of a distant Siberian city. All these people were pleasant to Nekhlyudov. The Englishman, a healthy, ruddy man, who spoke French very poorly, but English with remarkable fluency and oratorical impressiveness, had seen a great deal, and was very interesting with his stories of America, India, and Siberia. The young gold miner, the son of a peasant, in an even- ing dress which had been made in London and diamond cuff-buttons, who had a large library, gave much to charities, and held European hberal convictions, was agree- able and interesting to Nekhlyudov because he repre- sented to him an entirely new and good type of an educated graft of European culture on a healthy peasant stock. KESUEKECTION 103 The governor of the remote Siberian city was that same director of a department, of whom there was so much talk when he was in St. Petersburg. He was a pufied-up man with scanty curling hair, tender blue eyes, large around his waist, with well-kept white, ring-bedecked hands, and a pleasant smile. The host esteemed this governor because among bribe-takers he was the only one who did not receive bribes. The hostess, a great lover of music and herself a very good pianist, esteemed him because he was a good musician and played at four hands with her. Nekhlyudov was in such a benevolent frame of mind that even this man was not disagreeable to him. The merry, energetic adjutant, with his grayish blue chin, who offered his services to everybody, was pleasing for his good nature. Most agreeable to Nekhlyudov was the charming couple of the general's daughter and her husband. She was a homely, simple-hearted woman, all absorbed in her first two children ; her husband, whom she had married for love, after a long struggle with her parents, a graduate of the Moscow University and a liberal, a modest and intelligent man, served in the department of statistics, busying himself more particularly with the natives, whom he studied and loved, and whom he tried to save from extinction. Not only were they all kind and gracious to Nekhlyu- dov, but they were obviously glad to see him, as a new and interesting person. The general, who came out to the dinner in his military coat, with a white cross on his neck, greeted Nekhlyudov as an old acquaintance, and immediately invited him to the appetizer and brandy. To the general's question of what Nekhlyudov had been doing after he left him, Nekhlyudov told him that he went to the post-office, where he learned of the pardon granted to the person of whom they had been speaking in the 104 RESURRECTION morning, and he now again asked permission to visit the prison. The general, apparently dissatisfied to hear him speak of business at table, frowned and did not say any- thing. " Do you wish some brandy ? " he said in French to the Englishman, who had come up to them. The English- man drank the brandy and said that he had visited the cathedral and factory, but that he would still like to see the large transportation prison. " Now, this is excellent," said the general, turning to Nekhlyiidov, — " you can go together. Give them a per- mit," he said to the adjutant. " When do you want to go there," Nekhlyudov asked the EngUshman. " I prefer to visit prisons in the evening," said the EngHshman. " They are all at home, no preparations are made, and everything is natural." " Ah, he wants to see it in all its glory ? Let him. When I wrote, they paid no attention to me, so let them hear about it from the foreign press," said the general, going up to the table, where the hostess pointed out the places to the guests. Nekhlyudov sat between the hostess and the English- man. Opposite him sat the general's daughter and the ex-director of the department. At table the conversation went on by fits, now about India, of which the Englishman told something, now of the Tonquin expedition, which the general condemned severely, and now of the universal Siberian rascahty and bribery. None of these conversations interested Nekh- lyudov very much. But after dinner, when they were at coffee, in the drawing-room, a very interesting conversation was started between the Englishman and the hostess in regard to Gladstone, during which Nekhlyudov thought he had RESURRECTION 105 made many a clever remark, and that this had been noticed by his interlocutors. Nekhlyiidov felt more and more comfortable, after the good dinner and wine, and at coffee, seated in a soft arm- chair, amidst kind and well-brought-up people. And when the hostess, in reply to the Englishman's request, sat down at the piano with the ex-director of the department, and they played Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which they had well practised together, Nekhlyudov became conscious of a spiritual condition of complete self-contentment, such as he had not experienced for a long time, as though he now for the first time discovered what a good man he was. The piano was an excellent grand, and the execution of the sympliony was good. At least, Nekhlyudov thought so, and he loved and knew that symphony. When he heard the beautiful andante, he felt a tickling in his nose, being touched by the contemplation of himself and all his virtues. Thanking the hostess for the long-missed enjoyment. Nekhlyudov was on the point of bidding them good-bye and taking his leave, when the daughter of the hostess walked over to him with a determined glance and, blushing, said : " You have been asking about my children. Would you like to see them ? " " She thinks that everybody is interested in seeing her children," said the mother, smiling at the sweet tactless- ness of her daughter. " The prince is not at all interested in this." " On the contrary, I am very, very much interested," said Nekhlyudov, touched by this happy, ebullient mater- nal feeling. " Please, do show them to me ! " " She is taking the prince to see her young brood," laughing, cried the general at the card-table, where he was sitting with his son-in-law, the gold miner, and the adjutant. " Do your duty ! " 106 RESURRECTION In the meantime the young woman, apparently agitated because her children would soon be subject to criticism, rapidly preceded Nekhlyiidov to the inner apartments. In a third high room, papered white and hghted up by a small lamp with a dark shade, stood, side by side, two little beds, and between them sat, in a white pelerine, a Siberian nurse with a good-natured face and high cheek- bones. The nurse got up and bowed. The mother bent down to the first bed, in which, with her mouth open, was softly sleeping a two-year-old girl with long, wavy hair, which was dishevelled by the pillow. " This is Katya," said the mother, adjusting the blue- striped quilt coverlet, from underneath which peeped out the white sole of a foot. " Isn't she pretty ? She is only two years old." " Charming ! " "And tliis is Vasyiik, as his grandfather has called him. An entirely different type. He is a Siberian, — don't you think so ? " " A beautiful boy," said Nekhlyudov, looking at the chubby face of the boy, who was sleeping on his stomach. " Eeally ? " said the mother, with a significant smile. Nekhlyudov recalled the chains, the shaven heads, the brawls, the debauch, dying Kryltsov, Katyusha with all her past, — and he became envious and wished for him- self just such a refined and pure happiness as this now seemed to him to be. Having expressed several praises in regard to her chil- dren, and thus having partly satisfied the mother, who eagerly imbibed all these praises, he followed her back to the drawing-room, where the Englishman was waiting for him, in order, as they had agreed, to go together to the prison. Nekhlyildov bade the old and young hosts good- bye, and with the Eughshman went out on the porch of the general's house. The weather had changed. A heavy snow was falling RESURKECTION 107 in tufts and had already covered the road, and the roof, and the trees of the garden, and the driveway, and the top of the carriage, and the horse's back. The Eughsh- nian had his own carriage, and Nekhlyudov, having told the Englishman's coachman to drive to the prison, seated himself in his own vehicle and, with a heavy sensation of performing an unpleasant duty, followed after him in his vehicle, which rolled softly but with difficulty over the snow. XXV. The gloomy building of the prison, with the sentry and lamp near the gate, in spite of the pure, white shroud which now covered everything, — the driveway, the roof, and the walls, — produced by the lighted windows of its facade an even more melancholy impression than in the morning. The majestic superintendent came out to the gate, and, reading near the lamp the permit which had been given to Nekhlyiidov and the Englishman, shrugged his mighty shoulders in perplexity, but obeyed orders and invited the visitors to follow him. He first led them into the yard, then through a door on the right, and up the stairs to the office. He asked them to be seated, and wanted to know what he could do for them. Upon learning that Nekhlyvidov wished to see Maslova, he sent a warden for her, and got ready to answer the questions wliich the Englishman began to put through Nekhlyiidov. " For how many persons is the prison intended ? " asked the Englishman. " How many inmates are there now ? How many men, women, and children ? How many hard labour convicts, deportation prisoners, and volun- teers ? How many patients ? " Nekhlyiidov translated the words of the Englishman and of the superintendent, without entering into their meaning, as he was quite unexpectedly to himself agitated by the impending meeting. When, in the middle of a sentence which he was translating to the Englishman, he heard approaching steps, and the door of the office was opened and, as had happened often before, the warden entered, and, after him, Katyusha, in a prisoner's 108 RESUKRECTION 109 bodice and wrapped in a kerchief, — he, upon seeing her, was overcome by an oppressive sensation. " I want to Eve ; I want a family, children ; I want a human existence," flashed through his mind just as she walked into the room with rapid steps, without raising her eyes. He arose and made a few steps toward her. Her face seemed stern and disagreeable to him. She was the same she had been when she upbraided him. She blushed and grew pale ; her fingers convulsively twirled the edge of her bodice ; and now she looked into his face, and now again lowered her eyes. " Do you know that you have been pardoned ? " said Nekhlyiidov. " Yes, the warden told me so." " So, as soon as the papers are received, you may leave and settle where you please — We will think it over — " She hastened to interrupt him : " What have I to think about ? I shall be wherever Vladimir Ivanovich will be." Notwithstanding her agitation, she raised her eyes, to Nekhlyudov's, as she pronounced this rapidly and clearly, as though she had prepared her speech in advance. " Indeed ! " said Nekhlyudov. " Why not, Dmitri Ivanovich ? He wants me to live with him — " She stopped, frightened, and corrected her- self, " to be with him. What can there be better for me ? I must regard it as my good fortune. What else could I do?" " One of two things is the case : either she loves Simon- son and does not care for the sacrifice which I ima<:rined I was bringing her, or she still loves me and for my own good renounces me and burns her ships by uniting her fate with that of Siraonson," thought Nekhlyiidov, and he felt ashamed. He was conscious of blushing. " If you love him — " he said. 110 RESURRECTION " It is not a question of love. I have given that up long ago. Besides, Vladimir Ivanovich is quite a different man." " Yes, of course," began Nekhlyvidov. " He is a fine man, and I think — " She again interrupted him, as though fearing lest he should sav too much, or she not enough. " Dmitri Ivanovich, you nmst forgive me for not doing what you want," she said, looking into his eyes with her mysterious, squinting glance. " Apparently this is best. You, too, must Hve." She told him exactly what he had been saying to him- self. But now he was no longer thinking of this ; he was thinking and feeling something quite different. He was not only ashamed, but sorry for everything he was losing in her. " I did not expect this," he said. " Why should you hve and torture yourself here ? You have suffered enough." " I have not suffered ; I was happy here, and I should like to serve vou more, if I could." " We," she said, " we," and she looked at Nekhlyildov, " do not need anything. You have done enough for me as it is. If it were not for you — " she wanted to say something, but her voice quivered. " You have nothing to thank me for," said Nekhlyildov. " What is the use casting accounts ? God will cast our account," she muttered, and her black eyes glistened with tears that had appeared there. " What a good woman you are ! " he said. " I good ? " she said through tears, a pitiful smile light- ing up her face. " Are you ready ? " the Englishman asked, in the mean- time. " Directly," Nekhlyildov answered, and asked her for Kryltsov's health. She overcame her agitation, and told him quietly what RESURRECTION 111 she knew : Kryltsov had become very feeble on the road, and was immediately after their arrival placed in the hos- pital. Marya Pavlovna was very much disturbed about him, and asked to be taken as a nurse to the hospital, but they would not have her. " I had better go," she said, noticiug that the English- man was waiting for him. " I do not say good-bye, — I will see you again," said Nekhlyiidov, giving her his hand. " Forgive me," she said, almost inaudibly. Their eyes met, and in the strange, squinting glance and pitiful smile, with which she said "forgive me," instead of "good-bye," Nekhlyudov read that of the two propositions as to the cause of her decision the second was the correct one, — that she loved him and thought that, by uniting herself with him, she would ruin his hfe, but that, by going away with Simonson, she freed him, and she was glad to accomplish that which she wished to do, and, at the same time, suffered in parting from him. She pressed his hand, swiftly turned around, and walked out. Nekhlyudov looked back at the Englishman, being ready to go with him, but the Englishman was writing something down in his note-book. Nekhlyudov did not disturb him, but sat down on a wooden sofa which was standing near the wall, and suddenly experienced a terri- ble fatigue. He was not tired from a sleepless night, nor from the journey, nor from agitation ; he simply felt that he was dreadfully tired from the effect of his whole life. He leaned against the back of the sofa, on which he was sitting, and immediately fell into a deep, deathlike sleep. " Well, would you like to visit the cells now ? " asked the superintendent. Nekhlyudov awoke and wondered where he was. The Englishman had finished his notes and wished to see the cells. Nekhlyudov followed them, tired and hstless. XXVL Having passed through the vestibule and the nauseat- ing corridor, where, to their surprise, they found two prisoners urinating straight on the tioor, the superintend- ent, the Englishman, and Nekhlyudov, accompanied by wardens, entered the first cell of the convicts. In this cell, with benches in the middle, all the prisoners were already lying down. There were seventy of them. They lay head to head and side to side. At the appearance of the visitors all jumped up, rattling their chains, and stood up near the benches, glistening with their half-shaven heads. Only two were left lying. One was a young man, who was red in his face and apparently in a fever ; the other was an old man, who did not stop groaning. The Englishman asked how long the young prisoner had been ill. The superintendent .said that he had been ill since the morning, while the old man had long been suffering from his stomach, but that there was no other place for him because the hospital was overcrowded. The Enghshman shook his head in disapproval, and said that he should like to say a few words to these men, and asked Nekhlyudov to translate that which he had to say to them. It turned out that the Enghshman, in addition to the one purpose of his journey, — the description of the places of deportation and confinement in Siberia, had also another aim, and that was to preach salvation by faith and redemption. " Tell them that Christ pitied and loved them," he said, " and died for them. They will be saved if they believe this." While he was saying this, all the prisoners stood n2 RESUKKECTION 113 in silence near the benches, with their hands hanging down their sides. " In this book, tell them," he concluded, " it tells all about it. Are there any among them who can read ? " It turned out that there were more than twenty who could read. The Englishman took a few bound copies of the New Testament out of a hand-bag, and the muscular hands, with strong, black nails, were stretched out toward him, pushing each other away. He left two Gospels in this cell and went to the next. In the next cell it was the same. There was the same closeness and stench. Just as in the other, an image was hanging in front, between two windows, and to the left of the door stood the stink-vat, and all lay in the same way, close together, and side by side, and they all jumped up and arrayed themselves in the same manner, and similarly three persons remained lying down. Two of these raised themselves and sat down, while one remained lying and did not even look at the visitors : these were sick persons. The Englishman repeated his speech and again distributed two Gospels. In the third cell there were four sick people. To the Englishman's question why it was that the sick were not put together in one room, the superintendent an- swered that they did not wish it themselves. These patients, he said, were not suffering from infectious dis- eases, and the physician's sergeant was watching them and giving them attention. " He has not shown up for two weeks," said a voice. The superintendent did not answer and led them to the neighbouring room. The door was again unlocked, and again all arose and grew silent, and again the Englishman distributed Gospels ; the same took place in the fifth and sixth cells, on the right and left. From the hard labour convicts they went over to the deportation prisoners, and from the deportation pris- 114 KESURRECTION oners to the communal prisoners and to those who followed voluntarily. It was the same everywhere. Everywhere the same cold, hungry, idle, diseased, humiliated, confined people looked like wild beasts. Having distributed a set number of Gospels, the Eng- lishman did not give away any more, and did not even make his speech. The oppressive spectacle and, chiefly, the stifling atmosphere apparently undermined even his energy, and he went from cell to cell, saying only, " All right," to all the remarks of the superintendent as to the prisoners of each cell. Nekhlyiidov walked around as if in a sleep, having no strength to excuse himself and go away, and experiencing all the time the same fatigue and hopelessness. XXVII. In one of the cells of the deportation prisoners, Nekh- lyildov, to his surprise, saw the strange old man whom he had seen in the morning on the ferry. This old man, all wrinkled and with shaggy hair, dressed in nothing but a dirty ash-coloured shirt with holes at the shoulder, and trousers of the same description, was sitting barefooted on the floor near the benches and casting a stern, inter- rogative glance upon the strangers. His emaciated body, which could be seen through the holes in his shirt, looked wretched and weak, but his face looked even more ear- nestly concentrated and animated than on the ferry. All the prisoners jumped up, as in the other cells, and stood up erect at the sight of the entering officers ; but the old man remained sitting. His eyes sparkled, and his eye- brows frowned in anger. " Get up I " the superintendent cried to him. The old man did not stir and only smiled contemp- tuously, " Your servants are standing before you, but I am not your servant. You have the seal — " muttered the old man, pointing to the superintendent's forehead. " What ? " the superintendent cried, threateningly, mov- ing toward him. " I know this man," Nekhlyvidov hastened to say. "What has he been arrested for ? " " The police sent him up for having no passport. We ask them not to send them, but they continue doing so," the superintendent said, angrily, looking askance at the old man. 115 116 HESUKRECTION " You, I see, are also of the legion of the Antichrist,'* the old man turned to Nekhlyudov. " No, I am a visitor," said Nekhlyudov. " Well, have you come to see how the Antichrist tortures people ? All right, look ! He has taken up a lot of people and has shut a whole army up in a cage. People ought to eat their bread in the sweat of their Lrows, and he has shut them up like pigs and feeds them without work so as to make beasts of them." " What does he say ? " asked the Englishman. Nekhlyudov told him that the old man condemned the superintendent for keeping people under restraint. " What, then, ask him, is to be done with those who transgress the law ? " askod the Englishman. Nekhlyudov translated the question. The old man laughed out strangely, displaying two rows of sound teeth. " The law ! " he repeated, contemptuously. " First he has robbed all, the whole earth, has taken away the riches of all the people, has turned it to his own uses, has beaten all such as went out against him, and then he wrote a law not to rob and kill. He ought to have written that law before." Nekhlyudov translated. The Englishman smiled. " Still, ask him what is to be done now with thieves and murderers ? Ask him ! " Nekhlyudov again translated the question. The old man frowned austerely. " Tell him to take the seal of the Antichrist away from him, then there will be no thieves and murderers. Tell him so ! " " He is crazy ! " said the Englishman, when Nekhlyu- dov translated to him the words of the old man, and, shrugging his shoulders, he went out from the cell. " You do your duty, and leave them alone ! Every- body is for himself. God knows whom to punish and RESURRECTION 117 whom to pardon, but we do not," said the old man. " Be your own master, then there will be no need of masters. Go, go," he added, scowling and flashing his eyes on Nekhlyudov, who was lagging behind in the cell. " You have seen how the servants of the Antichrist feed lice on human beings. Go, go ! " When Nekhlyudov came out into the corridor, the Englishman and the superintendent were standing at the open door of an empty cell, the Englishman asking the meaning of that cell. The superintendent explained to him that it was the dead-house. " Oh," said the Englishman, when Nekhlyudov trans- lated it to him, and expressed his desire to walk in. The dead-house was an ordinary, small cell. A small lamp was burning on the wall ; it dimly Hghted up some bags and wood which was lyin^ in a corner, and four dead bodies lying on the benches, to the right. The first body, in a hempen shirt and trousers, was that of a tall man, with a small, pointed beard and half of his head shaven off. The body had already become stiff ; the ash-gray hands had apparently been placed over the breast, but they had fallen apart ; the feet, too, had fallen apart and had their soles turned in different directions. Next to him lay, in a white skirt and bodice, a barefooted, bareheaded old woman, with a short braid of scanty hair, a small, wrinkled, yellow face, and a sharp nose. Then, after the old woman, there was another male body in something of a lilac colour. This colour reminded Nekhlyudov of something. He walked over to the body and began to look at it. A small, sharp, upturned little beard ; a strong, hand- some nose ; a white, tall forehead ; scanty, wavy hair. He recognized the famiKar features and did not believe his own eyes. But yesterday he had seen that face agi- tated, provoked, suffering. Now it was quiet, motionless, and terribly beautiful. Yes, it was Kryltsov, or, at least, 118 RESURRECTION that vestige which his material existence had left behind. " Why did he suffer ? Why did he live ? Does he under- stand it now ? " thought Nekhlyiidov, and it seemed to him that there was no answer, that there was nothing but death, and he felt ill. Without bidding the Englishman good-bye, Nekhlyiidov asked the warden to take him out into the courtyard, and, feeling the necessity of being left alone, in order to think over everything which he had experienced during that evening, he drove back to the hotel. XXVIII. Nekhlyudov did not go to bed, but for a long time paced up and down in the room. His affair with Katyu- sha was ended. He was of no use to her, and this made him sad and ashamed. But it was not this that tor- mented him. His other affair was not only not ended, but it tormented him much more than ever before and demanded his activity. All that terrible evil, which he had seen and experienced during all that time, but espe- cially on that day in that horrible prison, all that evil, which had also killed dear Kryltsov, triumphed and lorded it, and he could see no possibility of subduing it, nay, not even of understanding how to subdue it. In his imagination arose those incarcerated in the foul air, those hundreds and thousands of disgraced people, who were confined by indifferent generals, prosecutors, and superin- tendents ; he recalled the strange, free old man, who ac- cused the authorities and who was declared to be a lunatic, and, among the corpses, the beautiful, wax-Hke, angry face of dead Kryltsov. And his previous question, whether he, Nekhlyudov, was insane, or those people who considered themselves wise and who did all those things ; arose be- fore him with renewed force and demanded an answer. He grew tired of walking up and down and of think- ing. He seated himself on the sofa before the lamp and mechanically opened the Gospel, which the Englishman had given him as a souvenir, and which, when looking for something in his pockets, he had thrown out on the table. " They say that here is the solution of every- thing," he thought, and, opening the Gospel, he began to HP 120 RESURRECTION read at the place where he had opened the book. Matthew, Chap. XVIII. 1. At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, say- ing, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? — he read. 2. And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, 3. And said. Verily I say unto you. Except ye he con- verted, and hecome as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdo7n of heaven. Jf. Wliosoever therefore shall humhle himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. " Yes, yes, that is so," he thought, recalHng how he had experieuced cahn and the joy of hfe only iu measure as he had humbled himself. 5. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. 6. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he ivere droivncd in the depth of the sea. " Why does it say here, Whoso receiveth ? and whither will he receive ? and what means, In my name ? " he asked himself, feelmg that these words did not mean anything to him. " And why a millstone about the neck, and the depth of the sea ? No, that is not quite right : it is not exact, not clear," he thought, recalling how he had several times tried to read the Gospel, and how the indefiniteness of such passages had repelled him. He read the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth verses about the offences, and how they must come, of the punishment by being cast into hell fire, and of the angels of children, who in heaven behold the face of the Father. " What a pity that this is all so indistinct," he thought, " while one feels that there is something good in it ! " RESURRECTION 121 11. For the Son of man is come to save that which is lost, — he continued to read. 1^. How think ye ? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them he gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and yoeth into the mountains, and seekcth that which is gone astray ? 13. And if so he that lie find it, verily I say unto you, he rcjoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. IJf.. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish. " Yes, it was not the will of the Father that they should perish, and now they perish by the hundred and by the thousand. And there is no means of saving them," he thought. 21. Then came Peter to him, and said, he continued reading, Lord, how oft shall my hr other sin against me, and I forgive him ? till seven times ? 22. Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee. Until seven times : hut until seventy times seven. 23. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would taJke account of his servants. 24- And when he had hegun to reckon, one was hrought unto him, which oivcd him ten thousand talents. 25. But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord com- manded him to he sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to he made. 26. The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped hi7n, saying. Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 27. Then the lord of that servant was moved with com- passion, and loosed him, and forgave him the deht. 28. But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants ivhich otved him an hundred pence : and he laid hands on him, and took him hy the throat, saying. Pay me that thou owest. 122 RESURRECTION 29. And his fellow servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 30. And he would not : hut went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt. 31. So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and eame and told itnto their lord all that was done. 32. Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desircdst me : 33. Shouldst not thou also have heed coinpassioii on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee ? " And only this ? " Nekhlyiidov suddenly exclaimed aloud, as he read these words. And the inner voice of his whole being said : " Only this." And there happened with Nekhlyiidov that which often happens with people who live a spiritual life, namely, the thought which at first had appeared to him as strange and paradoxical, even as jocular, ever more frequently finding a confirmation in life, suddenly arose before him as the simplest, incontrovertible truth. Thus the thought became clear to him that the only sure means of saving people from that terrible evil from which they were suffering was for people to acknowledge themselves guilty before God and therefore incapable of punishing or correct- ing others. It now became clear to him that all that terrible evil, of which he had been a witness in jails and prisons, and the calm self-confidence of those who com- mitted this evil, originated in the fact that people tried to do the impossible : being evil to correct the evil. Vicious people tried to correct vicious people, and they thought they could do so by mechanical means. All that came of it was that needy and selfish men, having made a profession of this supposed punishment and correction of people, have themselves become corrupted to the last RESURRECTION 123 degree, and did not stop corrupting those whom they tormented. Now it became clear to him what was the cause of all the horrors which he had seen, and what was to be done in order to destroy them. The answer, wliich he had been unable to find, was the same that Christ had given to Peter : it consisted in the injunction to forgive always, everybody, an endless number of times, because there were no people who were guiltless themselves and who therefore could punish or correct. " It cannot be all so simple," Nekhlyudov said to him- self, and yet he saw beyond any doubt that, however strange it had appeared to him in the beginning, being used to the opposite, it was unquestionably not only a theoretical, but also the most practical solution of the question. The customary retort about what to do with evil-doers, whether they were to be left unpunished, no longer disturbed him. This retort would have a meaning if it could be proved that punishment diminishes crime and corrects the transgressors ; but when the very oppo- site is the fact, and when it is seen that it is not in the power of one set of men to correct another, tlien the only sensible thing to do is to stop doing that which is not only useless but also harmful, and, in addition, immoral and cruel. You have for several centuries been punish- ing criminals whom you acknowledge to be criminals. Well, have they been abolished ? They have not only not been abolished, but their numbers have increased, by those transgressors who are corrupted by punishment, and by those transgressing judges, prosecutors, examining magis- trates, jailers, who sit in judgment over people and punish them. Nekhlyiidov now understood that society and order existed in general, not because there are these legal- ized transgressors, who judge and punish people, but because, in spite of such corruption, people do not cease pitying and loving each other. 124 KESURRECTION " I hope to find the confirmation of this thought in this very Gospel." Nekhlyudov began to read it from the beginning. Having read the sermon on the mount, which had always touched him, he now for the first time saw in this sermon, not abstract beautiful thoughts, and such as for the greater part presented exaggerated and unreal- izable demands, but simple, clear, and practical injunc- tions, which, in case of their execution (which was quite possible), established that to him wonderful new order of human society, in which all the violence, which so pro- voked Nekhlyudov, was not only eliminated, but also the greatest possible human good was obtained, — the king- dom of God upon earth. There were five such injunctions. First injunction (Matt. v. 21-26). This was that one must not only not kill his brother, but not even be angry with him ; that he must not regard any one as insignifi- cant, " Eaca ; " and that if he quarrelled with anyone, he must be reconciled before offering a gift to God, that is, before praying. Second injunction (Matt. v. 27-32). This was that man must not only not commit adultery, but must also avoid the enjoyment of a woman's beauty, and having once come together with a woman, he must not be false to her. Third injunction (Matt. v. 33-37). This was that man must not promise anything with oaths. Fourth injunction (Matt. v. 38-42). This was that man must not only not give an eye for an eye, but must also turn the other cheek to him who has smitten him on one ; that he must forgive offences and in humility bear them, and never refuse people that which they ask of him. Fifth injunction (Matt. v. 43-48). This was that man nmst not only not hate his enemies, and not fight with them, but he must love, aid, and serve them. RESURRECTION 126 Nekhlyudov stared at the light of the burning lamp and stood as though petrified. Eecalling the unseemli- ness of our life, he vividly imagined what this life might be if people were brought up under these rules, and a long-forgotten transport took possession of his soul, as though, after long pining and suffering, he had suddenly found peace and freedom. He did not sleep all night, and, as happens with many, many people who read the Gospel, he now for the first time understood in all their significance the words which had been read many a time without leaving any impres- sion. As a sponge sucks in the water, so he imbibed everything necessary, important, and joyful, which was revealed to him in this book. And everything which he read seemed familiar tc him, seemed to confirm and bring into consciousness that which he had known long ago, but did not completely become conscious of or believe. But he not only perceived and believed that, by executing these injunctions, people would attain the highest possible good ; he also perceived and believed that a man had nothing else to do than to carry out these injunctions, that in this lay the only sensible meaning of human life, and that every deviation from it was a mistake which immediately brought punishment in its wake. This flowed from the whole teaching, and was with special clearness expressed in the parable of the vineyards. The husbandmen imagined that the vineyard, where they had been sent to work for their master, was their property ; that everything which was in the vineyard was made for them, and all that they had to do was to enjoy themselves in this vineyard, forgetting their master, and killing those who reminded them of their master and of their obhga- tions to him. " Just so we act," thought Nekhlyudov, " living in the insipid conviction that we are ourselves the masters of our hfe, and that it was given us for our enjoyment. 126 REStJKEECTIOl^ This is obviously foolish. If we have been sent here, this was done by somebody's will and for a certain pur- pose. We, however, have decided that we are living for our own joy, and apparently we are suffering for it, as will the husbaudman who is not doing the will of his master. But the master's will is expressed in these injunctions. Let the people execute these injunctions, and there will be on earth the kingdom of God, and people will attain the highest good, which is within their reach." Seek ye the kingdom of God, mid his righteousness ; and all these things shall he added unto you. We are seeking " all these things " and obviously do not find them. " So this is the work of my life. One thing has ended, and another has begun." With that uight there began for Nekhlyudov an entirely new life, not so much because he entered it under new conditions, as because everything which happened to him after that assumed an entirely new meaning. The future will show how this new period of his life will end. Moscow, December 12, 1899. TWO PASSAGES FEOM EESURRECTION, RE- JECTED BY THE AUTHOR FROM THE FINAL EDITION THE EXECUTION (Passage omitted in Part I., Chap. XL VI., after liue 23, on p. 234 of Vol. XXI.) " What are you standing there for ? Lie down ! " The vagabond loosened his trousers, which dropped to the floor, and stepped out of them and of his prison shoes, and himself walked over to the bench. The wardens caught him under his arms and put him on the bench. The prisoner's legs fell to either side of the bench. One warden raised up his legs and lay down upon them, two others caught hold of the prisoner's arms and pressed them down on the bench, a fourth raised his shirt up to the small of his back, laying bare his ribs, which protruded beneath his sallow skin, the groove of his spine, the curva- ture of his waist, and the firm, muscular thighs of his crooked legs. Petrdv, the broad-shouldered and broad- breasted, muscular warden, chose one of the bunches of birch rods prepared for the occasion, spit into his hands, and, firmly grasping the rods and swishing them with a whistling noise, began to strike the bare body. With every stroke the vagabond uttered a dull sound and shud- dered, in so far as he could do so under the load of the wardens. Vasilev was pale, now and then casting his eyes upon what was in front of him, and again lowering them. On the vagabond's yellow back there appenred the 127 128 KESURRECTION intersecting lines of wales, and his dull sounds passed into groans. But Petrov, who had received a black eye, as they were leading Vasilev to the career, paid back for the offence by striking in such a way that the tips of the rods rebounded, and the vagabond's sallow buttocks and hips soon were smeared with red blood. When the vagabond was released, and he, with trem- bling nether jaw, wiped the blood away with the skirt of his shirt and began to pull in the cord of his hempen trousers, the chief warden put his hand on Vasilev's cloak. " Take it off," he said. Vasilev looked as though he smiled, displaying his white teeth above his black beard, and his whole intelligent, energetic face became distorted. He broke the cords of his garment, threw it off, and lay down, baring his beauti- ful, lithe, straight, muscular legs. " You are not — " he nuittered the beginning of some sentence ; but he suddenly faltered, compressing his teeth and preparing himself for the blow. Petrov threw away the tattered rods, took another bunch from among those which lay on the window, and there began the new torture. Vasilev cried from the very start. " Oh, oh ! " and he struggled so much that the wardens got down on their knees and so hung to his shoulders that their faces grew red from effort. " Thirty," said the inspector, when it was only twenty- six. " Not at all, your Honour, only twenty-six." " Thirty, thirty," the inspector said, scowling and claw- ing his beard. Vasilev did not get up when he was released. " Get up," said one of the wardens, raising him up. Vasilev raised himself, but tottered, and would have RESURKECTION 129 fallen if the wardens had not held him up. He breathed heavily and in short puffs. His pale lips trembled, emit- ting a strange sound, which resembled the one made by- people who with their lips try to amuse children. His knees trembled and struck against each other. " That's for striking wardens in the face," muttered Petrov, throwing away the rods and trying to encourage and justify himself; but he was not at all at his ease, and, letting the rolled-up sleeves of his uniform down over his hirsute arm and wiping the perspiration, which had come out on his forehead, with a dirty handkerchief, he went out of the visiting-room. " To the hospital," said the inspector, and, scowling and clearing his throat, as though he had swallowed something bitter and poisonous, he sat down on the window-sill and lighted a cigarette. " Shall I go home ? " he thought ; but he recalled the rapid passages of the Hungarian dances in Liszt's arrange- ment, which he had heard for two days and even that same morning, and a greater gloom fell upon his soul. Just then Nekhlyiidov was announced to him. " What does he want, anyhow ? " thought the inspector, and, breathing heavily, he went into the vestibule. IN THE BAREACKS (Passage omitted from Chap. XIX. of Part 11.) At this same time, in one of the barracks, a woman, with dress torn over her breast, hair dishevelled, and eyes bulging out, shrieked in a desperate voice and struck her head, now against the wall, and now against the door. The sentry looked through the peep-hole, went away, and continued to walk up and down. And every time his eye appeared at the hole, the shriek grew louder. 130 RESUKRECTION " Don't look ! Kill me, — give me a knife or poison, — I cannot stand it, I cannot ! " Steps were heard. The door opening into the corridor was opened, and a man in the uniform of an officer came in through it, accompanied by two attendants. In the neighbouring cells eyes appeared at the peep-holes, but the officer closed these, as he passed by. " Murderers, tormentors ! " was heard in one ; in another they struck the door with their fists. The officer was pale. Though this was frequently re- peated, it was always terrible and oppressive. The moment the door was opened to the cell of the hysterical woman, she rushed up toward it and wanted to get out. "Let me go, let me," she shrieked, with one hand grasping her torn dress over her breast, and with the other throwing back of her ear some strands of scanty hair which here and there was streaked with gray. " You know you can't. Don't talk nonsense," said the officer, standing at the door. " Let me, or kill me ! " she shouted, pushing him away. " Stop it," the officer said, sternly, but she paid no attention to him. The officer beckoned to the attendants, and they seized her. She shrieked louder than before. " Stop, or it will be only worse for you." She continued to cry. " Keep quiet ! " « I won't. Oh, oh, oh!" But here her cry was suddenly changed to moaning, and then died down entirely. One of the attendants caught hold of her arms, which he bound, and the other gagged her with a piece of cloth, which he tied behind her head, so that she might not be able to tear it off. She looked at the attendants and at the officer with eyes bulging out of their orbits, her whole face jerked, a KESURRECTION 131 noisy breath issued from her nose, and her shoulders rose up to her ears and fell again. " You must not make such a scandal, — I told you so before. It is your own fault," said the officer, going out. The chimes played in a soft tone, " How glorious is our Lord in Zion." The sentries were changed. In the cathedral caudles burned, and a sentry stood at the tombs of the Tsars. WHAT IS ART? 1897 WHAT IS ART? I. Take any newspaper of our time, and you will find in it a department of the theatre and of music; in almost any number you will find the description of this or that exhibition or of a separate picture, and in each you will find reviews of newly published books of artistic contents, of verses, stories, and novels. There is a detailed description, immediately after it has happened, of how such and such an actor or actress played this r61e or that in such and such a drama, comedy, or opera, and of what talent he or she displayed, and of what the contents of the new drama, comedy, or opera are, and of their failures and good points. With similar details and care the newspaper describes how such and such an artist sang or played on the piano or violin such and such a piece of music, and in what the good and bad points of this piece and of liis playing consist. In every large city there is always, if not several, at least one exhibition of new paintings, the good and bad quahties of which are analyzed by critics and connoisseurs with the greatest profundity. Nearly every day there appear new novels and verses, separately and in periodicals, and the news- papers regard it as their duty to give detailed accounts to their readers about these productions of art. For the support of art in Russia, where only one- 135 136 WHAT IS ART? hundredth part of what is necessary for furnishing in- struction to the whole people is expended on pubhc education, the government offers millions as subsidies to academies, conservatories, and theatres. In France eight millions are set aside for the arts ; the same is true of Germany and of England. In every large city they build enormous structures for museums, academies, conserva- tories, dramatic schools, for performances and concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen — carpenters, ma- sons, painters, joiners, paper-hangers, tailors, wig-makers, jewellers, bronzers, compositors — pass their whole lives at liard work for the satisfaction of the demands of art, so that there is hardly any other human activity, except the military, which absorbs so many forces as this. But it is not only these enormous labours that are wasted on this activity,- — on it, as on war, human lives are wasted outright : hundreds of thousands of men devote all their lives from their earliest youth, in order to learn how to twirl their feet very rapidly (dancers) ; others 'the musicians) — to learn how to run rapidly over the keys or over the strings ; others again (painters) — to learn how to paint with colours everything they see ; and others- to know how to twist every phrase in every way imaginable, and to find a rhyme for every word. And such people, who frequently are very good, clever men, capable of any useful work, grow wild in these exclusive, stupefying occupations and become dulled to all serious phenomena of life, and one-sided and completely self- satisfied specialists, who know only how to twirl their legs, their tongues, or their fingers. But tliis is not enough. I remember I was once present at the rehearsal of one of the most common modern operas, which is given in all the theatres of Europe and of America. I came after the first act had begun. In order to reach the auditorium I had to cross behind the curtain. I was Jed through dark corridors and passages in the basement WHAT IS ART? ' 137 of an enormous building, past enormous machines for the change of the scenery and for iUumination, where in the darkness and dust I saw men working at something. One of these labourers, with a gray, lean face, dressed in a dirty blouse, with dirty working hands with sprawling fingers, apparently tired and dissatisfied with somethiug, passed by me, angrily rebuking some one. Ascending a dark staircase, I entered the stage beliind the curtain. Among scenery lying in heaps, curtains, and some kind of poles, were standing abou^ and moving, tens, if not hundreds, of painted and dressed-u;^ men in costumes fitting tightly over their thighs and calves, and women with their bodies bared as much as always. All these were singers, choir- men and girls, and ballet-dancers, waiting for their turn. My guide led me across the stage and across a plank bridge over the orchestra, where sat about a hundred musicians of every description, from cymbals to flute an'", harp, into the dark parterre. On an elevation between two lamps with reflectors, the leader of the musical part, directing the orchestra and the singers and the whole getting up of the opera in general, wac sitting on a chair before a desk, holding the baton in his hand. When I came, the performance had already?' begun, and on the stage they were representing the procession of In- dians bringing a bride. Besides the masquerading men and women, two men in frock coats were running up and down the stage : one, the manager of the dramatic pert, and the other, who was stepping with extraordinary light- ness in his soft boots and running from one place to another, the teacher of dancing, who received a monthly salary which was greater than what ten workmen receive in a year. These three chiefs arranged the singing, the orchestra, and the procession. The procession was being performed, as always, by pairs with tin-foil halberds on their shoul- ders. AH came out from one spot and walked in a circle 138 WHAT IS ART? and again in a circle, and then stopped. The procession was long in getting into shape; now the Indians with the halberds came out too late, now too early ; now they came out in time, but crowded too much in goiug out, and now they did not crowd, but did not take up the right positions at the sides of the stage, and every time every- thing stopped and began anew. The procession began with a recitative of a man dressed up as a Turk or some- thing like that, who, opening his mouth in a strange manner, sang out, "I accompany the bri-i-ide." After smging he waved his arm, — which, of course, was bare, — under his mantle. And the procession begins, but the French horn does something wrong in a chord of the recitative, and the director, shivering as though from a misfortune which has happened to him, strikes the desk with his baton. Everything comos to a stop, and the director, turning to the orchestra, attacks the French horn, scolding him with the coarsest of words, such as cabmen curse with, because he did not take the right note. And again everything begins from the beginning. The Indians with the halberds come out again, stepping softly in their strange foot- gear, and again the singer sings, " I accompany the bri-i- ide." But here the pairs stand too close. Again a rap witli the baton, and scolding, and again from the begin- ning. Again, " I accompany the bri-i-ide ; " again the same motion with the bared arm from under the mantle, and the pairs, stepping softly with their halberds on their shoulders, some of them with serious and sad faces, others chatting and smiling, stand around and begin to sing. Everything, it would seem, is well, but again there is a rap with the baton, and the director begins with a suf- fering and furious voice to scold the men and the girls of the choir : it turns out that during the singing some members of the choir have not raised their hands now and then in sign of animation. WHAT IS ART? 139 " Are you dead, eh ? Cows ! Are you dead that you do not move ? " Again from the beginning, again, "I accompany the bri-i-ide," and again the choir-girls sing with gloomy faces, and now one, and now another raises her hand. But two choir-girls are talking to each other, — again an energetic rap of the baton. " Have you come here to talk ? You can gossip at home. You there, in the red pants, stand nearer. Look at me. from the beginning." Again, "I accompany the bri-i-ide," — and so it lasts an hour, two, three hours. Every such rehear.sal lasts six hours in succession. Eaps with baton, repetitions, trans- positions, corrections of the singers, of the orchestra, of the procession, of the dances, and everything seasoned with choice curses. Words, like " ass, stupids, idiots, swine," directed to the musicians and the singers, I heard some- thing like forty times during one hour. And the unfor- tunate, physically and morally distorted man, — the flute, the French horn, the singer, — to whom these curses are directed, is silent and does what he is commanded, — he repeats twenty times, " I accompany the bri-i-ide," and twenty times sings the same phrase, and again marches in his yellow shoes, with the halberd across his shoulders. The director knows that these people are so distorted that they are not good for anything but blowing the horn and walking with a halberd and in yellow shoes, and that at the same time they have become accustomed to a pleas- ant, luxurious life, and will endure everything, rather than be deprived of this pleasant life, — and so he calmly abandons himself to his vulgarity, the more so since he saw this in Paris and in Vienna and knows that the best directors do so and that this is the musical tradition of great artists, who are so much absorbed in the great work of their art that they have no time to analyze the feel- ings of the artists. l40 WHAT IS ART? It is difficult to find a more disgusting spectacle. I have seen at the unloading of merchandise one labourer curse another for not having supported a weight which was pressing down upon him, or at the harvest an elder scolding a labourer for rounding up a stack badly, when the labourer would submissively listen in silence. No matter how disagreeable it is to see this, the unpleasant feeling is mitigated by the consciousness that here a necessary and important work is being done and that the mistake for which the boss is scolding the labourer may have spoiled the necessary work. But what is being done here, and for what purpose, and for whom ? It is very likely that he, the director, is himself worn out like that labourer ; it is even evident that he is exhausted, — but who compels him to wear himself out ? Yes, and for what purpose does he wear himself out ? The opera which they were rehearsij ig was one of the most common operas for those who are used to them, but one of the greatest insipidities that one can imagine : The King of India wants to get married ; they bring a bride to him, and be dresses himself up as a singer, the bride falls in love with the presumptive singer and is in despair, and then discovers that the singer is the king himself, and all are very much satisfied. There cannot be the slightest doubt that there never have been, and never could have been, such Indians, and that what they represented not only did not resemble any Indians, but did not even resemble anything in the world, except other operas ; that nobody expresses his feehngs in a recitative and in quartettes, standing at a certain distance and waving his hand ; that no one walks with tin-foil halberds, in slippers, in pairs, except in the theatre ; that nobody gets angry like that, or makes love, or smiles, or weeps like that, and that no one in the world can be touched by all these performances. Involuntarily there arises the question : For whom is WHAT IS ART? 141 all this being done ? Whom can it please ? If now and then there is a good motive in the opera, which it would give pleasure to hear, it would be possiljle to sing the opera simply, without these stupid costumes, and processions, and recitatives, and wavings of the hand. But the ballet, in which half-naked women make lascivious evolutions and intertwine in all kinds of sensual garlands, is simply an immoral performance. And so it is hard to make out for whom all this is intended. To an educated man it is intolerable and annoying ; to a real working man it is com- pletely incomprehensible. It can please only those, and doubtfully even them, who have fiUed themselves with the spirit of gentlemen, but who are not yet satiated with gentlemanly pleasures, — corrupt artisans, who wish to testify to their culture, and young lackeys. And all this abominable stupidity is not only not prepared with good-natured merriment and with simplicity, but with fury and beastly cruelty. They say that this is done for art, and that art is a very important matter. But is it true that this is art, and that art is such an important matter, that such sacri- fices may be brought to it ? This question is especially important, because the art, for the sake of which the labours of milhons of men and even the lives of men and, above all else, love among men are sacrificed, becomes in the consciousness of men something more and more obscure and indefinite. Criticism, in which heretofore the lovers of art found a support for their judgments about art, has of late become so contradictory that, if we omit from the sphere of art everything which the critics of the various schools do not recognize as possessing the right of belonging to art, there will be hardly anything left in art. Like the theologians of the various sects, so the artists of the various denominations exclude and destroy one an- other. Listen to the artists of the modern schools, and you 142 WHAT IS AKT? will see in all branches one set of artists denying the rest : in poetry, — the old romanticists, denying the Parnassians and the decadents ; the Parnassians, denying the roman- ticists and the decadents ; the decadents, denying all their predecessors and the symhoHsts ; the symbolists, denying all their predecessors and the Magi ; and the Magi, deny- ing all their predecessors ; in the novel, — the naturalists, psychologists, naturists, denying one another. The same is true of painting and of music. Thus art, which absorbs the enormous labours of the nation and of human lives, and which impairs the love among them, is not only nothing clearly and firmly defined, but is also understood so contradictorily by its lovers that it is hard to say what indeed is meant by art, and especially by good, useful art, such tliat in the name of it there may be brought those sacrifices which are made for it. n. For every ballet, circus, opera, operetta, exhibition, painting, concert, printing of a book, we need the strained labour of thousands and thousands of men, who under pressure perform what frequently is destructive and debasing work. It would be well if the artists did all their work them- selves, but as it is, they need the aid of workmen, not only for the production of the art, but also for their for the most part luxurious existence, and in one way or another they receive it either in the form of pay from rich people, or in the form of subsidies from the govern- ment, which are given them by the million for theatres, conservatories, academies. This money is collected from the masses, whose cows are sold for this purpose and who never enjoy these lesthetic pleasures which art gives them. It was well for the Greek or the Eoman artist, or even for our artist of the first half of our century, when there were slaves and it was considered right that there should be, with a calm conscience to make men serve him and his pleasure ; but in our time, when in all men there is at least a faint consciousness of the equality of all men, it is impossible to make people work for art against their will, without having first decided the question whether it is true that art is such a good and important thing that it redeems this violence. Otherwise it is terrible to consider that it may very easily happen that terrible sacrifices in labour, in human 143 144 WHAT IS AKT? life, in morality, are made for art's sake, while art not only fails to be useful, but is even harmful. And so for a society, amidst which the productions of art arise and are supported, it is necessary to know whether all is really art which is given out as such, and whether all that which is art is good, as it is considered to be in our society, and whether, if it is good, it is impor- tant and deserves all those sacrifices which are demanded in its name. And still more indispensable is it for every artist to know this, in order that he may be assured that everything which he does has a meaning, and is not an infatuation of that small circle of men among whom he is living, evoking in him a false conviction that he is doing something good and that what he is taking from other people in the form of support for his for the most part luxurious life will be paid by those productions over which he is working. And so the answers to these ques- tions are of particular importance in our time. What, then, is this art which is considered so important and so indispensable for humanity that for it may be made those sacrifices, not only of labour and of human lives, but also of the good, which are made for it ? What is art? How is this, — what is art? Art is architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry in all its forms, will be the answer of the average man, of the lover of art, or even of the artist himself, assuming that what he is talking about is clearly and universally under- stood by all men. But in architecture, you will say, there are simple structures, which do not form the object of art, and, besides, structures which make a pretence of being objects of art, unsuccessful, monstrous structures, which, therefore, cannot be acknowledged to be objects of art. Where, then, is the sign of the object of art to be found ? The same is true of sculpture, and of music, and of poetry. Art in all its forms borders, on the one hand, WHAT IS ART? 145 on what is practically useful ; on the other, on attempts at art which are failures. It seems to him that all this has been decided long ago and is well known to all. "Art is an activity which manifests beauty," such an average man will say. " But if art consists in this, is a ballet, an operetta, also art ? " you will ask. "Yes," the average man will answer, but with some hesitation. "A good ballet and a graceful operetta are also art, in so far as they manifest beauty." But if, without asking the average man any further as to how a good ballet and a graceful operetta differ from ungraceful ones, — questions which he would find it hard to answer, — if you ask the same average man whether the activity of the costumer and the wig-maker who adorn the figures and the faces of the women in the ballet and the operetta, and of the tailor Worth, the per- fumer, and the cook may be considered to be art, he in the majority of cases will reject the activity of the tailor, the wig-maker, the costumer, and the cook, as not belonging to the sphere of art. But in this the average man will be mistaken, for the very reason that he is an average man, and not a specialist, and has not busied himself with questions of aesthetics. If he busied himself with them, he would find in the famous Eenan, in his book. Marc Aurele, a discussion as to the tailor's art being art, and a statement that those men who in the attire of woman do not see the work of the highest art are very narrow and very stupid. " C'est le grand art," he says. Besides, the average man would find out that in many esthetics, as, for example, in the aesthetics of the learned Professor Kralik, Wcltschonlieit, Versuch einer allegemeinen JEsthetik, and in Guyau, Les proUemes de Vcsthetiquc, the costumer's art and the arts of taste and of feeling are recognized as being art. " Es folgt nun ein Fiinfblatt von Kiinsten, die der 146 WHAT IS ART? subjectiveii Sinnlichkeit entkeimen," says Kralik (p. 175). " Sie sind die astethische Behaudlung der flinf Sinne." These five arts are the following : Die Ivimst des Geschmacksinns, — the art of the sense of taste (p. 175). Die Kunst des Geruchsinns, — the art of the sense of smell (p. 177). Die Kunst des Tastsinns, — the art of the sense of feeling (p. 180). Die Kunst des Gehorsinns, — the art of the sense of hearing (p. 182), Die Kunst des Gesichtsinns, — the art of the sense of sight (p. 184). Of the first, the Kuust des Geschmacksinns, the follow- ing is said : " Man halt zwar gewohnlich nur zwei oder hochstens drei Sinne flir wiirdig, den Stoff kunstlicher Behandlung abzugeben, aber ich glaube, nur mit beding- tera Eecht. Ich will kein all zu grosses Gewicht darauf legen, dass der gemeine Sprachgebrauch manch andere Kiinste, wie zum Beispiel die Kochkunst, kenut. " Und es ist doch gewiss eine asthetische Leistung, wenn es der Kochkunst gelingt aus einem thierischen Kadaver einen Gegenstand des Geschmacks in jedem Sinne zu machen. Der Grundsatz der Kunst des Ge- schmacksinns (die weiter ist als die sogenannte Kochkunst) ist also dieser. Es soil alles Geniessbare als Sinnbild einer Idee behandelt werden und in jedesmaligem Ein- klang zur auszudriickenden Idee." The author recognizes, like Eenan, eine Kostlimkunst (p. 200), and other arts. The same is the opinion of the French writer, Guyau, who is highly esteemed by some writers of our day. In his book, Les proUemes de Vesthctique, he speaks seriously of the sensations of feeling, taste, and smell as being able to give aesthetic impressions. " Si la couleur manque au toucher, il nous fournit en WHAT IS ART? 147 revanche une notion, que I'ceil seul ne pent nous donner et qui a une valeur estli^tique considerable : celle du doux, du soyeux, du poli. Ce qui caracterise la beauts du velours, c'est le douceur au toucher, non moins que son brillant. Dans I'id^e, que nous nous faisons de la beauts d'une femme, la velout^ de sa peau entre comme ^l^ment essentiel. " Chacuu de nous probablement avec un peu d'attention se rappellera des jouissances du gout, qui out ^t^ des v^ritables jouissances esth^tiques." And he goes on to tell how a glass of milk drunk by him in the mountains gave him an aesthetic pleasure. Thus the conception of art as a manifestation of beauty is not at all so simple as it seems, especially now, when in this conception of beauty they include, as the modern aestheticians do, our sensations of feeling, taste, and smell. But the average man either does not know this, or does not wish to know it, and is firmly convinced that all questions of art are very simply and very clearly solved by recognizing beauty as the contents of art. To the average man it seems clear and comprehensible that art is the product of beauty ; and by beauty are all the questions of art solved for Mm. But what is beauty, which, according to his opinion, forms the contents of art ? How is it determined, and what is it? As in every other matter, the more obscure and compli- cated the conception is which is transmitted in words, the greater is the aplomb and self-assurance with which people use this word, making it appear that what is understood by the word is so simple and so clear that it is not worth while to talk of what it really means. Thus people generally act in reference to questions of religious superstition, and so people act in our time in reference to the concept of beauty. It is assumed that 148 WHAT IS ART? what is understood by the word " beauty " is known and comprehensible to all. At the same time this is not only unknown, but ever since, in the last 150 years, from the year 1750, when Baumgarten laid the foundation for aesthetics, there have been written mountains of books by most learned and profound men, the question as to what beauty is has remained completely open and with every new work on aesthetics is solved in a new way. One of the last books which, among others, I read on aesthetics, is a not at all bad little book by Julius Mithalter, called Miitsel des Schonen. The title quite cor- rectly explains the position of the question as to what beauty is. The meaning of the word " beauty " has re- mained an enigma after 150 years of discussion by a thousand learned men as to the meaning of this word. The Germaus solve the enigma in their own way, though in a hundred different manners. The physiological aisthe- ticiaus, especially the Englishmen of the Spencer-Grant Allen school, also decide it each in his own way ; the French eclectics and the followers of Guyau and Taine also decide it in their own way, and all these men know all the previous solutions by Baumgarten, and Kant, and Schelling, and Schiller, and Fichte, and Winkelmann, and Lessing, and Hegel, and Schopenhauer, and Hartmann, and Schasler, and Cousin, and L^veque, and so forth. What is this strange conception of beauty, which seems so comprehensible to those who do not think what they are saying, and on the definition of which all the philosophers of the various nations having all kinds of tendencies have been unable to agree for the past 150 years ? What is the concept of beauty on which the pre- vailing doctrine about art is based ? By the word " beauty " we understand in the Eussian language only that which pleases our vision. Although of late we have begun to speak of " ugly acts," " beautiful music/' this is not Russian. WDAT IS ART ? 119 A Eussian from among the masses, who does not know- any foreign languages, will not understand you, if you tell him that a man who gave another his last garment, or something like that, acted " beautifully," or, having cheated another, acted " ugly," or that a song is " beauti- ful." In Paissian an act may be good, or bad ; music may be agreeable and good, or disagreeable and bad, but it can- not be beautiful or ugly. Beautiful can be a man, a horse, a house, a view, a motion, but of acts, thoughts, character, music, if we like them very much, we can say that they are good, or bad, if we do not like them ; " beautiful " we can say only of what pleases our sense of vision. Thus the word and the concept of " good " includes the concept of " beautiful," but not vice versa: the concept of "beautiful" does not include that of " good." If we say " good " of an object which is valued for its external appearance, we say by this that it is also beautiful ; but if we say " beautiful," it does not at all designate that the object is good. Such is the meaning ascribed by the Eussian language, consequently by the Eussian national mind, to tlie words and the concepts of " good " and " beautiful." In all European languages, in the languages of those nations among which the teacliing of the beautiful is dis- seminated, as being the essence of art, the words " beau," " schon," " beautiful," " bello," having retained the mean- ing of beauty of form, have also come to signify goodness, that is, have come to take the place of " good." Thus, it is quite natural in these languages to employ expressions like " belle ame, schdne Gedanken, beautiful deed ; " but for the definition of the beauty of form, these languages have no corresponding word, and are obliged to use the combination of words, " beau par la forme," and so forth. Observation made on the meaning which the words 150 WHAT IS ART? " beauty," " beautiful," have, both in our language and in all the ancient languages, not excluding the European languages, particularly those of the nations among whom the sesthetical theory has been established, shows us that a special meaning, that of goodness, is ascribed to the word " beauty." What is remarkable in this is the fact that since we, the Russians, have come more and more fully to adopt the European views of art, the same evolution has been taking place in our language, and, with the greatest assur- ance and without surprising any one, people have begun to speak and to write of beautiful music and ugly acts and even thoughts, whereas forty years ago, in my youth, such expressions as " beautiful music " and " ugly acts " were not only unused, but even incomprehensible. It is evident that this new meaning, wliich by European thought is attached to beauty, is being adopted also by Russian society. In what, then, does this meaning consist? What is beauty, as understood by the European nations ? In order to answer this question, I shall quote here a small part of those definitions of beauty which are most current in the existing works on aesthetics. I beg the reader most earnestly not to feel wearied, but to read these quotations or, what would be better still, to read any scientific esthetics he may please. Leaving out the exten- sive works on ffisthetics by the Germans, it would be very well for this purpose to read the German work by Krahk, the English by Knight, and the French by L^- veque. It is indispensable to read some learned work on aesthetics, in order that one may form for oueseK a con- ception of the variety of opinions and of the frightful obscurity which reign in this sphere of opinions, and not take another person's word for it. This, for example, is what Schasler, the German sesthe- tician, says about the character of all esthetic inves- WHAT IS ART ? 151 tigations, in his famous, compendious, and minute work on ivsthetics : " In hardly any other sphere of the philosophic sciences can we find such contradictory aud rude investigations and manners of exposition as in the sphere of aesthetics. On the one hand, there is an elegant phraseology, without any contents, distinguished for the most part by a most one-sided superficiality ; on the other, with an unquestion- able profundity of investigation aud wealth of contents, a repellent clumsiness of a philosophic terminology, which vests the simplest things in the garment of abstract learn- ing, as though to make them worthy of entering into the illuminated halls of the system, and, finally, between these two methods of investigation and exposition, a third, forming, as it were, a transition from one to the other, a metliod which consists in eclecticism, which foppishly displays now an elegant phraseology, and now a pedantic learning. . . . But a form of exposition which may not fall into any one of the three faults, but may be truly concrete and with its essential contents may express its meaning in a clear and popular philosophic language, is nowhere to be met with less frequently than in the sphere of aesthetics." ^ It is sufficient to read Schasler's own book, in order to become convinced of the justice of his opinion. " II n'y a pas de science," says of the saine subject Veron, a French writer, in the introduction to his very good work on aesthetics, " qui ait €t^ de plus, que I'esth^-. tique, Hvr^e aux reveries des metaphysiciens. Depuis Platon jusqu'aux doctrines officielles de nos jours, on a fait de I'art je ne sais quel amalgame de fantaisies quintes- sencit^es et de myst^res transcendentaux, qui trouvent leur expression supreme dans le conception absolue du beau ideal prototype immuable et divin des choses r^elles." ^ 1 Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der ^sthetik, 1872, i. p. xiii. All notes in What Is Art? are the author's. 2V6ron, L'estMtique, 1878, p. v. 152 WHAT IS AST ? This opinion is the more correct, as the reader will convince himself, if he takes the trouble to read the following definitions of beauty, which I quote from the chief authors on aesthetics. I will uot quote the definitions of beauty which are ascribed to the ancients, to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, down to Plotinus, because, in reality, there did not exist with the ancients that definition of beauty, distinct from goodness, w^iich forms the foundation and aim of aesthetics in our day. In adapting the opinions of the ancients about beauty to our concept, as they generally do in works on esthetics, we attribute to the words of the ancients a meaning which they did not have (see concern- ing this the beautiful book of B^nard, Lesthetiquc d'Aris- tote, and Walter's Geschichte der ^sthetik im Alterthum). III. I "WILL begin with the founder of aesthetics, Baumgarten (1714-62). According to Baumgarten/ the subject of logical cogni- tion is truth ; the subject of aesthetic (that is, sensuous) cognition is heauty. Beauty is the perfect (absolute), which is cognized by feeling. Truth is the perfect, which is cognized by reason. Goodness is the perfect, which is attained through moral will. Beauty is, according to Baumgarten, defined by the correspondence, that is, order of parts in their mutual relation among themselves and in their relation to the whole. The aim of beauty itself is to please and excite desire (Wohlgefallen und Erregung eines A^erlangens), — a proposition which, according to Kant, is directly opposed to the chief quality and sign of beauty. In respect to the manifestation of beauty, Baumgarten assumes that the highest realization of beauty we recognize in Nature, and so the imitation of Nature, according to Baumgarten, is the highest problem of art (a proposition which is directly opposed to the opinions of the later aestheticians). Omitting the less remarkable followers of Baumgarten, Meyer, Eschenburg, Eberhard, who modify their teacher's opinions but a little, by separating what is agreeable from what is beautiful, I quote the definitions of beauty in the authors who appeared immediately after Baumgarten, and who defined beauty quite differently. These writers were Schutz, Sulzer, Mendelssohn, Moritz. These writers rec- iSchasler, 76. p. 361. 153 154 WHAT IS ART? ognize, in contradistinctiou to Baumgarten's proposition, that the aim of art is not beauty, but goodness. Thus Sulzer (1720-79) says that only that which contains the good in itself may be recognized as beautiful. Ac- cording to Sulzer, the aim of the whole life of humanity is the good of the social life. It is obtained through the education of the moral sentiment, and art must be sub- jected to this aim. Beauty is that which evokes and educates this feeling. Almost in the same way does Mendelssohn (1729- 36) understand beauty. Art, according to Mendelssohn,^ is the elevation of what is beautiful, as cognized by a dim feeling, to what is true and good. But the aim of art is moral perfection. For the sestheticians of this school the ideal of beauty is a beautiful soul in a beautiful body. Thus in these sestheticians is completely wiped out the division of the perfect (the absolute) into its three forms, — truth, good- ness, and beauty, and beauty is again united with goodness and truth. But such a conception of beauty is not supported by the later sestheticians ; there appears Winkelmann's ses- thetics, which is again totally opposed to these views, which in a most decisive and sharp manner separates the problems of art from the aims of goodness, and which sets up as the aim of art external and even nothing but plastic art. To these opinions also hold Lessing and later Gothe. According to Wmkelmann's (1717-67) work, the law and aim of every art is nothing but iDcauty, quite distinct and independent of goodness. Now, beauty is of three kinds : (1) the beauty of forms, (2) the beauty of the idea, which finds its expression in the position of the figure (in relation to plastic art), and (3) the beauty of ex- pression, which is possible only in the presence of the first two conditions ; this beauty of expression is the highest 1 lb. p. 369. WUAT IS ART ? 155 aim of art, and is realized in antique art, for which reavSon modern art must strive to imitate antiquity.^ Beauty is similarly understood by Lessiug, Herder, then Gothe, and all the prominent a-stheticians of Germany up to Kant, with which time there begins an entirely differ- ent comprehension of art." •In England, France, Italy, Holland, there originated at the same time, independently of the writers of Germany, ffisthetical theories of their own, which are just as obscure and as contradictory, but all the a^stheticians, just like the Germans, who put at the base of their reflections the con- cept of beauty, understand beauty not as something not absolutely in existence, but more or less blending with goodness or having one and the same root with it. In England, almost at the same time with Baumgarteu, and even a little earlier, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Home, Burke, Hogarth, and others write about art. According to Shaftesbury (1670-1713) what is beauti- ful is harmonious and proportionable ; what is beautiful and proportionable, is true ; and what is at once both beautiful and true, is agreeable and good. Beauty, accord- ing to Shaftesbury, is cognized by the spirit only. God is the fundamental beauty, — beauty and goodness proceed from one source.^ Thus, according to Shaftesbury, though beauty is viewed as something distinct from goodness, it again blends with it into something indivisible. According to Hutcheson (1694-1744), in his Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virttte, the aim of art is beauty, the essence of which consists in the manifestation of unity in nniltiplicity. But in the cognition of what is beauty we are guided by the ethical instinct (" an internal sense"). Now this instinct may be opposed to the xs- thetical. Thus, according to Hutcheson, beauty no longer 1 lb. pp. 388-390. 2 Knight, The Philosophy of the iBeautiful, i. pp. 165-166. 156 WHAT IS ART? always coincides with goodness, and is separated from it and may be contrary to it.^ According to Home (1696-1782), beauty is that which is agreeable, and so beauty is determined only by taste. Now, the foundation of true taste rests on this fact, that the greatest wealth, fulness, strength, and variety of im- pressions are contained within most circumscribed limits. In this hes the ideal of the perfect production of art. According to Burke (1730-97), Eiiquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Suhlime and the Beautiful, the sublime and the beautiful, which form the aim of art, have for their foundation the feeling of self-preservation and the social feeling. These feelings, as viewed in their sources, are means for the preservation of the species through the individual. The first is attained through nu- trition, defence, and war ; the second, through communion and propagation. And so self-preservation and war, which is connected with it, are the source of the sublime ; the communal feeling and the sexual necessity, which is united with it, serve as the source of beauty.^ Such are the chief English definitions of art and beauty for the eighteenth century. At the same time Pfere Andr^, Batteux, Diderot, dAlem- bert, and Voltaire, in part, were writing in France on art. According to Pfere Andr^ {Essai sur le Beau) (1741), there are three kinds of beauty: (1) divine beauty, (2) natural beauty, and (3) artificial beauty .^ According to Batteux (1713-80), art consists in the imitation of the beauty of Nature, and its aim is enjoy- ment.* iSchasler, p. 289; Knight, pp. 168-169. ^Kralik, Weltschonheit, Versuch einer allgemeinen ^sthetik, pp. 304-806 ; p. 124. 3 Knight, p. 101. 4 8chasler, p. 316. WHAT IS ART? 167 Diderot's definition of art is similar to it. Taste is, as in the case of the English, assumed as the arbiter of what is beautiful. But the laws of taste are not only not established, but it is admitted that all this is im- possible. D'Alembert and Voltaire^ are of the same opinion. According to the Italian sesthetician of the same time, Pagano, art is the briugiiig together into one of the beau- ties scattered in Nature. The ability to see these beauties is taste ; the ability to unite them into one whole is the artistic genius. Beauty, according to Pagano, is so blended with goodness that beauty is manifesting good- ness, and good is inner beauty. According to the opinion of other Italians, Muratori (1672—1750), {Rifiessioni sopro il huon gusto intorno le scienze e le arti), and especially Spaletti^ (Saggio sopro la hellezza, 1765), art is reduced to an egoistical sensation which, as in the case of Burke, is based on the striving after self-preservation and the communal foeling. Among the Dutch we must note Hemsterhuis (1720- 90), who had an influence on the German sestheticians and on Gothe. According to his teaching, beauty is what offers the greatest enjoyment, and what offers us the gi'eatest enjoyment is what gives us the greatest number of ideas in the shortest possible time. The enjoyment of the beautiful is the highest cognition which man can attain, because in the shortest time possible it gives the greatest number of perceptions.^ Such were the theories of the aesthetics outside of Ger- many in the course of the past century. But in Germany there appears after Winkelmann again an entirely new aesthetic theory by Kant (1724—1804), which more than any other makes clear the essence of the concept of beauty, and so also of art. 1 Kaight, pp. 102-104. 2 Schapler, p. 328. 3 Schasler, pp. 331, 333. 158 WHAT IS ART? Kant's sesthetics is based on this: man, according to Kant, cognizes Nature outside himself, and himself in Nature. In Nature outside himself he seeks truth, in himself he seeks goodness, — one is the work of pure reason, the other — of practical reason (freedom). In addition to these two instruments of cognition, according to Kant, there is also the ability to judge (Urtheilskraft), which forms judgments without concepts and produces pleasure without desire (Urtheil ohne Begrift und Ver- gniigen ohne Begehren). This ability forms the basis of the aesthetic feeling. But beauty, according to Kant, in the subjective sense, is what pleases, without concep- tion or practical advantage, in general, of necessity ; in the objective sense it is the form of the suitable object in the measure in which it is conceived without any representation of its aim.^ Beauty is similarly defined by Kant's followers, among them by Schiller (1759-1805). According to Schiller, who wrote a great deal on aesthetics, the aim of art is, as with Kant, beauty, the source of which is enjoyment without any practical advantage. Thus art may be called a game, not in the sense of an insignificant occupa- tion, but in the sense of the manifestation of the beauty of life itself, which has no other aim than beauty.^ Next to Schiller, the most remarkable of Kant's fol- lowers in the field of sesthetics was Wilhelm Humboldt, who though he added nothing to the definition of beauty, expatiated on its various aspects, as the drama, music, humour, etc.^ After Kant, it is Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and their followers, besides less important authors, who have written on aesthetics. According to Fichte (1761-1814), the consciousness of the beautiful results from the fol- 1 76. pp. 525-528. 2 Knight, pp. 61-63. 8 Schasler, pp. 740-743. WHAT IS ART ? 169 lowing : the universe, that is, Nature, has two sides, — it is the product of our limitation and of our free ideal activity. In the first sense the universe is limited, iu the second it is free. In the first sense everybody is limited, distorted, compressed, narrowed, and we see ugliness ; in the second we see inner fulness, vitality, regeneration, — beauty. Thus the ugliness or the beauty of an object, according to Fichte, depends on the view-point of the observer. Thus beauty is not contained in the world, but in the beautiful soul (schoner Geist). Art is the mani- festation of this beautiful soul, and its aim is the educa- tion, not only of the mind, — that is the work of the scholar, — not only of the heart, — that is the work of the moral preacher, — but also of the whole man. And so the sign of beauty is found, not in something external, but in the presence of the beautiful soul iu the artist.^ With Fichte, Friedrich Schlegel and Adam Miiller define beaut}^ in the same way. According to Schlegel (1778-1829), beauty in art is understood in too incom- plete, one-sided, and disjointed a manner ; beauty is found not only in art, but also in Nature, in love, so that the truly beautiful is expressed in the union of art. Nature, and love. For this reason Schlegel recognizes, inseparable from aesthetic art, a moral and a philosophic art.^ According to Adam Miiller (1779-1829), there are two beauties : one — social art, which attracts men, as the sun attracts the planets, — this is preeminently the antique art, — and the other — individual beauty, which becomes such because the one who contemplates himself becomes the sun which attracts beauty, — this is the beauty of the new art. The world, in which all the contradictions are harmonized, is the highest beauty, and every production of art is a repetition of this universal harmony.^ The highest art is the art of life.* *G' 1 26. pp. 709-771. 2 lb. p. 87. 3 Kralik, p. 148. * lb. p. 820. 160 WHAT IS ART? The next philosopher after Fichte and his followers, and contemporaneous with him, was Schelling (1775— 1854), who had a great influence on the aesthetic concepts of our time. According to Schelling, art is the product or consequence of that world conception according to which the subject is transformed into its object, or the object itself becomes its subject. Beauty is the representation of the infinite in the finite. The chief character of the product of art is unconscious infinitude. Art is the union of the subjective with the objective, — of Nature and reason, of the unconscious with the conscious. Thus art is the highest means of cognition. Beauty is the contem- plation of things in themselves, as they are found in the basis of all things (in den Urbilderu). The beautiful is not produced by the artist through his knowledge or will, but by the idea of beauty itself in him.^ Of Schelling's followers the most noticeable was Solger (1780-1819) (Vorlesungcn iibcr JEsthetik). According to Solger, the idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of any- thing. In the world we see only the distortion of the fundamental idea, — but art through fancy may rise to the height of the fundamental idea. And so art is the similitude of creativeness.^ According to another follower of Schelling, Krause (1781-1832), true real beauty is the manifestation of the idea in the individual form ; but art is the realiza- tion of beauty in the sphere of the free human spirit. The highest degree of art is the art of life, which directs its activity to the adornment of life, so that it may be a beautiful place of abode for a beautiful man.^ After Schelling and his followers begins Hegel's aesthetic doctrine, wdiich, consciously in many and unconsciously in the majority, has remained new until the present. This doctrine not only fails to be clearer and more definite xSchasler, pp. 828-829, 834, 841. ^Ib. p. 891. 8/{>. p. 917. WUAT IS ART? 161 than the former doctrines, but, if that is at all possible, is even more hazy and mystical. According to Hegel (1770-1831), God is manifested in Nature and in art in the form of beauty. God expresses himself in a twofold manner, — in the object and in the subject, — in Nature and in the spirit. Beauty is the idea made transparent through matter. Truly beautiful is only the spirit and all that which partakes of the spirit : the beautiful has only spiritual contents. But the spiritual has to be manifested in a sensuous form ; and the sensuous manifestation of the spirit is only sem- blance (Schein). Tliis semblance is the only reality of the beautiful. Thus art is the realization of this sem- blance of the idea, and is a means, together with rehgion and philosophy, for bringing to consciousness and express- ing the profoundest problems of men and the highest truths of the spirit. Truth and beauty are, according to Hegel, one and the same : the only difference is that truth is the idea itself, in so far as it exists and is thinkable in itself. But the idea, as it is manifested without, becomes for conscious- ness, not only true, but also beautiful. The beautiful is the manifestation of the idea.^ After Hegel come his numerous followers, Weisse, Arnold Ruge, Rosenkranz, Theodor Vischer, and others. According to Weisse (1801-67), art is the intro- duction (Einbildung) of the absolutely spiritual essence of beauty into the external, dead, and indifferent matter, the concept of which, outside of the beauty introduced into it, represents in itself the negation of every existence for oneself (Negation alles Fiirsichseins). In the idea of truth, says Weisse, lies the contradiction of the subjective and the objective sides of cognition, in that the single ego cognizes the All-being. This contra- diction may be removed by the concept which would unite 116. pp. 946, 1085, 984-985, 990. 162 WHAT IS ART? into one the moment of universality and unity, which in the concept of truth falls into two parts. Such a concept would be truth harmonized (aufgehoben), — beauty is such har- monized truth.^ According to Euge (1802-80), a strict adherent of Hegel, beauty is a self-expressing idea. The spirit, con- templating itself, finds itself expressed, either in full, — and then this full expression of oneself is beauty, or not in full, — and then there appears in him the necessity of changing his incomplete expression, and then the spirit becomes creative art.^ According to Vischer (1807-87), beauty is the idea in the form of the limited manifestation. But the idea itself is not indivisible, but forms a system of ideas, wliich present themselves as an ascending and descending line. The higher the idea, the more beauty does it contain ; but even the lowest contains beauty, because it forms a neces- sary link of tlie system. The highest form of the idea is personality, and so the highest art is that which has the highest personality for its object.^ Such are the German theories of aesthetics in the one Hegelian direction ; but the aesthetic considerations are not exhausted with this : side by side with the Hegelian theories there appear simultaneously in Germany theories of beauty which not only do not recognize Hegel's propo- sitions in regard to beauty as the manifestation of an idea, and of art as an expression of this idea, but which are even directly opposed to this view, and which deny and ridicule it. Such are those of Herbart and especially Schopenhauer. According to Herbart (1776-1841), there is no beauty in itself, and there can be none ; but what there is, is our judgment, and it is necessary to discover the foundations of this judgment (a^sthetisches Elementarurtheil). And these foundations of judgments are found in the relation 1 16. pp. 966, 955-956. ^Ib. 1017. »Ib. pp. 1065-1066. WHAT IS ART? 163 of impressions. There are certain relations, which we call beautiful, and art consists in finding these relations, which are coexisting in painting, plastic art, and architec- ture, and consecutive and coexisting in music, and only consecutive in poetry. In opposition to former aestheti- cians, beautiful objects are, according to Herbart, frequently such as express absolutely nothing, as, for example, the rainbow, which is beautiful on account of its Hne and colours, and by no means in relation to the significance of its myth, as Iris, or Noah's rainbow.^ Another opponent of Hegel was Schopenhauer, who rejected Hegel's whole system and his aesthetics. According to Schopenhauer (1788-1860), the will ob- jectifies itself in the world at various stages, and, although the higher the degree of its objectivation is, the more beautiful it is, each degree has its beauty. The renuncia- tion of one's individuality and the contemplation of one of these degrees of the manifestation of the will give us the consciousness of beauty. All men, according to Schopenhauer, possess the ability to cognize this idea at its various stages and thus to free themselves for a time from their personality. But the genius of the artist has this ability in the highest degree, and so manifests the highest beauty.^ After these more prominent authors there follow in Germany less original ones, who had less influence, such as Hartmann, Kirchmann, Schnasse, Helmholtz partly (as an sesthetician), Bergmann, Jungmann, and an endless number of others. According to Hartmann (1842), beauty does not lie in the external world, not in the thing itself, nor in man's soul, but in what is seeming (Schein), which is produced by the artist. The thing in itself is not beautiful, but the artist changes it into beauty.^ 176. pp. 1097-1100. 2J6. pp. 1124, 1107. 3 Knight, pp. 81-82. 164 WHAT IS ART? According to Schnasse (1798-1875), there is no beauty in the world. In Nature there is but an approximation to it. Art gives what Nature cannot give. Beauty is manifested in the activity of the free ego, which is con- scious of a harmony that does not exist in Nature.^ Kirchmann wrote a whole experimental aesthetics. According to Kirchmann (1802-84), there are six spheres of history : (1) the sphere of knowledge, (2) the sphere of wealth, (3) the sphere of morality, (4) of religion, (5) of politics, and (6) of beauty. The activity in this sphere is art.^ According to Helmholtz (1821), who wrote of beauty in relation to music, beauty is attained in a musical com- position invariably only through following the laws, — but these laws are unknown to the artist, so that beauty is manifested in the artist unconsciously, and cannot be subjected to analysis.^ According to Bergmann (1840), in his Ueber das Schone (1887), it is impossible objectively to determine beauty : beauty is cognized subjectively, and so the prob- lem of aesthetics consists in determining what it is that pleases this or that man.* According to Jungmann (died 1885), beauty is, in the first place, a suprasensible property of things ; in the second, beauty produces in us pleasure through mere contemplation ; in the third, beauty is the foundation of love.^ The French and the English theories of aesthetics and those of other nations for recent times are, in their chief representatives, the following : In France, the prominent authors on aesthetics for this time were : Cousin, Jouffroy, Petit, Ravaisson, L^veque. Cousin (1792-1867) is an eclectic and a follower of the German idealists. According to his theory, beauty has 1/6. p. «3. 2Schaslcr, p. 1122. 3 Knight, pp. 85-86. 4i6. p. 88. 6i6. p. 88. WHAT IS ART? 165 always a moral basis. Cousin refutes the proposition that art is imitation, and that the beautiful is that which pleases. He asserts that beauty may be determined in itself, and that its essence consists in diversity in unity .^ After Cousin, JoufFroy (1796-1842) wrote on aesthetics. Jouffroy is also a follower of German eesthetics and a disciple of Cousin. According to his definition, beauty is the expression of the invisible by means of visible signs, which make it manifest. The visible world is the gar- ment by means of which we see beauty .^ The Swiss Pictet,^ who wrote on art, repeats Hegel and Plato, assuming beauty to lie in the immediate and free manifestation of the divine idea which makes itself manifest in sensuous images. L^veque is a follower of Schelling and of Hegel. Ac- cording to L^veque, beauty is something invisible which is concealed in Nature. Force or spirit is the manifesta- tion of organized energy.^ Similarly indefinite judgments about the essence of beauty were uttered by the French metaphysician Eavais- son, who recognizes beauty as the final aim of the world. " La beaut^ la plus divine et principalement la plus parfaite contient le secret."^ According to his opinion, beauty is the aim of the world. " Le monde entier est I'oeuvre d'une beaut^ absolue, qui n'est la cause des choses que par I'amour qu'elle met en elles." I purposely do not tran"slate these metaphysical ex- pressions, because, no matter how hazy the Germans may be, the French, when they fill themselves with the con- tents of German books and imitate them, surpass them by far, as they unite into one the heterogeneous concepts and indiscriminately substitute one for the other. Thus, the French philosopher Renouvier, who also discusses 1 lb. p. 112. 2//,. p. no. sib. p. 118. * lb. pp. 123-124. ^ La pJiilosophie en France, p. 232. 166 WHAT IS ART? beauty, says : " Ne' craignons pas de dire, qu'uue v^rit^, qui ne serait pas belle, n'est qu'un jeu logique de notre esprit et que la seule v^iit^ solide et digne de ce nom c'est la beaute." ^ Besides these idealistic iiestheticians, who have written under the influence of German philosophy, Taine, Guyau, Cherbuhez, Coster, V^ron, have of late had in France an influence on the comprehension of art and beauty. According to Taine (1828-93), beauty is the mani- festation of the essential character of some important idea, which is more perfect than its expression in reality .^ According to Guyau (1854-88), beauty is not some- thing foreign to the object itself, nor a parasitical plant upon it, but the florescence itself of the being on which it is manifested. But art is the expression of rational and conscious life, which calls forth in us, on the one hand, the profouudest sensations of existence, on the other, the highest and most elevated of ideas. Art raises man from his personal life to the universal, not only through a participation in the same ideas and beliefs, but also through the same sentiments.^ According to Cherbuliez, art is an activity which (1) satisfies our inherent love of images (apparences), (2) introduces ideas into these images, and (3) ofi'ers enjoy- ment simultaneously to our feelings, our heart, and our reason. But beauty, according to Cherbuliez, is not inherent in the objects, but is an act of our soul. Beauty is an illusion. There is no absolute beauty, and that appears beautiful which to us seems to be characteristic and harmonious. According to Coster, the ideas of beauty, goodness, and truth are inborn. These ideas enlighten our intellect and are identical with God, who is goodness, truth, and 1 Du fondement de Vinduction. 2 Taine, Philosophic de Vart,!., 1893, p. 47. 8 linight, pp. 139-141. WHAT IS ART? 167 beauty. The idea of beauty includes the unity of essence, the diversity of the component elements, and order, which introduces unity into the diversity of the manifestations of life.i For completeness' sake I will quote a few more recent writings on art. La psychologie du Beau et de I'Art, by Mario Pilo (1895). According to Mario Pilo, beauty is the product of our physical sensations, and the aim of art is enjoy- ment, but this enjoyment is for some reason sure to be considered highly moral. Then Essais sur Fart contemporam, by H. Fierens- Gevaert (1807), according to whom art depends on its connection with the past and on the religious ideal which the artist of the present sets before himself, giving to his production the form of his individuality. Then Sar Peladan's L'art idealiste et mystique (1894). According to Peladan, beauty is one of the expressions of God. " II n'y a pas d'autre Eealit^ que Dieu ; il n'y a pas d'autre Verite que Dieu ; il n'y a pas d'autre Beauts que Dieu " (p. 33). This book is very fantastic and very ignorant, but it is characteristic on account of its proposi- tions and on account of a certain success which it has among the French youth. Such are the esthetics which were most current in France until recently, from which Veron's book, L'esthe- tique (1878), forms an exception on account of its lucidity and sensibleness ; although it does not precisely define art, it at least removes from aesthetics the hazy concept of absolute beauty. According to V^ron (1825-89), art is a manifesta- tion of feeling (Amotion), wliich is transmitted from with- out through combinations of lines, forms, colours, or through the consecutiveness of gestures, sounds, or words, which are subject to certain rhythms.^ 1 Knight, p. 134. ^L'estMUque, p. 106. 168 WHAT IS ART? In England the writers on aesthetics of this time more and more frequently define beauty, not by its character- istic properties, but by taste, and the question of beauty gives way to the question of taste. After Eeid (1704-96), who recognized beauty only in dependence on the person contemplating it, Alison, in his book. On the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790), proves the same. The same, but from another side, is affirmed by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the uncle of the famous Charles. He says that we find beautiful what in our conception is united with what we love. The same tendency is found in Eichard Knight's book. Ana- lytical Inquiry on the Principles of Taste (1805). The same tendency is to be found in the majority of the theories by the English iiestheticians. In the begin- ning of the present century, Charles Darwin in part, Spencer, Mozley, Grant Allen, Ker, Knight, were promi- nent writers in esthetics in England. According to Charles Darwin (1809-83), Descent of Man (1871), beauty is a sentiment which is not peculiar to man alone, but also to animals, and so also to man's ancestors. The birds adorn their nests and appreciate beauty in their mates. Beauty has an influence on mar- riages. Beauty includes the concept of various characters. The origin of the art of music is the call of the males for their females.^ According to Spencer (1820), the origin of art is play, a thought which was expressed before by Schiller. In the lower animals all the energy of life is spent on the sup- port and continuation of life ; but in man there appears, after the gratification of his needs, a surplus of strength. This surplus is used for play, which passes into art. Play is a simulation of the real act, — and so is art. The source of aesthetic enjoyment is : (1) what exercises the senses (vision or any other sense) in the completest 1 Knight, p. 238. WHAT IB ART? 169 manner, with the least loss and the greatest amount of exercise ; (2) the greatest diversity of sensations evoked, and (3) the union of the first two with the representation arising from it.^ According to Todhunter {The Tlieory of the Beautiful, 1872), beauty is infinite attractiveness, which we cognize with reason and with the enthusiasm of love. The recog- nition of beauty as such depends on taste and cannot be defined by anything. The only approximation to a defi- nition is the greatest culture of men ; but there is no definition of what culture is. The essence of art, of what moves us through lines, colours, sounds, words, is not the product of blind forces, but of rational forces striving, while aiding one another, toward a rational aim. Beauty is a harmonization of contradictions.^ According to Mozley {Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, 1876), beauty is found in the human soul. Nature tells us of what is divine, and art is the hieroglypliic expression of the divine.^ According to Grant Allen {Physiological Esthetics, 1877), the continuator of Spencer, beauty has a physical origin. He says that sesthetic enjoyment is due to the con- templation of the beautiful, and the concept of the beauti- ful results from a physiological process. The beginning of art is play ; with the surplus of physical forces man abandons himself to play, and with the surplus of recep- tive forces man abandons himself to the activity of art. Beautiful is that which gives the greatest excitation with a minimum of loss. The difference in the appreciation of the beautiful is due to taste. Taste may be educated. It is necessary to believe in the judgment of " the finest nurtured and most discriminative men," that is, those who are best capable to appreciate. These men form the taste of the future generation.* 1 16. 239-240. ^Ib. pp. 240-243. sib. p. 247. *Ib. 250-262. 170 WHAT IS ART? According to Ker [Essay on Philosophy of Art, 1883), beauty gives us the means of a full comprehension of the objective world without references to other parts of the world, as is inevitable for science. And so science destroys the contradiction between unity and multiplicity, between the law and the phenomenon, between the subject and the object, uniting them into one. Art is the manifestation and assertion of freedom, because it is free from the obscurity and incomprehensibility of finite things.^ According to Knight (^Philosophy of the Beautiful, II., 1893), beauty is, as with Schelling, the union of the ob- ject with the subject, an extraction from Nature of what is proper to man, and the consciousness in oneself of what is common to all Nature. The opinions on beauty and art which are quoted here by no means exhaust everything which has been written about this subject. Besides, every day there appear new writers on aesthetics, and in the opinions of these new writers there is the same enchanted obscurity and contradictoriness in the definition of beauty. Some from inertia continue Baumgarten's and Hegel's mystical aesthetics with various modifications, others transfer the question into the sub- jective sphere and seek for the bases of the beautiful in matters of art ; others — the testheticians of the very latest formation — find the beginning of beauty in phys- iological laws; others again discuss the question quite independently of the concept of beauty. Thus, according to Sully {Studies in Psychology and Esthetics, 1874), the concept of beauty is completely set aside, since art, accord- ing to Sully's definition, is the product of a permanent or passing subject, capable of affording active pleasure and agreeable impressions to a certain number of spectators or hearers, independently of the advantages derived from it.^ Ub. pp. 258-259. ^Ib. p. 243. IV. Now, what results from all these definitions of beauty as enunciated by the science of esthetics ? If we leave out of consideration the definitions of beauty, which are entirely inexact and do not cover the concept of art, and which assume it to lie, now in usefulness, now in fitness, now in symmetry, now in order, now iu proportion, now in smooth- ness, now in the harmony of the parts, now in unity, now in diversity, now in the vaiious combinations of these principles, if we leave out of consideration these unsatis- factory attempts at objective definitions, — all the lesthetic definitions of beauty reduce themselves to two fundamental conceptions: the first is this, that beauty is something which exists in itself, one of the manifestations of the absolutely perfect, — the Idea, the Spirit, the Will, God, — and the other — that beauty is a pleasure of a certain kind, experienced by us, which has no aim of personal advantage. The first definition was accepted by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and the philosophizing Frenchmen, Cousin, Jouffroy, Ravaisson, and others, not to mention the philosophical ?estheticians of secondary importance. The greater half of the educated people of our time hold to the same objectively mystical definition of beauty. This conception of beauty has been very popular, espe- cially among men of the former generation. The .second conception of beauty, as of a pleasure of a certain kind, derived by us, which has not for its aim any personal advantage, is preeminently popular among the English a'stheticians, and is shared by the other half, mainly the younger, of our society. 171 172 WHAT IS ART? Thus there exist, as indeed it cannot be otherwise, only two definitions of beauty: one — the objective, mystical definition, which blends this connection with the higher perfection, with God, — a fantastical definition, which is not founded on anything ; the other, on the contrary, is very simple and comprehensible, and subjective ; it considers beauty to be what pleases us (to the word " pleases " I do not add " without any aim, or advantage," because the word " pleases " naturally includes this absence of considerations of advantage). On the one hand, beauty is understood as something mys- tical and very elevated, but, unfortunately, something very indefinite, and so including philosophy, and religion, and life itself, as is the case with Schelling and Hegel and their German and French followers ; or, on the other hand, as it must be accepted, according to thfe definition of Kant and his followers, beauty is nothing but an unselfish en- joyment of a peculiar kind, which we experience. In this case, beauty, though, it seems to be very clear, is unfortu- nately again inexact, because it expands in another direc- tion, namely, it includes the enjoyments derived from drink, food, the touch of a tender skin, and so forth, as it is accepted by Guyau, Kralik, and others. It is true that, in following the evolution of the doctrine of beauty in aesthetics, we can observe that in the begin- ning, ever since the time when the science of aesthetics was established, there predominated the metaphysical definition of beauty, and that the nearer we approach our time, the more and more is there worked out an experi- mental definition, which of late has been assuming a phys- iological character, so that we meet with such aesthetics as V^ron's and Sully's, who try to get along entirely without the concept of beauty. But such sestheticians have very little success, and the majority, both of the public and the artists and the scholars, hold firmly to the concept of beauty as it is defined in the majority of the WHAT IS ART? 173 aesthetics, that is, as something mystical or metaphysical, or as some special kind of enjoyment. But what, in reality, is the concept of beauty to which the men of our circle and time hold so stubbornly in their definition of art ? Beauty in the subjective sense we call what furnishes us enjoyment of a certain kind. In the objective sense, we call beauty something which is absolutely perfect, and we accept it as such only because we derive from the manifestation of this absolute perfection a certain kind of enjoyment, so that the objective definition is nothing but a differently expressed subjective definition. In reality both concepts of beauty reduce themselves to a certain kind of pleasure derived by us, that is, we accept as beauty what pleases us, without evoking desire in us. It would seem that, with such a state of affairs, it would be natural for the science of art not to be satisfied with the definition of art as based on beauty, that is, on what pleases, and to seek a common definition, applical^le to all products of art, on the basis of which it would be possible to deter- mine the pertinency or non-pertinency of objects to art. But, as the reader may see from the extracts quoted by me from the ;esthetics, and still more clearly from the sesthetical works themselves, if he will take the trouble to read them, there is no such definition. All the attempts at defining absolute beauty in itself, as imitation of Nature, as fitness, as correspondence of parts, symmetry, harmony, unity in diversity, etc., either define nothing, or define only certain features of certain products of art and are far from covering everything which all men have always regarded as art. There is no objective definition of art ; but the existing definitions, both the metaphysical and the experimental, reduce themselves to a subjective definition and, however strange it may seem to say so, to this, that that is con- sidered to be art which manifests beauty ; but beauty is 174 WHAT IS ART? what pleases (without evoking desire). Many sestheticians have felt the insufficiency and weakness of such a defi- nition, and, in order to find a basis for it, have asked them- selves why this or that pleases, and have transferred the question of beauty to that of taste, as was done by Hutch- eson, Voltaire, Diderot, and others. But all the attempts at defining what taste is, as the reader may see from the history of aesthetics and from experience, cannot bring us to anything, and there is no explanation, and there can be none, as to why such and such a thing pleases one and does not please another, and vice versa. Thus the whole existing aesthetics does not consist in what one could ex- pect from the mental activity which calls itself science, — namely, in defining the properties and laws of art or of the beautiful, if this is the contents of art, or the property of taste, if taste decides the question of art and its value, and then in recognizing as art, on the basis of these laws, those productions which fit in with these laws, and in rejecting those which do not fit in with them ; — it con- sists in this, that, having come to recognize a certain kind of production as good, because it pleases us, we form a theory of art, according to which all the productions which please a certain circle of men should be included in this theory. There exists an artistic canon, according to which favourite productions are in our circle recognized as art (Phidias, Sophocles, Homer, Titian, Eaphael, Bach, Beethoven, Dante, Shakespeare, Gcithe, and others), and the aesthetic judgments must be such as to take in all these productions. Opinions as to the value and significance of art, which are not based on certain laws, according to which we consider tliis or that good or bad, but on this, whether it coincides with the canon of art, as established l)y us, are constantly met with in aesthetic literature. The other day I read a book by Volkelt : it is not at all bad. In discussing the demands of the mornl in the pro- ductions of art, the author says outright that the putting WHAT IS ART? 175 forward of demands of morality in art is wrong, and in proof of this he mentions that, if we were to admit this demand, Shakespeare's Bovico and Juliet and Gtithe's Wil- helm Mcister would not fit in with the definition of good art. But since both do enter into the canon of art, this demand is not right. And so, it is necessary to find a definition of art into which these productions would fit, and so Volkelt, in the stead of the demand of what is moral, places at the base of art the demand of what is important (Bedeutungsvolle). All existing aesthetics are composed according to this plan. Instead of giving a definition of true art, and then, judging from this, whether a production fits in with this definition, or not, or judging as to what is art, and what not, a certain series of productions, which for s©me reason please men of a certain circle, is recognized as art, and they invent a definition of art which would cover all these productions. A remarkable confirmation of this method I found lately in a very good book. History of Painting in the Nineteenth Century, by Muther. While approaching the description of the Preraphaelites, decadents, and sym- bolists, who have already been taken into the canon of art, he not only fails to have the courage to condemn this tendency, but is also zealously trying to expand his frame, so as to include in it the Preraphaelites, and decadents, and symbolists, who appear to him as a legitimate reac- tion against the excesses of naturalism. No matter what the madness in art may be, the moment it is accepted among the higher classes of our society, there is at once worked out a theory which explains and legitimizes this madness, as though there never existed periods in his- tory when in certain exclusive circles of men there was accepted and approved a false, monstrous, senseless art, which left no traces and was completely forgotten later on ; and what senselessness and monstrosity art may reach, especially when it knows that it is considered, as in our 176 WHAT IS ART? day, infallible, we may see from what is going on now in the art of our circle. Thus the theory of art, based on beauty and expounded in aesthetics and in dim outlines professed by the public, is nothing but the acknowledgment that that is good which pleased and still pleases us, that is, a certain circle of men. In order to define any human activity, we must under- stand its meaning and significance. But in order to understand the meaning and significance of any human activity, we must necessarily first of all view this activity in itself, in dependence on its causes and consequences, and not merely in relation to the pleasure which we de- rive from it. But if we acknowledge tlmt the aim of any activity is nothing but our enjoyment, and define it only in refer- ence to this enjoyment, this definition will obviously be false. The same took place in the definition of art. In analyzing the question of food, it will not occur to any one to see the significance of food in the enjoyment which we derive from its consumption. Everybody understands that the gratification of our taste can in no way serve as a basis for the definition of the value of food, and that, therefore, we have no right whatever to assume that those dinners with Cayenne pepper, Limburger cheese, alcohol, and so forth, to which we are accustomed and which please us, form the best human food. Similarly beauty, or what pleases us, can in no way serve as a basis for the definition of art, and a series of objects which afford us pleasure can by no means be a sample of what art ought to be. To see the aim and mission of art in the enjoyment which we derive from it, is the same as ascribing — as is done by men who stand on the lowest stage of moral development (savages, for example) — the aim and sig- nificance of food to the enjoyment which we derive from its consumption. WUAT IS ART? 177 Just as people who think that the aim and mission of food is enjoyment cannot learn the true meaning of eat- ing, so people who think that the aim of art is enjoyment cannot learn its meaning and destination, because to an activity which has its meaning in connection witli other phenomena of life they ascribe a false and exclusive aim of enjoyment. Men came to understand that the meaning of food is the nutrition of the body, only when they stopped regarding enjoyment as the aim of this activity. The same is true of art. Men will understand the meaning of art only when they will cease to regard beauty, that is, enjoyment, as the aim of this activity. The recognition of beauty, or of a certain kind of enjoy- ment which is derived from art, as the aim of art, not only fails to contribute the definition of what art is, but, on the contrary, by transferring the question into a sphere which is entirely alien to art, — into metaphysical, psy- chological, physiological, and even historical reflections as to why such and such a production pleases some, and such and such does not please them, or pleases others, makes this definition impossible. And as the reflection as to why one person likes a pear and another meat in no way contributes to the definition as to what the essence of nutrition consists in, so the solution of the questions of taste in art (to which the discussions about art are involuntarily reduced) not only fails to contribute to the elucidation of what that special human activity which we call art con- sists in, but makes this elucidation completely impossible. In reply to the questions as to what art is, for which the labours of millions of men, human lives themselves, and even morality are sacrificed, we received from the existing aesthetics answers which all reduce themselves to this, that the aim of art is beauty, — but beauty is recognized through the enjoyment which we derive from it, — and that the enjoyment from art is good and impor- tant, that is, that the enjoyment is good because it is an 178 WHAT IS ART? enjoyment. Thus, what is regarded as a definition of art is not at all a definition of art, but only a device for the justification of the existing art. And so, no matter how strange it may seem, in spite of the mountains of books written on art, there has so far not been made any exact definition of art. The cause of it is this, that at the basis of the concept of art they have been placing the concept of beauty. V. What, then, is art, if we reject the concept of beauty, which brings confusion into the whole matter ? The last and most comprehensible definition of art, which is inde- pendent of the concept of beauty, will be as follows : art is an activity, which arose in the animal kingdom from the sexual feeling and the proneness to play (Schiller, Darwin, Spencer), which is accompanied by a pleasurable excitation of the nervous energy (Grant Allen). This will be a definition of physiological evolution. Or: art is the manifestation from without, by means of lines, colours, gestures, sounds, words, of emotions experienced by man (V^ron). This will be an experimental defini- tion. According to the very latest definitions by Sully, art will be : " the production of some permanent object or passing action, which is fitted not only to supply an active enjoyment to the producer, but to convey a pleas- urable impression to a number of spectators or listeners quite apart from any personal advantage to be derived from it," In spite of the superiority of these definitions over the metaphysical definitions, which are based on the concept of beauty, these definitions are none the less far from being exact. The first, the definition of physiological evolution, is inexact, because it does not speak of the activity itself which forms the essence of art, but of the origin of art. The definition according to the physio- logical effect on man's organism is inexact, because many other human activities may be brought under this defini- tion, as is the case in the new aesthetics, in which the 179 180 WHAT IS ART? preparation of pretty garments and pleasant perfumes and even food is counted in as art. The experimental defini- tion, which assumes art to lie in the manifestation of emotions, is inexact, because a man may by means of lines, colours, sounds, and words manifest his emo- tions, without acting through this manifestation upon others, and then this manifestation wull not be art. The third definition, Sully's, is inexact, because with the production of objects supplying enjoyment to the producer and a pleasurable impression to the spectators and listeners without any advantage to them, may be classed the performance of sleight of hand and of gym- nastic exercises, and other activities, which do not form art, and, on the contrary, many objects, from which we derive a disagreeable impression, as, for example, a gloomy and cruel scene in a poetical description or in the theatre forms an unquestionable production of art. The inexactness of all these definitions is due to this, that in all these definitions, just as in the metaphysical definitions, the aim of art is found in the enjoyment derived from it, and not in its destination in the life of man and of humanity. In order exactly to define art, it is necessary first of all to cease looking upon it as a means for enjoyment, but to view art as one of the conditions of human life. In view- ing life thus, we cannot help but see that art is one of the means of intercourse among men. Every product of art has this effect, that the receiver enters into a certain kind of intercourse with the producer of art and with all those who contemporaneously with him, before him, or after him, have received or will receive the same artistic impression. As the word which conveys the thoughts and experi- ences of men serves as a means for the union of men, so also does art act. The peculiarity of this means of inter- course, which distinguishes it from intercourse by means WHAT IS ART? 181 of the word, consists in tliis, that by means of the word one man communicates his thoughts to another, while by means of art they communicate their feehngs to one another. The activity of art is based on this, that man, by receiv- ing through hearing or seeing the expressions of another man's feelings, is capable of experiencing the same feeling which was experienced by the man who expresses his feehng. Here is the simplest kind of an example : a man laughs, and another man feels happy ; he weeps, and the man who hears this weeping feels sad ; he gets excited and irritated, and another, looking at him, comes to the same state. A man with his motions, with the sounds of his voice, expresses vivacity, determination, or, on the contrary, gloom, calm, and this mood is communicated to others. A man suffers, expressing his suffering by means of groans and writhing, and this sufiering is com- municated to others ; a man expresses his feehng of delight, awe, fear, respect for certain objects, persons, phenomena, and other men are infected and experience the same feelings of delight, awe, fear, respect, for the same objects, persons, and phenomena. It is on this property of men to be infected by the feelings of other men that the activity of art is based. If a man infects another or others directly, immedi- ately, by his look or by sounds produced by him at the moment that he experiences the feeling ; or causes another man to yawn, when he himself is yawning, or to laugh or weep, when he himself is laughing or weeping over some- thing, or to suffer, when he himself is suffering, that is not yet art. Art begins when a man, with the purpose of conveying to others the feeling which he has experienced, evokes it in himself and expresses it by means of well-known external signs. 182 WHAT IS ART? Here is the simplest kind of a case : a boy, who, let us say, has experienced fear from having met a wolf, tells of this encounter and, in order to evoke in others the sen- sation which he has experienced, pictures himself, his con- dition before this encounter, the surroundings, the forest, his carelessness, and then the looks of the wolf, liis motions, the distance between him and the wolf, and so forth. All this, if during the recital the boy again lives through the sensation experienced by him, infects his hearers, and causes them to go through everything through which the narrator has passed, is art. Even if the boy did not see the wolf, but frequently was afraid of him, and, wishing to evoke in others the sensation of fear experi- enced by him, invented the encounter with the wolf and told of it in such a way that by his recital the same sen- sation was evoked in his hearers which he experienced in picturing the wolf to himself, this is also art. Similarly it will be art, when a man, having in reality or in his imagination experienced the terror of suffering or the charm of enjoyment, has represented these sensations on canvas or in marble, so that others are infected by it. And similarly it will be art if a man has experienced or imagined to himself the sensation of mirth, joy, sad- ness, despair, vivacity, gloom, or the transitions of these sensations from one to another, and has represented these sensations in words in such a way that the hearers are infected by them and pass through them just as he passed through them. The most varied sensations, the strongest and the weakest, the most important and the most insignificant, the worst and the best, so long as they infect the reader, spectator, hearer, form the subject of art. The feeling of self-renunciation and submission to fate or to God, as conveyed in the drama ; or of the ecstasy of lovers, as de- scribed in the novel ; or the feeling of lust, as represented in a picture ; or of vivacity, as communicated in a solemn WHAT IS ART? 183 march in music ; or of merriment, as evoked by a dance ; or of humour, as evoked by a funny anecdote ; or the sensation of quiet, as conveyed by yesterday's land- scape or cradle-song, — all this is art. The moment the spectators, the hearers, are infected by the same feeling which the composer experienced, we have art. To evoke in oneself a sensation which one has experi- enced before, and, having evoked it in oneself by means of motions, lines, colours, sounds, images, expressed in words, to communicate this sensation in such a way that others may experience the same sensation, — in this does the activity of art consist. Art is a human activity which consists in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, communicates to otliers the sensations experienced by him, so that other men are infected by these sensations and pass through them. Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of any mysterious idea, beauty, God ; it is not, the physi- ological ffistheticians say, a play, in which a man lets out the surplus of his accumulated energy ; it is not the manifestation of emotions by means of external signs ; it is not the production of agreeable objects, above all else, not an enjoyment, but a means for the intercourse of men, necessary for man's life and for the motion toward the good of the separate man and of humanity, which unites men in the same feelings. Just as, thanks to the ability of man to understand the ideas which are expressed in words, every man is able to find out everything which in the sphere of thought all humanity has done for him, is able in the present, thanks to the ability of understanding other men's thoughts, to become a participant in the activity of other men, and himself, thanks to this ability, is able to communicate to his contemporaries and to posterity those ideas which he has acquired from others and his own, which have 184 WHAT IS ART? arisen in him ; even so, and thanks to man's ability to he infected by other people's feelings through art, there is made accessible to him, in the field of sentiments, everythiug which humanity passed through before him, the senti- ments which are experienced by his contemporaries, the sentiments experienced by men thousands of years ago, and there is made possible the communication of his own sentiments to other people. If men did not have the ability of receiving all tbe thoughts which are communicated in words and which have been thought out by men who lived before him, and to communicate his ideas to others, they would be like animals and like Kaspar Hauser. If there did not exist man's other ability, to be infected by art, men would be almost more savage still, and, above all else, disunited and hostile. And so the activity of art is a very important activity, as important as the activity of speech, and just as universal. As the word acts upon us, not only in sermons, orations, and books, but also in every speech in which we commu- nicate our thoughts and experiences to one another, so art, in the broad sense of the word, penetrates all our life, but only a few manifestations of this art do we call art, in the narrower sense of this word. We are accustomed to understand under art only what we read, hear, and see in theatres, at concerts, and at exhibitions, — buildings, statues, poems, novels; But all this is only a very small part of that art by means of which we commune with one another in life. The whole human life is filled with products of art of every kind, from a cradle-song, a jest, mocking, adornments of houses, garments, utensils, to church services, solemn processions. All this is the activity of art. Thus, we call art in the narrower sense of the word not all human activity, which communicates feelings, but only such as we for some WHAT IS ART ? 185 reason segregate from this whole activity and which we invest with a special significance. Such a special significance all men have at all times ascribed to the activity which has conveyed feelings which arise from the religious consciousness of men, and this small part of all art has been called art in the full sense of this word. Thus art was looked upon by the men of antiquity, by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Thus art was looked upon by the Jewish prophets and by the ancient Christians ; thus it is also understood by the Mohammedans, and thus it is understood by the religious people of our time. Some teachers of humanity, like Plato in his RcpuUic, and the first Christians, and the Mohammedans, and the Buddhists, frequently denied all art. Men who look upon art in an opposite manner from the present view, according to which every art is consid- ered good so long as it affords enjoyment, have thought that art, in contradistinction to the word, which one may avoid hearing, is to such a degree dangerous by infecting people against their will, that humanity will lose much less if all art shall be expelled than when all arts shall be admitted. Such men, who have rejected all art, have obviously been wrong, because they have denied what cannot be denied, — one of the indispensable means of intercourse, without which humanity could not live. But not less wrong are the men of our European civilized society, circle, and time, who admit all art, provided it serves beauty, that is, affords men pleasure. Formerly men were afraid that among the subjects of art there might get such as corrupt people, and so it was all prohibited. But now they fear only lest they may lose some enjoyment, which art gives, and so protect every art. And I think that this latter error is much more gross than the first, and that its consequences are much more harmful. VI. But how could it have happened that that art itself, which in antiquity was either admitted or entirely de- nied, in our day began to be regarded as always good, if only it afforded pleasure ? This happened from the following causes. The appreciation of the value of art, that is, of the sensations which it conveys, depends on the comprehen- sion by men of the meaning of life, on what they see their good in, and on what they see the evil of life. But the good and the evil of life are defined by what is called religion. Humanity moves without interruption from the lower, less private, and less clear to the higher, less common, and clearer comprehension of life. And, as in all motion, there are advanced men in this motion, too : there are men who understand the meaning of life more clearly than others, and of all these advanced men there is always one who more lucidly, accessibly, and forcibly — in words and in his life — expresses this meaning of life. The ex- pression by this man of this meaning of life, together with those superstitious traditions and ceremonies which gener- ally group themselves about the memory of this man, is called religion. The religions are the indices of that higher comprehension of life, accessible at a given time and in a given society to the best advanced men, which all other men of this society invariably and inevitably approach. And so it is only the religions that have always served as a foundation for the valuation of men's sentiments. If the sentiments bring the men nearer to 186 WHAT IS ART? 187 the ideal indicated Ijy religion, agree with it, and do not contradict it, they are good ; if they remove men from it, do not agree with it, and contradict it, they are bad. If religion puts the meaning of hfe in the worship of the one God and in the performance of what is considered His will, the sentiments which arise from the love of this God and His law, as conveyed by art, — the sacred poetry of the prophets, the psalms, the narration of the Book of Genesis, — are good and elevated art. But everything which is opposed to it, hke the communication of the sentiments of the worship of foreign gods and of feelings which are not in agreement with the law of God, will be considered bad art. But if religion takes the meaning of life to be in earthly happiness, in beauty, and in force, the joy and alacrity of life, as conveyed by art, will be considered good art; but art which communicates the sentiment of effeminacy or dejection will be bad art, and so it was considered by the Greeks. If the meaning of life lies in the good of one's nation or in the prolongation of that life which one's ancestors have led, and in respect for them, then the art which conveys the sentiment of the joy of sacrifice to personal gods for the good of the nation or for the honour of the ancestors and the support of their traditions will be considered good art ; but the art which expresses sentiments which are contrary to it will be bad, and such it was considered to be by the Eomans and by the Chinese. If the meaning of life is in the hberation of self from the bonds of animality, the art which conveys sentiments which elevate the soul and debase the flesh will be good art, and such it is considered by the Buddhists, and everything w^hich conveys senti- ments which intensify the passions of the body will be bad art. Always, at all times and in every human society, there is a religious consciousness, common to all men of this society, of what is good and what bad, and this religious 188 WUAT IS ART? consciousness defines the worth of the sentiments con- veyed by art. And so with all nations the art which conveys sentiments arising from the religious conscious- ness common to the men of that nation has been recog- nized as good and has been encouraged ; but the art which conveys sentiments which do not agree with this religious consciousness has been considered bad and has been re- jected ; but all the remaining enormous field of art, by means of which men have intercourse among themselves, has not been at all appreciated and has been rejected only when it was contrary to the religious consciousness of its time. Thus it was with all the nations, — with the Greeks, the Jews, the Hindoos, the Egyptians, the Chi- nese ; and thus it was at the appearance of Christianity. The Christianity of the first times regarded as good products of art only such legends, hves of saints, sermons, prayers, songs, as evoked in men the feeling of love for Christ, a sentiment of meekness in contemplating his life, a desire to follow his example, a renunciation of the worldly life, humility, and love of men ; but all the pro- ductions which transmitted sentiments of personal enjoy- ments were regarded by it as bad, and so it rejected all pagan plastic art, permitting only symbolical plastic representations. Thus it was among the Christians of the first centuries, who accepted Christ's teaching, if not in its absolutely true form, at least not in the form corrupted by paganism, in which it was accepted later. But besides these Christians, there appeared, after the time of the wholesale conversion of the nations to Chris- tianity, by order of the authorities, — as was the case under Constantiue, Charlemagne, and Vladimir, — the ecclesiastic teaching, which was much nearer to paganism than to the teaching of Christ. And this ecclesiastic Christianity, which is quite distinct from the other, began, on the basis of its doctrine, to change the appreci- WHAT IS ART ? 189 ation of men's sentiments and the productions of the arts which conveyed them. This ecclesiastic Christianity not only did' not recognize the fundamental and essential propositions of true Christianity, — the immediate rela- tion of each man to the Father, and the brotherhood and equahty of all men, resulting from it, and the substitu- tion of humility and love for all kinds of violence, — but, on the contrary, by establishing a celestial hierarchy, similar to the pagan mythology, and a worship of this hierarchy, of Christ, the Holy Virgin, the angels, apostles, saints, martyrs, and not only of these divinities, but also of their representations, established as the essence of its teaching blind faith in the church and its decrees. No matter how foreign this doctrine was to true Chris- tianity, no matter how low it was, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but also with the world conception of such Romans as Julian and his like, — it was none the less for the barbarians who received this Christianity a higher teaching than their former worship of God, heroes, and good and bad spirits. And so this teaching was a religion for those barbarians who accepted it, and on the basis of this religion was the art of that time appreciated; the art which communicated a pious worship of the Holy Virgin, of Jesus, of saints, of angels, a blind faith and submission to the church, terror before the torments, acd hope in the bliss of the life beyond the grave, was considered good ; and the art which was contrary to it was all considered bad. The doctrine on the basis of which this art arose was the corrupted teaching of Christ, but the art which arose on this corrupted teaching was none the less true because it contributed to the religious world conception of the nation in which it originated. The artists of the Middle Ages, living by the same basis of sentiments, by the same religion, as the masses of the nation, and transmitting the sentiments and moods experienced by them in architecture, sculpture, painting, 190 WHAT IS ART ? music, poetry, the drama, were true artists, and their activity, being based on the highest comprehension acces- sible at the time and shared by the whole nation, may be low for our time, but is none the less true art, which is common to the whole nation. And so it was up to the time when there appeared in the highest, wealthy, more educated classes of European society a doubt about the truth of that comprehension of life which was expressed in the ecclesiastic Christianity. But where, after the Crusades, the higher development of the papal power, and its misuse, after the acquaintance with the wisdom of the ancients, the men of the wealthy classes saw, on the one hand, the rational clearness of the teaching of the ancient sages, and on the other, the lack of correspondence between the church doctrine and the teaching of Christ, they lost the power of believing, as before, in the church doctrine. Even though outwardly they preserved the forms of the church doctrine, they no longer were able to believe in it and held on to it only through inertia, and for the sake of the people, who continued to believe blindly in the church doctrine, and whom the men of the higher classes considered it indispensable for their own advantage to maintain in these beliefs. Thus the Christian teach- ing of the church ceased at a certain time to be a common religious teaching of the whole Christian people ; so the higher classes, those in whose hands was the power, the wealth, and so the leisure and the means for the production and encouragement of art, ceased to believe in the religious teaching of their church, while the people continued to believe in it blindly. The higher classes of the Middle Ages found them- selves as regards religion in the condition in which the cultured Eomans found themselves before the appearance of Christianity, that is, they no longer believed in what the people believed in ; they themselves had no faith WUAT IS ART ? 191 which they could put in the place of the church teach- ing, wliich had outhved and lost its significance. The only difference was this, that while for tlie Romans, who had lost their faith iu their gods, eiii- perors,_ and domestic gods, it was impossible to extract anything else from that complicated mythology which they had borrowed from all the conquered nations, and it was necessary to accept an entirely new world conception, — the men of the Middle Ages, who had come to doubt the truths of the church doctrine, did not have to look for a new faith. The Christian teaching, which in a distorted form they professed as the church faith, had outlined the path to humanity so far ahead that they needed only to reject those distortions which obscured the teaching revealed by Christ, and to make it their own, if not as a whole, at least in a small part of its whole meaning (but yet greater than what the church had made its own). Precisely this was partly done, not only by the reforms of Wyclif, Huss, Luther, Calvin, but also by the whole current of the non-ecclesiastic Chris- tianity, the representatives of which, in the first times, were the Paulicians and Bogomils, and later the Wal- deuses and all the other non-ecclesiastic Christians, the so-called sectarians. But this could be done, and was done, only by the poor, the men not in power. Only very few from the rich and powerful classes, like Francis d'Assisi and others, though this teaching destroyed their advantageous position, accepted the Christian teaching in all its significance. But the majority of the men from the higher classes, though in their hearts they had lost the faith in the church doctrine, were unable or unwill- ing to accept the Christian teaching because the essence of the Christian world conception which they would have to accept, iu rejecting the church faith, was the teaching of the brotherhood and so of the equality of men, aud such a teaching denied their privileges, by which they 192 WHAT IS ART ? lived, in which they had grown up and had been edu- cated, and to which they were used. As they, in the depth of their hearts, did not beheve in the church doc- trine which had outhved its age and no longer had for them a true meaning, and as they did not have the strength to accept the true Christianity, the men of these wealthy, ruhug classes, the Popes, kings, dukes, and all the mighty of the world, were left without any rehgion whatever, only with its external forms, which they sup- ported, considering this not only advantageous, but also indispensable for themselves, since this doctrine justified those privileges which they enjoyed. In reahty these men did not believe in anything, just as the Eomans of the first centuries did not believe in anything. At the same time the power and wealth was in their hands, and it is these men who encouraged art and guided it. Among these people there began to flourish art, which was valued, not to the extent to which it expressed the sentiments which arise from the religious consciousness of men, but only to the extent to which it was beautiful ; in other words, to the extent to which it afforded enjoyment. Being unable to believe any longer in the church re- ligion, since its lie was made manifest, and being unable to accept the true Christian teaching, which rejected their whole lives, these wealthy and ruling people, who were left without any religious conception of life, involuntarily turned to that pagan world conception which assumes the meaning of life to lie in enjoyment. And there took place in the higher classes what is called the " renascence of sciences and arts," which in reahty is nothing but the rejection of all religion, and even the recognition of its uselessness. The ecclesiastic, especially the CathoHc, faith, is a connected system which cannot be changed or mended without destroying it. The moment there arose a doubt as to the infallibility of the Popes, — and this doubt did WHAT IS ART? 193 at that time arise in all cultured men, — there inevitably arose a duubt also as to the truth of the Tradition. And the doubt as to the truth of the Tradition destroyed not only Popery and Cathohcism, but also the whole church faith, with all its dogmas, with the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, the Trinity, and destroyed the authority of the Scriptures, because the Scriptures were recognized as sacred because Tradition taught so. Thus the majority of the men of the higher classes of that time, even the Popes and clerical persons, in reality did not believe in anything. These men did not believe in the church teaching, because they saw its inadequacy ; but they were unable to recognize the .moral, social teach- ing of Christ, which was recognized by Francis d'Assisi, Chelcicky, and a few others, because this teaching des- troyed their pubhc position. And so these men were left without any religious world conception. And having no rehgious world conception, these men could have no stand- ard for the estimation of good and of bad art, except that of enjoyment. In recognizing as the standard of good- ness enjoyment, that is, beauty, the men of the highest classes of European society returned in their conception of art to the rude conception of the original Greeks, which already Plato had condemned. And the theory of art was formed among them in conformity with this com- prehension among them. VII. Ever since the men of the highest classes lost their faith iu the church Christianity, the standard of what is good and bad in art became beauty, that is, the enjoyment which is derived from art. And in conformity with this view on art, there naturally arose among the higher classes an aesthetic theory, which justified such a comprehension, — a theory according to which the aim of art consists in the manifestation of beauty. The followers of the esthetic theory affirm, in confirmation of its truth, that this theory was not invented by them, that it lies in the essence of things, and that it was accepted even by the ancient Greeks. But this assertion is quite arbitrary and has no other foundation than this, that with the Greeks, on account of the low stage of their moral ideal, as compared with the Christian ideal, the concept of goodness (t6 dyaOov) was not yet sharply distinguished from the concept of the beautiful (to Ka\6v). The highest perfection of goodness, which not only does not coincide with beauty, but for the most part is opposed to it, which the Jews knew even in the days of Isaiah, and which is fully expressed in Christianity, was altogether unknown to the Greeks ; they assumed that the beautiful must by all means be also tlie good. It is true, the advanced thinkers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, felt that goodness may not coincide with beauty. Socrates directly subordinated beauty to goodness ; Plato, in order to unite the two concepts, spoke of spiritual beauty; Aristotle demanded of art a moral action upon men (KaOapms), but 194 WHAT IS ART ? 195 none the less even these thinkers were unable fully to renounce the concept that beauty and goodness coincide. And so they began in the language of that time to use the compound word KaXoKayaQia (beauty and goodness), which expressed this union. The Greek thinkers apparently were beginning to ap- proach that concept of goodness which is expressed in Buddhism and in Christianity, and lost themselves in the establishment of relations of goodness and beauty. Plato's judgments about beauty and goodness are full of contra- dictions. This very confusion of ideas the men of the European world, who had lost all faith, tried to raise to a law, and they tried to prove that this union of beauty with goodness lies in the very essence of the matter, that beauty and goodness must coincide, that the word and the concept of KaXoKayaOia, which had a meaning for a Greek, but has no meaning whatever for a Christian, forms the highest ideal of humanity. On this misunder- standing was built the new science, — ai'sthetics. In order to justify this new science, the teaching of the ancients about art was so interpreted as to make it appear that this newly invented science, aesthetics, had already existed with the Greeks. In reality, the reflections of the ancients on art do not at all resemble ours. Thus, B^nard, in his books on the eesthetics of Aristotle, says quite correctly, " Pour qui veut y regarder de prfes, la th^orie du beau et celle de I'art sont tout-k-fait separ^s dans Aristote, com me elles le sont dans Platon et chez leurs successeurs." ^ Indeed, the reflections of the ancients on art not only fail to confirm our aesthetics, but rather reject its teaching of beauty. And yet it is affirmed in all aesthetics, begin- ning with Schasler and ending with Knight, that the science of the beautiful, aesthetics, was begun by the an- 1 B^nard, V estMtigue d' Aristote et de ses successeurs, Paris, 1789, 196 WHAT IS ART?. cients, by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and was continued in part by the Epicureans and Stoics, by Seneca, Plutarch, and up to Plotiuus ; but that by some unfortunate acci- dent this science suddenly disappeared in the fourth century, and for fifteen hundred years was absent and was regenerated, only after an interval of fifteen hundred years, in Germany, in the year 1750, in Baumgarten's teaching.^ After Plotinus, says Schasler, there pass fifteen centu- ries, during which time there is not the slightest scientific interest in the world of beauty and of art. These fifteen hundred years, he says, are lost for aesthetics and for the development of the scientific mood of this science. In reality there is nothing of the kind. The science of aesthetics, the science of what is beautiful, has never dis- appeared and never could have disappeared, because it never existed ; what did exist was this, that the Greeks, precisely like all other people, always and everywhere regarded art, like anything else, as good only when this art served goodness (as they understood goodness), and bad when it was opposed to this goodness. But the Greeks themselves were so little developed that goodness and beauty seemed to them to coincide, and on tbis obso- lete world conception of the Greeks is based the science of aesthetics, invented by men of the eighteenth century 1 " Die Liicke von fiinf Jahrhunderten, welche zwischen die kunst- philosophischeu Betrachtungen des Plato und Aristoteles und die des Plotins fallt, kann zwar auffiillig ersclieineu ; deunoch kann man eigentlicli uicht sagen, dass in diesei' Zwisclieuzeit iiberhaupt von astiietiscben Dingen nicht die Rede gewesen, oder dass gar ein volliger Mangel an Zusammenhang zwischen den Kunstauschauimgen des letztgenannten Philosophen und denen des ersteren existire. Freilich wurde die von Aristoteles begriindete Wissenschaft in Nichts dadurch gefordert ; immerhin zeigte sich in jener Zwischenzeit noch ein gewisses Interesse fiir asthetische Fragen. . . . Diese anderthalbtau- send Jahre, innerhalb deren der Weltgeist durch die mannigfachsten Kampfe hindurch zu einer vollig neuen Gestaltnng des Lebens sich durcharbeitete, sind fiir die Aesthetik, hinsichtlich des weiteren Aus- baues dieser Wissenschaft, verloren." (Schasler, p. 253.) WHAT IS ART? 197 and specially worked into a theory by Baumgarten. The Greeks never had any science of aesthetics (as any one may become convinced who will read B^nard's beautiful book on Aristotle and his followers, and Walter's on Plato). The aesthetic theories and the name of the science itself arose about 150 years ago among the wealthy classes of the Christian European world, and simultaneously among several nations, among the Italians, the Dutch, the French, the English. But its founder and establisher, who vested it in a scientific, theoretic form, was Baumgarten. With characteristically German external, pedantic cir- cumstantiality and symmetricalness he invented and ex- pounded this remarkable theory, and nobody's theory pleased so much the cultured masses, in spite of its startling baselessness, or was accepted with such readi- ness and absence of critical judgment. This theory was so much to the taste of the higher classes that, in spite of its complete arbitrariness and the insufficiency of its propositions, it is repeated by the learned and the un- learned as something indubitable and a matter of course. Hahent S2ia fata lihdli pro capitc lectoris, and even more separate theories hahent sua fata on account of the condition of error in which society is, amidst which and for the sake of which these theories are invented. If a theory justifies that false state in which a certain part of society happens to be, no matter how unfounded and even obviously false a theory may be, it is accepted and be- comes the faith of that part of society. Such, for example, is the famous unfounded theory of Malthus about the tendency of the population of the globe to increase in a geometric progression, while the means of subsistence increase in an arithmetic progression, and consequently about the overpopulation of the globe ; such also is the theory of the struggle for existence and of natural selec- tion, as the basis of human prepress, which has grown up on this theory. Such also is at present Marx's popular 198 WHAT IS ART? theory about the inevitableness of economic progress, which consists in the absorption of all private production by capitalism. No matter how unfounded such theories may be and how opposed they may be to everything which is known to humanity and is cognized by it ; no matter how immoral they may be, these theories are taken on faith without criticism, and are preached with impassioned bias, sometimes for centuries, until the conditions are destroyed which they justify, or the insipidity of the theories preached becomes too obvious. Such is the re- markable theory of the Baumgarteuian triad, Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, from which it turns out that the best that the art of the nations who have lived a Christian life for eighteen hundred years can do consists in choosing for the ideal of its life the one which two thousand years ago was held by a half-savage slave-holding little people, which very well represented the nudity of the human body and built handsome buildings. All these inconsistencies are not observed by any one. Learned men write long, hazy treatises on beautv as one of the members of the aesthetic triad of beauty, truth, and goodness. " Das Schoue, das Wahre, das Gute," " Le Beau, le Vrai, le Bon," with capi- tal letters, is repeated by philosophers, and iestheticians, and artists, and private people, and novelists, and writers of feuilletons, and it seems to all of them that, in pro- nouncing these sacramental words, they are speaking of something definite and firmly established, — something on which our judgments may be based. In reality these words not only have no definite meaning, but also are in the way of ascribing any definite meaning to the existing art, and are needed only in order to justify that false meaning which we ascribe to the art which transmits all kinds of sensations, so long as these sensations afford us pleasure. {\ We need but for a tim©: renounce the habit of consider- ing this triad as true as the religious Trinity, and ask WHAT IS AET? 199 ourselves what it is we all understand by the three words which form this triad, in order to convince ourselves beyond any doubt of the complete fantasticalness of the union of these three words and concepts, absolutely different and, above all, incommensurable in meaning, into one. Goodness, beauty, and truth are placed on one height, and all these three concepts are acknowledged to be fundamental and metaphysical. But in reality there is nothing of the kind. Goodness is the eternal, highest purpose of our life. No matter how we may understand goodness, our life is nothing but a striving after goodness, that is, toward God. Goodness is actually a fundamental concept which metaphysically forms the essence of our consciousness, a concept which is not definable by reason. Goodness is what cannot be defined by anything, but which defines everything else. But beauty, if we are not satisfied with words, but speak of what we comprehend, — beauty is nothing but what pleases us. The concept of beauty not only does not coincide with goodness, but is rather opposed to it, since goodness for the most part coincides with victory over bias, while beauty is the foundation of all our bias. The more we abandon ourselves to beauty, the more do we depart from goodness. I know that in reply to this we are always told that beauty may be moral and spiritual, but that is only a play of words, because by moral or spiritual beauty nothing but goodness is meant. Spiritual beauty, or goodness, for the most part, not only does not coincide with what we generally understand under beauty, but is even opposed to it. But as to truth, we can still less ascribe to this member of the imaginary triad either unity with goodness and beauty, or even any independent existence. 200 WHAT IS ART? What we call truth is only a correspondence of the expression or definition of the subject with its essence, or with all men's universal comprehension of the subject. Now what is there in common between the concepts of beauty and truth on the one side, and of goodness on the other ? The concepts of beauty and truth are not only not equal to that of goodness, not only do not form one essence with goodness, but even do not coincide with it. Truth is the correspondence of the expression with the essence of the subject, and so is one of the means for the attainment of goodness, but truth is in itself neither goodness nor beauty, and does not even coincide with them. Thus, for example, Socrates and Pascal, and many others, considered the cognition of truth about useless things incompatible with goodness. But with beauty truth has even nothing in common, and is, for the most part, opposed to it, because truth, which generally dispels deception, destroys illusion, the chief condition of beauty. And so the arbitrary union of these three incommen- surable and mutually alien conceptions into one has served as the foundation of that remarkable theory ac- cording to which there was completely wiped out the distinction between good art, which conveys good sensa- tions, and bad art, which conveys evil sensations ; and one of the lowest manifestations of art, the art for enjoyment only, — against which all the teachers of humanity have warned men, — began to be regarded as the very highest art. And art did not become that important work which it was destined to be, but an idle amusement for idle people. VIII. But if art is a human activity which has for its aim the conveyance to men of those highest and best sensa- tions which men have attained, how could it have happened that humanity shouki have passed a certain, sufficiently long period of its life, — ever since people stopped believ- ing in the church teaching and up to our time, — without this important activity, and should have been contented in its place with the insignificant activity of the art which affords only enjoyment ? In order to answer this question it is necessary first of all to correct a customary error which men make when they ascribe to our art the significance of a true universal art. We are so used naively to regard not only the Caucasian race as the very best race of men, but even only the Anglo-Saxon, if we are Englishmen or Ameri- cans, and the Germanic, if we are Germans, and the Gallo- Latin, if we are Frenchmen, and the Slavic, if we are Eussians, that we, in speaking of our art, are fully con- vinced that our art is not only true, but even the best and only art, just as the Bible was regarded as the only book. But our art is not only not the only art, but is not even the art of the whole Christian humanity, but only the art of a very small division of this part of humanity. It was possible to talk of a national — Jewish, Greek, Egyptian — art, and now it is possible to speak of Chinese, Japa- nese, Hindoo art, which is common to the whole nation. Such art, common to the whole people, existed in Eussia before Peter, and such also existed in the European socie- ties of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ; but from 201 202 WHAT IS ART? the time that the men of the higher classes of European society, having lost the faith in the church teaching, did not accept true Christianity, and remained without any faith, it is impossible to speak of the art of the higher classes of the Christian nations, meaning by it all art. Ever since the higher classes of the Christian nations lost their faith in the ecclesiastic Christianity, the art of the higher classes separated from the art of the whole people, and there grew up two arts : popular art and lordly art. And so the answer to the question as to how it could have happened that humanity should have passed a certain period of time without true art, substituting for it an art which serves only for enjoyment, consists in this, that it is not all humanity, nor even a considerable part of it, but only the higher .classes of the Christian European society, that has hved without true art, and that, too, for but a comparatively short period of time. As the consequence of this absence of true art there took place what could not help but take place, — the cor- ruption of that class which made use of this other art. All the complicated, incomprehensible theories of art, all the fallacious and contradictory judgments about it, and, above all else, that self-confident stagnation of our art on this false path, — all that is due to this assertion, which has entered into universal use and is accepted as un- doubted truth, but is striking on account of its obvious fallacy, that the art of our higher classes is all art, the true and exclusively universal art. In spite of the fact that this assertion, which is quite identical with the assertions of religious people of various denominations who think that their religion is the one true religion, is quite arbitrary and obviously incorrect, it is calmly repeated by all tlie men of our circle, with full confidence in its infallibility. The art which we possess is all the art, the true, the one art, but at the same time not only two-thirds WHAT IS ART? 203 of the human race, all the nations of Asia, of Africa, hve and die without Ivuowing this one, higher art, but, more- over, in our Christian society hardly one hundredth part of the men make use of that art which we call all art; the other ninety-nine hundredths of our own European na- tions live and die for generations in tense labour, without ever tasting of this art, which, besides, is such that, even if they were able to make use of it, they would not under- stand anything about it. We, according to the assthetics professed by us, acknowledge that art is either one of the highest manifestations of the Idea, God, Beauty, or the highest spiritual enjoyment ; besides, we acknowledge that all men have equal rights, if not to material, at least to spiritual goods, while in the meantime ninety-nine hun- dredths of our European people live and die generation after generation in tense labour, which is necessary for the pro- duction of our art, without making use of it, and yet we calmly assert that the art which w^e produced is real, true, one, all art. In reply to the statement that if our art is true art, all the people ought to make use of it, we generally get the reply that if not all men at present enjoy the existing art, it is not the fault of art, but of the false structure of society ; that it is possible to imagine for the future that physical labour will be partly relegated to machines and partly lightened by its regular distribution, and that the labour for the production of art will alternate ; that there is no need for some to sit under the stage all the time, moving the scenery, to raise machines, to work the piano and French horns, and to set up and print books, but that those who do all this will be able to work a small number of hours a day, and in their leisure to enjoy all the bene- fits of art. Thus say the defenders of our exclusive art, but I think that they themselves do not believe in what they say be- cause they cannot know that our refined art could have 204 WHAT IS ART? arisen on nothing but the work of the popular masses, and can be continued only so long as there shall be this slav- ery, and also this, that only under conditions of the tense labour of the workingmen, the specialists — authors, mu- sicians, dancers, actors — can reach that refined degree of perfection, which they do reach, and by which they are able to produce their refined works of art, and that only under these conditions can there be a refined pubHc which appreciates these productions. Free the slaves from capi- tal, and it will be impossible to produce this refined art. But even if we admit the inadmissible, that there can be found methods with which art — that which with us is considered to be art — will be enjoyed by all the peo- ple, there presents itself another consideration, according to wliich the modern art cannot be all art, and that is that it is entirely incomprehensible to the people. Formerly they used to write poetical productions in the Latin lan- guage ; but the modern productions of art are as incom- prehensible to the people as if they were written in Sanscrit. In reply to this we are generally told that if the people do not now understand this our art, it only proves their insufficient development, and that precisely the same happened with every new step in art. At first it was not understood, and later the people got used to it. " The same will happen with the modern art : it will be comprehensible when the whole people shall be as cultured as we are, we, the men of the higher classes, who produce art," say the defenders of our art. But this assertion is obviously even more incorrect than the first, because we know that the majorit}' of the products of art of the higher classes, which, like all kinds of odes, epics, dramas, cantatas, pastorales, pictures, and so forth, delighted the men of the higher classes of their time, were later never understood, nor appreciated by the large masses, and re- mained, as they had been, the amusement of the rich of that time, and had a meaning only for them ; from this WHAT IS ART? 205 we may conclude that the same will happen with our art. But when, in proof of the fact that the masses will in time understand our art, they adduce that certain pro- ductions of the so-called classical poetry, music, art, which formerly did not please the masses, later, when they are offered to the masses on all sides, begin to please them, this proves only that the crowd, especially the city crowd, which is half-corrupted, could always be easily taught, by having its taste corrupted, any art you please. Besides, this art is not produced by this crowd of people, and is not chosen by it, but is forcibly obtruded upon it in those places in which art is accessible to it. For the great majority of the whole labouring class our art, inaccessible to them on account of its costliness, is also foreign to them on account of its contents themselves^ siuce it conveys the sensations of people who are removed from the conditions of a life of labour, which are peculiar to the great majority of humanity. What forms an en- joyment for a man of the wealthy classes is, as an enjoy- ment, incomprehensible to the workingman, and does not evoke any sensation in him, or evokes sensations which are the very opposite to those which they evoke in an idle and satiated man. Thus, for example, the feelings of hon- our, patriotism, enamourment, which form the chief con- tents of modern art, evoke in a workingman nothing but perplexity and contempt, or indignation. Thus, even if the majority of the workingmen were given the chance- during the time which is free from labour, to see, read, hear, as is indeed partly the case in the cities, in picture- galleries, popular concerts, books, everything which forms the flower of modern art, the workingmen, in so far as they are working people and have not yet partly passed into the class of people corrupted by idleness, would understand nothing of our refined art, and if they did, the greater part of what they understood would not only fail to elevate their souls, but would even corrupt them. 206 WHAT IS AET? Thus there can be no doubt whatsoever for thinking and sincere men that the art of the higher classes can never become t)ie art of the whole people ; and so, if art is an important matter, a spiritual good, indispensable for all men, like religion (as the devotees of art are fond of saying), it must be accessible to all men. And if it can- not become the art of the whole people, one of two things is true : either art is not that important matter which it is claimed to be, or the art which we call art is not this important matter. This dilemma is not capable of solution, and so clever and immoral men boldly solve it by denying one side of it, namely, the right of the popular masses to enjoy art. These men express outright what is lying in the essence of the matter, namely this, that only the " schtine Geis- ter," the chosen ones, as the Romanticists called them, or the " Uebermenschen," as the followers of Nietzsche call them, may be participants and enjoyers of what, according to their conception, is highly beautiful, that is, of the high- est enjoyment of art ; but all the others, the common herd, which is incapable of experiencing these enjoyments, must minister to the high enjoyments of this higher breed of men. The men who express such views are at least not feigning and do not wish to unite what cannot be united, and admit outright that which is, namely, that our art is only the art of the higher classes. . Thus, in reality, art has been understood by all men who in our society busy themselves with art. IX. The unbelief of the higher classes of the European world has had this effect, that in place of that activity of art which had for its aim the conveyance of those higher sensations which result from the religious consciousness attained by humanity, there has come an activity which has for its aim the bestowal of the greatest enjoyment to a certain society of men. And from the whole enormous mass of art there was segregated and began to be called art what afforded enjoyment to the men of a certain circle. Not to speak of those moral consequences which such a segregation from the whole sphere of art and the recog- nition as important art of what did not deserve that valu- ation have had for European society, this distortion of art weakened and reduced almost to annihilation art itself. The first consequence of it was this, that art was deprived of its characteristic, infinitely varied, and profoundly re- ligious contents. The second consequence was this, that, having in view nothing but a small circle of men, it lost the beauty of form, and became artificial and obscure ; and the third, the chief consequence, was, that it ceased being sincere and became fictitious and reasoned. The first consequence — the impoverishment of con- tents — was achieved for the reason that a true product of art is only that which conveys new sensations, such as have not yet been experienced by men. As a product of thought is a product of thought only when it communi- cates new considerations and thoughts, and does not repeat what is known, even so a product of art is a product of 207 208 WHAT IS ART? art only when it introduces a new sensation (no matter how insignificant it may be) into the habitual course of human life. It is for this reason that the products of art are so strongly felt by children and youths, when they for the first time afford them sensations which they had not experienced before. An entirely new, never before expressed sensation acts with the same force upon grown people. The art of the higher classes has deprived itself of this source of sensa- tions, by valuing the sensations not in correspondence w4th the religious consciousness, but according to the degree of enjoyment which they afford. There is nothing more anti- quated and trite than enjoyment, and nothing more new than sensations which arise on the religious consciousness of a certain time. Nor can it he otherwise : man's enjoy- ment has a limit which is put to it by his nature ; but the forward movement of humanity, that which is ex- pressed by the religious consciousness, has no limitation. With every step in advance which liumanity makes, ^ — - and these steps are achieved through an ever greater and greater elucidation of the religious consciousness, — men experience all the time new sensations. And so only on the basis of religious consciousness, which shows the highest degree of men's comprehension of life at a certain period, can there arise new sensations, such as have never before been experienced by men. From the religious con- sciousness of the ancient Greek there resulted actually new and important and infinitely varied sensations for the Greeks, which were expressed by Homer and by the tragic authors. The same was true of the Jew, who rose to the religious consciousness of monotheism. From this consciousness resulted all those new and important sensa- tions which were expressed by the prophets. The same was true of the man of the Middle Ages, who believed in the ecclesiastic commune and the celestial hierarchy ; and the same is true of the man of our time, who has WHAT IS ART ? 209 attained to the religious consciousDess of true Christianity, — tlic cousciousuess of the brotherhood of men. The diversity of feelings which result from the religious consciousness is infinite, and they are all new, because the religious consciousness is nothing but an indication of a new relation of man to the world in the process of crea- tion, whereas the sensations which arise from the desire to enjoy oneself are not only limited, but were long ago explored and expressed. And so the unbelief of our higher European classes has led them to an art which is exceed- ingly poor in contents. The impoverishment of the contents of the art of the higher classes has increased even through this, that, ceasing to be religious, the art has ceased to be national, and so has still more diminished the circle of sensations which it has conveyed, since the circle of sensations which the ruling people, the rich who do not know the labour of supporting hfe, experience is much smaller, poorer, and more insignificant than that of the sensations character- istic of the labouring people. The men of our circle, the ffistheticians, generally think and say the opposite. I remember how the author Gon- charov, a clever, cultured, but absolutely urban man, an festlietician, told me that after Turg^nev's Memoirs of a Hunter there was nothing left to write about from the life of the people. Everything was exhausted. The life of the labouring people seemed to him so simple that after Turgenev's popular tales there was nothiug left to describe from it. But the life of the wealthy people, with its enam- ourmeut and self-discontent, seemed to him to be full of endless contents. One hero kissed his lady's palm, another her elbow, a third kissed a lady in some other way. One pines away from idleness, another, because he is not loved. And it seemed to him that in this sphere there was no end to the variety. And this opinion, that the life of the labouring classes is poor in contents, while our life, 210 WHAT IS ART? that of idle men, is full of interest, is shared by many people of our circle. The life of the workingman, with its endlessly varied forms of labour and its perils under- ground and on the sea, which are connected with it, with his travels, with his intercourse with masters, the au- thorities, companions, and men of other religions and nationalities, with his struggle with Nature and wild animals, with his relations to domestic animals, with his work in the forest, the steppe, the field, the garden, with his relations to his wife and his children, not only as near and beloved people, but also as colabourers, helpers, and substitutes in work, with his relations to all the economic questions, not as subjects of sophistry and ambition, but as questions of life for himself and his family, with his pride of contentment and service of men, with his enjoy- ments of rest, with all these interests permeated by the religious relation to these phenomena, — appears to us, who have not these interests and no religious compre- hension, as monotonous in comparison with those petty enjoyments, insignificant cares of our hfe, not of labour, nor of creation, but of exploiting and destroying that which others have done for us. We think that the sensa- tions which are experienced by the men of our time and circle are very important and varied, whereas, in reality, nearly all the sensations of the men of our circle reduce themselves to three very insignificant and uncomplicated sensations, — to the sensation of pride, of sexual lust, and of the dejection of spirits. These three sensations and their ramifications form almost the exclusive con- tents of the art of the wealthy classes. Formerly, in the very beginning of the segregation of the exclusive art of the higher classes from popular art, the sentiment of pride was the chief contents of art. Thus it was during the time of the renascence and after it, when the chief subject of the products of art was the laudation of the mighty, — the Popes, the kings, the dukes. They WHAT IS ART? 211 wrote madrigals, which lauded the mighty, cantatas, hymns ; they painted their portraits and sculptured their statues in all kinds of forms which glorified them. Then art began more and more to be invaded by the element of sexual lust, which now became an indispensable condition of every production of the art of the wealthy classes (with exceedingly few exceptions, and in novels and dramas without exception). Later on, a third sensation, which forms the contents of the art of the wealthy classes, namely, the sensation of despondency, entered among the number of sensations expressed by art. This sensation was in the beginning of this century expressed only by exclusive men, Byron, Leopardi, then Heine, but of late it has become fashion- able and is being expressed by the coarsest and commonest of men. The French critic Doumic says quite correctly that the chief character of the productions of the new writers, " c'est la lassitude de vivre, le m^pris de I'^poque pr^sente, le regret d'un autre temps aperQU a travers I'illusion de I'art, le gout du paradoxe, le besoin de se singulariser, une aspiration de raffin^s vers la simplicity, I'adoration enfantine du merveilleux, la st^duction mala- dive de la reverie, I'ebranlement des nerfs, surtout I'appel exasp^r^ de la sensuaht^ " {Les jetmes, by Een^ Doumic). And, indeed, of these three sensations, sensuality, as the lowest of sensations, accessible not only to men, but also to all animals, forms the chief subject of all the produc- tions of art of modern times. From Boccaccio to Marcel Provost, all the novels and poetic productions are sure to express the sensations of sexual love in its various forms. Adultery is not only the favourite, but even the only theme of all novels. A performance is not a performance if in it there do not, under some pretext, appear women who are nude above or below. Romances, songs, — all these are expressions of lust in various stages of poetization. 212 WHAT IS ART? The majority of the pictures of the French artists represent feminine nudity in its various forms. In mod- ern French hterature there is hardly a page or a poem in which tliere is not a description of nudity, and in which the fond concept and word " nu " is not used at least twice. There is a writer, Een^ de Gourmont, who is considered talented, and whose works are printed. In order to have an idea about the modern authors, I read his novel, Les chevaux de Diomede. It is through and through a detailed description of sexual intercourses which a certain gentleman had with a number of women. There is not a page without descriptions that fan lust. The same is true of a book which had success, by Pierre Louis, Aphrodite ; the same — of a book which lately fell into my hands, by Huysmans, Certains, which was to be a criticism of painters ; the same, with very rare excep- tions, of all French novels. They are all productions of people suffering from an erotic mania. These men are evidently convinced that, since their whole life is, in con- sequence of their morbid condition, centred on expatiating on sexual abominations, the whole life of the world is centred on the same. And it is these men who are suffer- ing from the erotic mania that the whole artistic world of Europe and of America is imitating. Thus, in consequence of the unbelief and the exclusive- ness of the life of the wealthy classes, the art of these classes has become impoverished in contents and has all reduced itself to the expression of the sensations of vanity, of despondency, and, above all, of sexual lust. X. In consequence of the unbelief of the higher classes, the art of these men has become poor in contents. Be- sides, becoming more and more exclusive, it has at the same time become more and more complex, artificial, and obscure. When a national artist, — such as were the Greek artists and the Jewish prophets, — composed his produc- tion, he naturally tried to say what he had to say, so that his production might be understood by all men. But when the artist composed for a small circle of men, who were under exclusive conditions, or even for one person and his courtiers, for the Pope, the cardinal, the king, the duke, the queen, the king's paramour, he naturally had nothing else in view but producing an effect upon these men he knew, who lived under definite conditions with which he was acquainted. This easier method of evoking sensations involuntarily drew the artist to expressing himself in hints which were obscure to all and compre- hensible only to the initiated. In the first place, in such a way it was possible to say more, and in the second, such a mode of expression included a certain charm of haziness for the initiated. This method of expression, which is shown in euphemism, in mythological and his- torical allusions, has entered more and more into use, and of late has reached what seems to be the extreme limits in the art of so-called decadence. Of late, it is not only the haziness, enigmaticaluess, obscurity, and incompre- hensibleness for the masses, but also the inexactness, indefiniteness, and absence of style that are regarded as 213 214 WHAT IS ART? an advantage and a condition of the poetic quality of the subjects of art. Th^ophile Gautier, in his introduction to the famous Fleurs du Mai, says that Baudelaire did his best to drive out of poetry eloquence, passion, and truth, too well repre- sented, " r^loquence, la passion, et la v^rit^ calqu^e trop exactement." And Baudelaire not only gave utterance to this, but also proved it by his verses, and still more by his prose in his Petits i^oemes en prose, the meaning of which one has to guess like rebuses, and the majority of which are left unsolved. The next poet after Baudelaire, who is also considered great, Verlaine, even wrote a whole Art poetique, in which he advises men to write as follows : " De la musique avant toute chose, Et pour cela pr^fere I'lmpair Plus vague et plus soluble dans Fair, Sans rien en lui qui pese ou qui pose. « II faut aussi que tu n'aille point Choisir tes mots sans quelque m^prise : Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise Oil rindicis au Precis se joint." And farther: " De la musique encore et toujours, Que ton vers soit la chose envol^e, Qu'on sente qu'il fuit d'une ame en all6e Vers d'autres cieux a d'autres amours. " Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure Eparse au vent crisp6 du matin, Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym . . . Et tout le reste est litt^rature." The next after these two, the poet Mallarm^, who is considered the most prominent of the younger poets, says WHAT IS ART ? 215 distinctly that the charm of a poem consists in guessing its meaning, and that in poetry there must always be an enigma : " Je pense qu'il faut qu'il n'y ait qu'allusioii. La contempla- tion des objets, I'image s'envolant des reveries suscit^es par eux, sent le cliant : les Paniassieus, eux, preinieiit la chose entiere- ment et la inoiitrent; par la ils manqueiit de mystere ; ils retirent aux esprits cette joie d^licieuse de croire qu'ils cr^ent. Nommer an objet, c'est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poele qui est faite du l/onheur de deviner pen a pen ; le sugge'rer — voila le reve. C'est le parfait usage de ce mystere qui constitue le syinbole : 6voquer petit a petit un objet pour montrer un 6tat d'ame, ou inversement, choisir uu objet et en degager uu 6tat d'ame par une s6i'ie de ddchiffrements. " Si un etre d'une intelligence moyenne et d'une preparation litt6raire insuffisante ouvre par liasard un livre ainsi fait et pre- tend en jouir, il y a malentendu, il faut remettre les choses a leur place. II doit y avoir toujnnrs iniignie en poesie, et c'est le but de la litt^rature ; il n'y en a pas d'autre, — d'evoquer les objets " (^Enquete sui- Vevolution litteraire, Jules Iluret, pp 60-61). Thus obscurity is among the modern poets raised to a dogma, as the French critic Doumic, who does not yet recognize the truth of this dogma, remarks quite cor- rectly. " II serait temps aussi de finir," — he says, — " avec cette fa- meuse th^orie de I'obscurit^ que la nouvelie ^cole a 61ev6e en eifet a la liauteur d'un dogme " (Les jeunes, etudes et portraits par Ren6 Doumic). And it is not only the French writers who think so. So think and act the poets of all other nationalities, — the Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Kussians, English ; so think all the artists of modern times in all branches of art, — in painting, in sculpture, in music. Leaning on Nietzsche and Wagner, the artists of modern times as- sume that they need not be understood by the rude masses, — that it is enough for them to evoke poetical 216 WHAT IS ART? conditions in the " best nurtured meu," as the Enghsh aesthetician says. In order that what I say may not appear bold, I will quote here at least a few samples of French poets who have led in this movemeut. The name of these poets is legion. I have chosen the modern French authors, because they more glaringly than any otliers express the new tendency in art, and because the majority of the Europeans imitate them. Besides those whose names are considered famous, such as Baudelaire aud Verlaine, I give here a few names of these poets : Jean Mor^as, Charles Maurice, Henri de E^gnier, Charles Viguier, Adrien liomaille, Een^ Ghil, Maurice Maeterlinck, C. Albert Aurier, Ren^ de Gour- mont, St. Paul, Eoux le Magnitique, Georges Eodenbach, le Comte Eobert de Montesquiou-F^zansac. These are symbolists and decadents. Then come the magi : Jos^phin Peladau, Paul Adam, Jules Bois, M. Papus, and so forth. Besides these, there are 141 other poets counted out by Doumic in his book. Here are samples from those of the poets who are con- sidered to be the best. I begin with the most famous, Baudelaire, who is recognized to be a great man, worthy of a monument. Here, for example, is his poem from his famous Fleiirs du Mai : " Je t'adore a I'^gal de la voute nocturne, O vase de tristesse, 6 grande taciturne, Et t'ainie d'autant plus, belle, que tu me fuis, Et que tu nie parais, ornement de mes nuits, Plus ironiquement accumuler les lieues, Qui s^parent mes bras des immensit^s bleues. Je m'avauce a I'attaque, et je grimpe aux assauts, Comme apres un cadavre un choeur de vermisseaux. Et je ch^ris, 6 hHe implacable et cruelle ! Jusqu'a cette froideur par oil tu m'es plus belle I " WHAT IS AKT? 217 Here is another, by the same Baudelaire : " DUELLUM « Deux guerriers ont couru I'lm sur I'autre ; leurs armes Out eclabouss6 i'air de lueurs et de sang. — Ces jeux, ces cliquetis du fer sont les vacarmes D'une jeuuesse en proie a I'amour vagissant. *' Les glaives sont brisks ! comme notre Jeunesse, Ma chere ! Mais les dents, les ongles ac6r^s, Vengent bientot I'ep^e et la dague tvaitresse. — O fureur des coeurs mCirs par I'amour ulc6r6s! " Dans le ravin hant6 des chats-pards et des onces, Nos h6ros, s'^treignant m6chamrnent, ont roul6, Et leur peau fleurira I'aridit^ des ronces. « — Ce gouffre, c'estl'enfer, de nos amis peupl^I Roulons y sans remords, amazone inhumaine, Afin d'^terniser I'ardeur de notre haine 1 " To be exact, I must say that in the collected volume there are some poems which are less incomprehensible, but there is not one that is simple or that could be under- stood without some effort, — an effort which is seldom rewarded, since the sentiments expressed by the poet are bad and very low. These sentiments are intentionally always expressed in an original and insipid manner. This intentional obscu- rity is particularly noticeable in prose, where the author might have spoken simply, if he had so wished. Here, for example, from his Petits poemes en prose, is the first piece " L'^tranger." "l'^tranger " ' Qui aimes-tu le mieilx, homme ^nigmatique, des : ton pere, ta mere, ton frere ou ta soeur ? ' " ' Je n'ai ni pere, ni mere, ni soeur, ni frere.' 218 WHAT IS AKT? '"Tes amis?' '"Vous vous servez la d'une parole dont le sens m'est rest6 jusqu'a ce jour inconnii.' " ' Ta patrie ? ' " 'J 'ignore sous quelle latitude elle est situ^e.' " ' La beaut6 ? ' " ' Je I'aimerais volontiers, d^esse at immortelle.' " ' L'or ? ' " ' Je le hais, comme vous haissez Dieu.' " ' Eh 1 qu'aimes tu done, extraordinaire stranger?' <''J'aime les nuages . . . les nuages qui passent . . . la-bas . . . les rnerveilleux nuages !...'" The piece, " La soupe et les nuages," is no doubt intended to express the poet's incomprehensibility even by her whom he loves. Here it is : " Ma petite folle bien-aim^e me donnait a diner, et par la fenetre ouverte de la salle a manger je contemplais les mou- vantes architectures que Dieu fait avec les vapeurs, les merveil- leuses constructions de I'impalpable. Et je me disais a travers ma contemplation : ' Toutes ces fantasmagories sont presque aussi belles que les yeux de ma belle bien-aim^e, la petite folle monstrueuse aux yeux verts.' " Et tout-a-coup je regus un violent coup de poing dans le dos, et j'entendis une voix rauque et charmante, une voix hyst^rique et comme enrou6e par I'eau de vie, la voix de ma chere petite bien-aitnee, qui disait : ' Allez-vous bientot manger votre soupe, s b de marchand de nuages?'" However artificial this production may be, it is possible with some effort to guess what it is the poet meant to convey by it ; but there are some pieces which are entirely incomprehensible, at least for me. Here, for example, is " Le galant tireur," the meaning of which I was not able to grasp completely : " LE GALANT TIREUR " Comme la voiture traversait le bois, il la fit arreter dans le voisinage d'un tir, disant qu'il lui serait agr^able de tirer quel- tpies balles pour tuer le Temps. WHAT IS AKT ? 219 " Tiier ce monstre-la, n'est-ce pas I'occiipation la plus oidiiiaire et la plus li'^itinie de chaciin ? — Et il offril galaniiueut la main a sa cIk'tc, diMicieuse et execrable feiiiiiie, a cette myst(''rieiise femme, a laqiielle il doit taut de plaisirs, taut de douleurs, et peut-elre aussi uue graude partie de sou geuie. " riusieurs balles frappereut loiu du but propose : I'uue d'elles s'enfonca menie daus la plafoud ; et comnie la charmaute creature riait folleuient, se raoquaut de la lualadresse de sou 6poux, celui- ci se tourua brusquement vers elle, et lui dit : ' Observez cette poupee, Uirbas, a droite, qui porte le nez en I'air et qui a la mine si hautaiue. Eh bieu! cher ange, /e me figure que c'est vous.' Et il feruKi les yeux et il lacha la detente. La poup6e fut nette- meut d^capit^e. " Alors s'iucliuaut vers sa chere, sa d61icieuse, son execrable femme, son inevitable et impitoyable Muse, et lui baisant respec- tueusement la main, il ajouta : " ' Ah, mon cher ange, combien je vous remercie de men adi-esse I ' " The productions of another celebrity, Verlaine, are not less artificial and not less incompreheusible. Here, for example, is the first from the division of " Ariettes ouhliees." ■ Here is the first ariette : " ' Le vent dans la plaine Suspend son haleine ' (Favart). " C'est I'extase langoureuse, C'est la fatigue amoureuse, C'est tous les frissons des bois Parmi I'^treinte des brises, C'est vers les ramures grises, Le choeur des petites voix. O le frele et frais murmure ! Cela gazouille et susure, Cela ressemble an cri doux Que riierbe agit^e expire . . . Tu dirais, sous I'eau qui vire, Le roulis sourd des cailloux. Cette S,me qui se lamente En cette plainte dormante, 220 WHAT IS AKT? C'est la notre, ii'est-ce pas ? La mienne, dis, et la tienne, Dont s'exhale I'humble antienne Par ce tiede soir, tout bas." Wliat is this " chceur des petits voix " ? And what is " cri doux I'herbe agit^e expire " ? And it remains abso- lutely incomprehensible to me what meaning the whole may have. Here is another ariette : " Dans rintermiiiable Ennui de la plaine, La neige incertaine ^/uit comme du sable. Le ciel est de cuivre, Sans lueur aucuue. On croirait voir vivre Et niourir la lune. Conime des nu6es Flottent gris les chenes Des forets prochaines Parnii les bu6es. Ce ciel est de cuivre, Sans hieur aucune. On croirait voir vivre Et mourir la lune. Corneille poussive Et vous, les loups maigrea, Par ces bises aigres, Quoi done vous arrive ? Dans interminable Ennui de la plaine, La neige incertaine Luit comuie du sable." How does the moon live and die in the copper sky, and how does the snow shine like sand ? All this is not only incomprehensible, but, under the pretext of conveying a mood, a compilation of inexact comparisons and words. Besides these artificial and obscure poems, there are WHAT IS ART ? 221 some that are comprehensible, but very bad in form and contents. Such are all the poems under the title of " Lou sagesse." In these poems the largest space is occupied by very poor expressions of the tritest of Catholic and patriotic sentiments. In them there are, for example, such stanzas : " Je ne veux plus penser qu'a ma mere Marie, Siege de la sagesse et source de pardons, Mere de France aussi de qui nous attendons, Inehranlablement rhonneur de la pair ie." Before quoting examples from other poets, I cannot refrain from dwelling on the remarkable fame of these two poets, Baudelaire and Verlaine, who are now ac- knowledged to be great poets. How could the French, who had a Chenier, Musset, Lamartine, and, above all, a Hugo, who but lately had so-called Parnassians, Leconte de Lisle, Sully-Prud'homme, and others, have ascribed such meaninu; to these two versifiers and consider them to be great poets, who are very inartistic in form and very low and trite as to their contents ? The world conception of the one, Baudelaire, consists in raising coarse egoism to a theory, and putting in the place of morality the con- cept of beauty, which is as indefinite as the clouds, a beauty which has by all means to be artificial. Baude- laire prefers a woman's painted face to the natural, and metallic trees and the theatrical imitation of water to the natural. The world conception of the other poet, Yerlaine, con- sists in a limp laxity of morals, the recognition of his moral impotcuce, and, as a salvation from this impotence, the coarsest Catholic idolatrv. Both are at the same time not only deprived of naivety sincerity, and sim- plicity, but also full of artificiality, striving after orig- inality, and self-conceit. Thus one sees, in their less bad productions, more of Mr. Baudelaire or Mr, Verlaine than 222 WHAT IS ART? what they represent. And these two bad versifiers form a school and lead after them hundreds of followers. There is but one explanation of this phenomenon : it is this, that the art of that society in which these versifiers are active is not a serious, important matter of life, but only play. But every play grows tiresome with every repetition. In order to make a tiresome game again pos- sible, it is necessary to renovate it : if boston is tiresome, they invent whist ; if whist is tiresome, they invent pref- erence; if preference is tiresome, they invent something new, and so on. The essence of the thing remains the same, but the form changes. Even so it is in this art: its contents, becoming more and more limited, have finally reached such a stage that it seems to the artists of these exclusive classes that everything has been said and noth- ing new can be said. And so, in order to renovate this art, they seek for new forms. Baudelaire and Verlaine invent a new form and, in addition, renovate it by heretofore unused pornographic details. And the critique and the pubhc of the higher classes recognize them as great writers. Only in this way can we explain the success, not only of Baudelaire and Verlaine, but also of all the decadents. There are, for example, some poems of Mallarm^ and Maeterlinck which have no meaning whatever, and, in spite of it, or, perhaps, in consequence of it, are printed not only in tens of thousands of separate editions, but also in the collections of the best productions of the young poets. Here, for example, is a sonnet by Mallarm^ (Pan, 1895, No. 1) : " A la nue accablante tu Basse de basalte et de laves A rneme les ^chos esclaves Par une trompe sans vertu. Quel s^piilcral iiaufrage (tu Le soil", ^cuine, mais y brave) WHAT IS ART ? 223 Supreme line entre les 6pave3 Abolit le mat d6vetu. Ou cela que I'urihoud faute De quelque perdition haute, Tout I'abiine vaiu 6ploye Dans le si blanc cheveu qui traine Avarement aura noy6 Le flanc enfant d'une sirene." This poem is not an exception for its incomprehensible- ness. 1 have read several poems by Mallarm^ They are all equally deprived of all sense. Here is a sample of another famous contemporary poet, a song by Maeterlinck. I copy it also from the periodical Pan, 1895, No. 2. " Quand il est sorti (J'entendis la porte) Quand il est sorti Elle avait souri. Mais quand il rentra (J'entendis la lampe) Mais quand il rentra Une autre 6tait la . . . Et j'ai vu la mort (J'entendis son Time) Et j'ai vu la mort Qui I'attend encore . . . On est venu dire (Mon enfant, j'ai peur) On est venu dire Qu'il allait partir . . . Ma lampe alliim^e (Mon enfant, j'ai peur) Ma lampe allum^e Me suis approch^e . . . A la premiere porte (Mon enfant, j'ai peur) A la premiere porte, La flam me a tremble . . « A la seconds porte (Mon enfant, j'ai peur) 224 WHAT IS ART? A la seconde porte, La flamme a parl6 . . . A la troisieme porte (Mon enfant, j'ai peur) A la troisieme porte, La lumiere est morte . . . Et s'il revenait un jour Que f aut-il lui dire ? Dites lui qu'on I'attendit Jusqu'a s'eu mourir . . . Et s'il interroge encore Sans me reconnaitre, Parlez lui comme une soeur, II souffre peut-etre . . . Et s'il demande oil vous etes Que f aut-il r^pondre ? Donnez lui mon anneau d'or Sans rien lui r6pondre . . . Et s'il veut savoir pourquoi La salle est d^serte ? Montrez lui la lampe 6teinte Et la porte ouverte . . . Et s'il m 'interroge alors Sur la derniere heure ? Dites lui que j'ai souri De peur qu'il ne pleure . . ." Who went out, who came, who told, who died ? I beg the reader to take the trouble to read what I copied in Appendix I., — the specimens from the better known and esteemed young poets, — Griffin, E^gnier, Moreas, and Montesquiou. This is necessary in order to form a clear conception of the present condition of art, and not to think, as many do, that the decadence is an accidental, temporary phenomenon. In order to avoid a reproach of having chosen the worst poems, I copied from all these books such poems as were found on page 28. All the poems of these poets are equally incomprehen- sible, or comprehensible only with great effort and then not fully. WHAT IS AKT ? 225 Of the same kind are all the productions of those hun- dreds of poets from whom I have quoted a few names. Similar poems are printed by the Germans, the Scandi- navians, the Italians, and us Russians. Of such produc- tions there are priuted and distributed, if not millions, at least hundreds of thousands of copies (some of them are sold by the ten thousand). For the setting up, printing, composition, binding of these books, millions are wasted, and millions of work-days, I think not less than was spent on building the great pyramid. But that is not all : the same takes place in all other arts, and millions of work-days are wasted on the productions of similarly incomprehensible subjects in painting, music, and the drama. Painting not only does not fall behind poetry in this, but even precedes it. Here is an extract from a diary of a lover of painting, who in 1894 visited the Paris exhi- bitions : " I was to-day at three exhibitions, — of the symbolists, impressionists, and neo-impressionists. I looked con- scientiously and carefully at the pictures, but again the same perplexity and finally indignation. The first exhi- bition by Camille Pissaro is the most comprehensible, though there is no drawing, no contents, and the colour- ing is most improbable. The drawing is so indefinite that at times it is hard to make out which way a hand or a head is turned. The contents are for the most part ' effets.' Effet de brouillard, Effet du soir, Soleil couchant. A few pictures were with figures, but without any subject. " In the colouring there predominates the bright blue and bright green. In each painting there is a funda- mental tone with which the whole picture seems to be bespattered. For example, in a shepherdess watching the geese, the fundamental tone is ' vert de gris,' and every- where there occur little blots of this colour, on the face, the hair, the hands, the dress. In the same gallery 226 WHAT IS ART? ' Durand Euel ' other paintings are by Puvis de Chavannes, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, — all of them impression- ists. One of them, — I did not make out the name, — it was something like Eedon, — painted a blue face in profile. In the whole face there is nothing but this blue tone with white in it. Pissaro's water-colour is all made in dots. In the foreground a cow is all painted in many- coloured dots. It is impossible to catch the general tone, no matter how far you recede or approach it. " From there I went to see the symbolists. I looked for a long time, asking nobody about them, and trying to guess myself what it was all about, — but that is above human reason. One of the first things that attracted my attention was a wooden haut-relief, monstrously executed, representing a (naked) woman, who with both her hands is pressing two streams of blood out of her teats. The blood flows down and passes into hlac-coloured flowers. The hair is at first falling down, then rises, when it is changed into trees. The statue is painted solid yellow, the hair — brown, " Then a picture : a yellow sea, — on it sails something hke a ship, or a heart, — on the horizon is a profile with an aureole and with yellow hair, which passes into the sea and is lost in it. The paint is on some pictures put on so thick that the result is something intermediate be- tween painting and sculpture. The third is still less comprehensible : a male profile, in front of it a flame and black streaks, — leeches, as I was told later. Finally I asked a gentleman who was there what it meant, and he explained to me that the statue was a sj^mbol, that it represented ' La terre ; ' the sailing heart in the yellow sea was ' Illusion perdue,' and the gentleman with the leeches ' Le mal.' There are here also some impressionist pictures : primitive profiles with some kind of flower in tlieir hands, — of one tone, not painted, and either abso- lutely indefinite or surrounded by a broad black contour." WHAT IS AKT ? 227 That was in the year 1894 ; now this tendency has been more strongly defined : Bocklin, Stuck, Klinger, Sasha Schneider, and others. The same is taking place in the drama. They either represent an architect, who for some reason has not ful- filled liis former high resolves and in consequence of this climbs on the roof of a house built by him and from there flies down headlong ; or some incomprehensible old woman, who raises rats and for some unknown reason takes a poetic child to the sea and there drowns it ; or some blind people, who, sitting at the seashore, for some reason all the time repeat one and the same thing; or a bell, which flies into a lake and there keeps ringing. The same takes place in music, in that art which, it would seem, ought to be more than any other compre- hensible to all alike, A musician whom you know and who enjoys a reputa- tion sits down at the piano and plays for you, as he says, a new production of his own or of a new artist. You hear strange loud sounds, and marvel at the gymnastic exercises of his fingers, and see clearly that the composer wishes to impress you with the idea that the sounds pro- duced by him are poetical strivings of the soul. You see his intention, but no other sensation than ennui is com- municated to you. The performance lasts long, or, at least, you think that it lasts very long, since you, receiv- ing no clear impression, involuntarily think of A. Karr's words : " Plus 9a va vite, plus 9a dure lougtemps." And it occurs to you that this may be a mystification, that the performer is trying you, whirling his hands and fingers over the keys, in the hope that you will be caught and will praise, while he will laugh and confess that he has been trying you. But when it is at last finished, and the percpiring and agitated musician, evidently expecting praise, gets up from the piano, you see that all this was in earnest. 228 WHAT IS ART? The same takes place at all concerts with the produc- tions of Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz, Brabras, and the modern Eichard Strauss, and an endless number of others, who compose uninterruptedly one after another operas and symphonies. The same takes place in the sphere where, it would seem, it is hard to be incomprehensible, — in the sphere of the novel and the story. You read Huysmans' Lit has, or Kipling's stories, or Villier de ITsle Adam's L' annonciateur from his Contes cruels, and so forth, and all this is for you not only " abscons " (a new word of the new writers), but com- pletely incomprehensible, both in form and in contents. Such, for example, is E. Morel's novel, Terre Promise, which has just appeared in the Revue blanche, and also the majority of the modern novels : the style is flowery, the sentiments seem to be elevated, but it is absolutely impossible to understand how, when, and to whom things happen. Such is all the young art of our time. The men of the first part of our century, the appreci- ators of Gothe, Schiller, Musset, Hugo, Dickens, Beethoven, Chopin, Eaphael, Vinci, Michelangelo, Delaroche, who can- not make out anything in this latest art, frequently con- sider the productions of this art to be downright tasteless madness, and want to ignore it. But such a relation to modern art is quite unfounded, because, in the first place, this art is being disseminated more and more and has already conquered for itself a firm place in society, such as romanticism conquered in the thirties ; in the second place, and chiefly, because, if it is possible to judge thus of the productions of the later, the decadent art because we do not understand it, there is an enormous number of men, — all the working people, and many who are not working people, — who similarly do not understand those productions of art which we consider beautiful, — the WHAT IS ART ? 229 poetry of our favourite artists, Gbthe, Schiller, Hugo, the novels of Dickens, the music of Beethoven and Chopin, the paintings of Eaphael, Michelangelo, Vinci, and others. If 1 have the right to think that large masses of people do not understand and do not like what I indubitably recognize as good, because they are not sufficiently devel- oped, I have not the right to deny even this, that possibly I do not understand and like the new productions of art only because I am not sufficiently developed in order to understand them. But if I have the right to say that, with the majority of men sharing my views, I do not understand the productions of modern art, only because there is nothing in them to understand and because it is bad art, then a still greater majority, the whole mass of the working people, who do not understand what I regard as beautiful art, may say with precisely the same right that what I consider to be good art is bad art, and that there is nothing in it to understand. I saw with peculiar clearness the injustice of condemn- ing the modern art, when once a poet, who composed incomprehensible verses, at one time in my presence with merry self-confidence made fun of incomprehensible music, and soon after this a musician, who composed in- comprehensible symphonies, with the same self-confidence made fun of incomprehensible verses. I have not the right, and I am not able, to condemn modern art, because I, a man educated in the first half of the century, do not understand it ; all I can say is that it is incomprehensible to me. The only superiority of the art which I acknowl- edge over the decadent art consists in this, that the art which I acknowledge is comprehensible to a somewhat larger number of men than the modern. Because I am used to a certain exclusive art and under- stand it, but do not understand a more exclusive art, I have no right whatsoever to conclude that this, my art, 230 WHAT IS ART? is the true one, and the one I do not understand is not true, but bad ; from this I can conclude only this, that art, becoming more and more exclusive, has become more and more incomprehensible for an ever growing number of men, in this its movement toward a greater and ever greater incomprehensibility, on one of the steps of which I find myself with my customary art, and has reached a point where it is understood by the smallest number of the elect, and the number of these elect is growing smaller and smaller. As soon as the art of the higher classes segregated itself from the popular art, there appeared the conviction that art may be art and at the same time incomprehen- sible to the masses. The moment this supposition was admitted, it had to be inevitably admitted that art may be comprehensiljle only for a very small number of the elect and, finally, only for two or one, — one's own best friend, oneself. This is precisely what the modern artists say : " I create, and understand myself, and if some one does not understand me, so much the worse for him." The assertion that art may be good art, and yet be in- comprehensible to a great majority of men, is to such a degree incorrect, its consequences are to such a degree pernicious for art, and, at the same time, it is so diffused, has so corroded our conception, that it is impossible suffi- ciently to elucidate its whole incompatibility. There is nothing more common than to hear of supposed productions of art that they are very good, but that it is hard to understand them. We have become accustomed to such an assertion, and yet, to say that a production of art is good, but not comprehensible, is the same as to say of a certain food that it is very good, but that men cannot eat it. People may dislike rotten cheese, decaying par- tridges, and so forth, food which is esteemed by gastrono- mers with a corrupt taste, but bread and fruit are good only when people like them. The same is true of art : WHAT IS ART? 231 corrupted art may be comprehensible to men, but good art is always comprehensible to all men. They say that the very best productions of art are such as cannot be understood by the majority and are acces- sible only to the elect, who are prepared for the compre- hension of these great productions. But if the majority do not understand, it is necessary to explain to them, to convey to them that knowledge which is necessary for comprehension. But it turns out that there is no such knowledge and that it is impossible to explain the pro- ductions, and so those who say that the majority do not understand the good productions of art do not give any explanations, but say that in order to understand, it is necessary to read, to see, to hear the same productions again and again. But this does not mean explaining, but training, and people may be trained for the very worst. As men may be trained to eat decayed food, to use whiskey, tobacco, or opium, so they can be trained for bad art, which is actually being done. Besides, we cannot say that the majority of men have no taste for the appreciation of the highest productions of art. The majority of men have always understood what we consider to be the highest art ; the artistically sim- ple stories of the Bible, the parables of the Gospel, the national legends, the fairy-tales, the popular songs, are understood by everybody. Why have the masses sud- denly been deprived of the ability to understand what is high in our art ? Of a speech we may say that it is beautiful, but incom- prehensible to those wdio do not know the language in which it is enunciated. A speech made in Chinese may be beautiful and still remain incomprehensible to me, if I do not know Chinese ; but a production of art is dis- tinguished from any other spiritual activity by this very fact, that its language is comprehensible to all, that it infects all without distinction. The tears, the laughter, of 232 WHAT IS ART? a Chinaman will infect me as much as the laughter and the tears of a Eussian, just like painting and music and a poetical production, if it is translated into a language which I understand. The song of a Kirgiz and a Jap- anese moves me, though more feebly than it touches the Kirgiz or Japanese. Similarly am I affected by Japanese painting and Hindoo architecture and an Arabian fable. If I am little moved by a Japanese song and a Chinese novel, it is not because I do not understand these produc- tions, but because I know and am trained to higher sub- jects of art, and not because this art is too high for me. Great subjects of art are great for this very reason, that they are accessible and comprehensible to all. The story of Joseph, translated into Chinese, affects the Chinese. The story of Sakya Muni affects us. The same is true of buildings, pictures, statues, music. And so, if some art does not move us, we cannot say that this is due to the hearer's and spectator's lack of comprehension, but must conclude from this that it is bad art, or no art at all. Art differs from a reasoning activity demanding prepa- ration and a certain consecutiveuess of knowledge (thus it is impossible to teach a man trigonometry if he does not know geometry) in that art acts upon men independ- ently of their degree of development and education, in that the charm of a picture, of sounds, of images, infects every man, no matter at what stage of development he may be. The business of art consists in making comprehensible and accessible what in the form of reasoning may remain incomprehensible and inaccessible. As a rule, in receiv- ing a truly artistic impression the person so impressed imagines that he knew that before, but was unable to express it. And such the highest art has always been : the Iliad, the Odyssey, the history of Jacob, Isaac, Joseph, the Jewish prophets, the psalms, the Gospel parables, the story of Sakya Muni, and the Vedic hymns, all these WHAT IS ART? • 233 convey very elevated sentiments, and, in spite of this, are quite comprehensible at the present time to us, the cul- tured and the uncultured, and were comprehensible to the men of that time, who were even less enlightened than the working people of our day. They talk of the incomprehensibility. But if art is a conveyance of senti- ments which result from the rehgious consciousness of men, how can a sentiment be incomprehensible if it is based on religion, that is, on the relation of man to God ? Such art must have been, and in reality has been, at all times comprehensible, because the relation of every man to God is one and the same. And so the temples and the images and the singing in them has always been compre- hensible to all men. An obstacle to the comprehension of the highest, the best sentiments, as it says in the Gospel, is by no ni'ians in a lack of development and teaching, but, on the contrary, in a false development and a false teaching. A good and high artistic production may indeed be incomprehensible, but not to simple, un- corrupted working people (to them everything which is very high is comprehensible) ; a truly artistic production may be, and frequently is, incomprehensible to over- learned, corrupted men, who are deprived of religion, as all the time takes place in our society, where the highest religious sentiments are directly incomprehensible to men. I know, for example, some men who consider themselves extremely refined and who say that they do not under- stand the poetry of love for their neighbour and of self- sacritice, — that they do not understand the poetry of chastity. Thus good, great, universal, religious art may be in- comprehensible only to a small circle of corrupted men, and not the contrary. The reason why art cannot be incomprehensible to the masses is not because it is very good, as the artists of our time are fond of saying. It would be more correct to 234 WHAT IS ART? suppose that art is iucomprehensible to the great masses, only because this art is very bad or even uo art at all. Thus the favourite proof, ua'ively accepted by the culti- vated crowd, that in order to feel art we must understand it (what in reality means only to become trained to it), is the surest indication that what it is proposed to under- stand in such manner is either very bad, exclusive art, or no art at all. They say : " The productions of art are not liked by the people, because they are incapable of understauding it. But if the productions of art have for their aim the infection of men with the sentiment which the artist experienced, how can we speak of lack of comprehen- sion ? " A man of the masses reads a book, looks at a picture, hears a drama or a symphony, and receives no impressions whatever. He is told that it is so, because he cannot understand. A man is told that he shall see a certain spectacle, — he goes there, and sees nothing. He is told that this is so because his vision is not prepared for this spectacle. But the man knov^s that he has excellent sight. If he does not see what he was promised he would see, he concludes only this (which is quite correct), that the men who undertook to show him the spectacle have not fulfilled what they undertook to do. Exactly so and with exactly as much justice does the man from the people judge of the productions of the art of our time, which evoke no sentiments of any kind in him. And so to say that a man is not moved by my art, bcr cause he is still too stupid (which is very self-confident and very bold to say), means to change parts, and to throw the onus of the guilty on the innocent. Voltaire has said that, " Tons les genres sont bons, hors le genre ennuyeux ; " with nnich greater right we can say of art that, " Tons les genres sont bons, hors celui qu'on ne comprends pas ; " or, " qui ne produit pas son eff et," be- WHAT IS ART ? 235 cause, what worth can there be in a subject which does not do what it is destined for ? But the chief thing is, that the moment we admit that art may be art, while it remains incomprehensible to some mentally healthy persons, there is no reason why some circle of corrupted men should not create productions which tickle their corrupt sensations and are incompre- hensible to any one but themselves, calling these produc- tions art, which is actually done at present by the so-called decadents. The road which art has traversed is like the super- position of circles of diminishing diameters on a circle of greater diameter, so that a cone is formed, the apex of which is no longer a circle. Precisely this has been done by the art of our time. XI. "Becoming poorer and poorer in contents and less and less comprehensible in form, it has in its last manifesta- tions lost all the properties of art and has given way to semblances of art. Not only has the art of the higher classes, in consequence of its segregation from the national art, become poor in contents and bad in form, that is, more and more incom- prehensible, but the art of the higher classes has in the course of time ceased to be art and has given place to an imitation of art. This has taken place from the following causes. Na- tional art arises only when some man from the people, having experienced some strong sensation, feels the ne- cessity of communicating it to men. But the art of the wealthy classes does not arise because the artist feels the necessity for it, but chiefly because the men of the higher classes demand diversions for which they reward well. The men of the wealthy classes demand from art the com- munication of sensations which are agreeable to them, and the artists try to satisfy these demands. But it is very hard to satisfy these demands, since the men of the wealthy classes, passing their lives in idleness and luxury, demand constant diversions from art ; it is, how- ever, impossible at will to produce art, even though of the lowest description. And so the artists, to satisfy the demands of the men of the higher classes, had to work out methods by means of which they could produce sub- jects which resemble art, and so these methods were "worked out. 236 WHAT IS ART ? 237 These methods are the following : (1) borrowing, (2) imitation, (3) effectiveness, and (4) entertainingness. The first method consists in borrowing from former pro- ductions of art either whole subjects, or only separate features of former, well-known poetical productions, and in so transforming them that with certain additions they might represent something new. Such productions, evoking in the men of a certain circle recollections of artistic sensations experienced be- fore, produce an impression like that from art, and pass among men who seek enjoyment from art for such, if with them other necessary conditions are observed. The subjects which are borrowed from previous artistic pro- ductions are generally called poetical subjects, and objects and persons borrowed from previous artistic productions are called poetical objects. Thus, in our circle, all kinds of legends, sagas, ancient traditions, are called poetical subjects ; and as poetical persons and objects are regarded maidens, warriors, shepherds, hermits, angels, devils in every form, moonlight, storms, mountains, the sea, preci- pices, flowers, long hair, lions, a lamb, a dove, a nightin- gale ; as poetical in general are regarded all those objects which more than any other were employed by previous artists for their productions. Some forty years ago a not clever, but very cultured lady, " ayant beaucoup d'acquis " (she is dead now), called me to listen to a novel which she had v^ritten. In this novel the story began with a heroine in a poetical forest, near the water, in a poetical white garment, with poetical flowing hair, reading verses. The whole took place in Eussia, and suddenly, from behind some bushes, there appeared the hero in a hat with a feather a la Guil- laume Tell (so it said) and with two poetical dogs accom- panying hira. It seemed to the authoress that all this was very poetical ; and all would be well if the hero did not have to say something. The moment the gentleman 238 WHAT IS ART? in the hat a la Guillmimc Tell began to talk with the maiden in the white dress, it became clear that the authoress had nothing to say, and that she was affected by the poetical recollections from previous productions, and was thinking that by rummaging through these rec- ollections she could produce an artistic impression. But the artistic impression, that is, the infection, is had only when the author has in his own way experienced some kind of a sensation and is conveying it, and not when he communicates a foreign sensation, which has been com- municated to him. Such poetry from poetry cannot infect men, but only gives the semblance of art, and that, too, only to men with a corrupted aesthetic taste. This lady was very stupid and not at all talented, and so it was easy to see at once where the trouble was ; but when this borrowing is taken up by well-read and talented men, who, besides, have worked out the technique of their art, we get those borrowings from the Greek, the ancient, the Christian, and the mythological worlds, which have been breeding so extensively and especially now continue to appear so much, and which are taken by the public to be productions of art, if these borrowings are well worked out by the technique of that art in which they are made. As a characteristic example of such a kind of imitation of art in the sphere of poetry may serve Eostand's Prin- cess Lointainc, in wliich there is not a spark of art, but which appears to many and, no doubt, to its author as exceedingly poetical. The second method which gives a semblance of art is what I called imitation. The essence of this method consists in rendering the details which accompany that which is described or represented. In the literary art this method consists in describing, down to the minutest details, the appearance, faces, garments, gestures, sounds, apartments of the acting persons, with all those incidents which occur in life. Thus, in novels and stories, they WHAT IS ART? 239 describe, with every speech of the acting person, in what voice he said it, and what he did then. And the speeches themselves are nut told so as to make tlie best sense, but as incoherently as they are in life, with interruptions and abrupt endings. In dramatic art this method consists in this, that, in addition to the imitation of the conversa- tions, all the concomitant circumstances, all the actions of the persons, should be precisely such as they are in real life. In painting and sculpture this method reduces painting to photography, and destroys the difference be- tween photography and painting. However strange this may appear, this method is used also in music: music attempts to imitate, not only by its rhythm, but even by its sounds, those sounds which in life accompany that which it wishes to represent. The third method is the appeal to the external senses, which frequently is of a purely physical nature, — it is what is called effectiveness. These effects in all arts con- sist mainly in contrasts, — in the juxtaposition of the terrible and the tender, the beautiful and the monstrous, the loud and the quiet, the dark and the light, the most common and the most uncommon. In literary art there are, besides the effects of contrast, other effects which consist in the description and representation of what has never been described or represented before, especially in the description and the representation of details which evoke the sexual passion, or of the details of suffering and death, which evoke the sensation of terror, — so that, for example, in the description of a murder there should be a coroner's description of the laceration of tissues, of the swelling, of the odour, of the amount and form of the blood. The same happens in painting : besides the con- trasts of every kind, there enters into painting a contrast which consists in the careful execution of one subject and carelessness in regard to everything else. But the chief and most usual effect in painting is the effect of light and 240 WHAT IS ART ? of the representation of the terrible. In the drama the most common effects, besides the contrasts, are storms, thunder, moonlight, actions upon the sea or near the sea, the change of costumes, the laying bare of the fendnine body, insanity, murder, and, in general, death, during which the dying give detailed accounts of all the phases of the agony. In music the most usual effects consist in begin- ning a crescendo with the feeblest and most monotonous sounds, and in rising to the strongest and most complin cated sounds of the whole orchestra, or in repeating the same sounds arpeggio in all the octaves and with all the instruments, or in making the harmony, the time, and the rhythm entirely different from those which naturally result from the train of the musical thought, so as to startle us by their suddenness. Besides, the commonest effects in music are produced in a purely physical way, by the force of the sounds, especially in the orchestra. Such are some of the more common effects in all the arts ; but, in addition to these, there is still another method, common to all arts, and this is, the representation by one art of what is proper for another art to represent, such as, that music should " describe," as all programme music and that of WagTier and his followers does, or that painting, the drama, and poetry should " produce a mood," as all decadent art does. The fourth method is eutertainingness, that is, a mental interest united with the production of art. Eutertaining- ness may consist in an intricate plot, — a method which until lately was used in English novels and French comedies and dramas, but now has begun to go out of fashion and has given way to documentality, that is, to detailed descriptions of some historic period or some especial branch of contemporary life. Thus, for example, eutertainingness consists in describing in a novel the Egyptian or the Roman life, or the life of the miners, WHAT IS ART ? 241 or of the clerks of some large establishment, and the reader is interested, and this interest is taken for an artistic impressiou. Eutertaiuingn(?ss may consist in the mere methods of expression. This kind of eutertainiug- ness has now become exceedingly common. Poetry and prose, and pictures, and the drama, and musical composi- tions are produced in such a way that they have to be guessed like rebuses, and this process of guessing also affords pleasure and gives the semblance of an impression received from art. Frequently it is said that a production of art is very good, because it is poetical or realistic, or effective or interesting, when neither the first, nor the second, nor the third, nor the fourth can be a standard of the value of the art or has anything in common with it. " Poetical " means " borrowed." Now, every borrowing is only a leading up of the readers, spectators, or hearers to some dim recollection of those artistic impressions which they received from previous productions of art, and not an infection with the sensation which the artist has experienced. A production which is based on borrowing, as, for example, Gothe's Faust, may be worked out very beautifully, replete with sallies of wit and all kinds of beauties, but it cannot produce a real artistic impression, because it wants the chief property of a production of art, — completeness, organicalness, — that is, that the form and the contents should form one uninterrupted whole, expressive of the sensations experienced by the artist. By the borrowing the artist conveys no other sensation than what was impressed upon him by the production of some previous art, and so every borrowing of whole subjects or different scenes, situations, descrip- tions, is only a reflection of art, its semblance, and not art. And so to say of a certain production that it is good because it is poetical, that is, because it resembles a production of art, is the same as saying of a coin that it 242 WHAT IS ART ? Is good, because it resembles a real coin. Just as little can the imitation of realism, as many think, be a standard of the value of art. Imitation cannot serve as a stand- ard of the value of art, because, if the chief property of art is the infection of others with the sensation described by the artist, the infection with the sensation not only does not coincide with the description of the details of what is being conveyed, but for the most part is impaired by a superabundance of details. The attention of him who receives artistic impressions is distracted by all these well-observed details, and on account of them the author's feeling, if he has any, is not communicated. It is just as strange to value the production of art by the degree of its realism and truthfulness of details com- municated, as it is to judge of the nutritive value of food by its appearance. When we define the value of a produc- tion by its realism, we merely show by this that we are not speaking of a production of art, but of an imitation of it. The third method of imitating art, effectiveness, like the first two, does not coincide with the concept of true art, because in effectiveness, in the effect of novelty, sud- denness of contrast, terror, no sentiment is conveyed, and there is only an effect upon the nerves. When a painter paints beautifully a wound with blood, the sight of this wound will startle me, but there will be no art in this. A prolonged note on a mighty organ will produce a striking impression, will frequently even evoke tears, but there is no music in this, because no sensation is conveyed. And yet it is just such physiological effects that are con- stantly taken by men of our circle to be art, not only in music, but also in poetry, painting, and the drama. They say that modern art has become refined. On the con- trary, thanks to the hunt after effects, it has become extraordinarily gross. They are performing, let us say, the new production of Hannele, which has made the round of the theatres of the whole of Europe, and in WHAT IS ART? 243 which the author wants to convey to the public com- passion for a tortured girl. To evoke this feeling in the spectators by means of art, the author ought to have made one of his persons express compassion so that it would infect all men, or correctly describe the girl's sensations. But he is either unable or unwilling to do so, and chooses another, more complicated method for the stage-manager, but one that is easier for the artist. He makes the girl die on the stage ; and with that, to increase the physio- logical effect on the audience, he puts out the lights in the theatre, leaving the audience in the dark, and to the sounds of pitiful 'uusic shows how the drunken father persecutes and beats this girl. The girl writhes, squeaks, groans, falls. There appear angels who carry her off. And the audience, experiencing some agitation at this, is fully convinced that this is an sesthetic sensation. But in this agitation there is nothing asthetical, because there is no infection of one man by another, but only a mingled feel- ing of compassion for another and of joy for myself because I am not suffering, — something like what we experience at the sight of an execution, or what the Eomans experi- enced in their circuses. The substitution of effectiveness for the aesthetic feeling IS particularly noticeable in the musical art, that art which by its nature has an immediate physiological effect upon the nerves. Instead of conveying in melody the author's sensations as experienced by him, the modern musician accumulates, interweaves sounds, and now intensifying, and now weakening them, produces upon the public a physiological effect, such as may be measured by an ap- paratus invented for the purpose.^ And the public receives this physiological effect as the effect of art. ^ There exists an apparatus by means of which a very sensitive needle, brought in relation to the tension of the muscle of the hand, indicates the physiological effect of music upon the nerves and the muscles. ^44 What is art? As regards the fourth method, entertainingness, this method, though more foreign to art than any other, is more frequently than any other mistaken for art. To say nothing of the intentional concealment by the author in his novel of what the author has to guess about, we very frequently get to hear about a picture or about a musical production, that it is interesting. What is meant by " interesting " ? An interesting production of art means either that the production evokes in us unsatisfied curios- ity, or that, in being impressed by a production of art, we receive information which is new to us, or that the pro- duction is not quite comprehensible and we by degrees and with an effort make our way to its comprehension and in the divination of its meaning derive a certain amount of pleasure. In neither case has the entertainingness anything in common with artistic impressions. Art has for its aim the infection of men with the sensation ex- perienced by the artist. But the mental effort which the spectator, the hearer, the reader, has to make for the grati- fication of the curiosity evoked, or for the acquisition of new information to be gained from the production, or for the comprehension of the meaning of the production, in absorbing the reader's, spectator's, hearer's attention, im- pedes the infection. And so the entertainingness of a production has not only nothing in common with the worth of a production of art, but rather impedes the artis- tic impression than cooperates with it. Poeticalness, and imitation, and effectiveness, and enter- tainingness may be found within a production of art, but they cannot take the place of the chief property of art, of the sensation experienced by the artist. Of late the majority of subjects in the art of the higher classes, which are given out as subjects of art, are precisely such as only resemble art, and lack in their foundation the chief char- acteristic of art, — the sensation experienced by the artist. WHAT IS ART? 245 To produce a true subject of art, many conditions are needed. Tliis man must stand on the level of the highest world conception of his time, and must have experienced a seusation and have had the desire and the chance to communicate it, and also possess the talent for some kind of art. All these conditions, necessary for the production of true art, are rarely combined. But in order, with the aid of methods worked out, borrowing, imitation, effective- ness, and entertainingness, to produce semblances of art, which in our society are well rewarded, one needs only to have a talent in some sphere of art, w^hich is of very fre- quent occurrence. By talent I mean the ability, in literary art, — easily to express one's ideas and impressions, and to notice and remember characteristic details ; in plastic art, the abihty to distinguish, remember, and reproduce hues, forms, colours ; in musical art, — the ability to distinguish intervals, and to remember and reproduce the consecutiveness of sounds. The moment a man in our day possesses such a talent, he is able, after having learned the technique and the methods of the imitation of his art (if his aesthetic sense, which would make his productions loathsome to him, is atrophied, and if he has patience), without interruption, to the end of his days, to compose productions which in our society are considered to be art. For the production of such imitations there exist in every kind of art special rules or recipes, so that a tal- ented man, having acquired them, is able a froid, coldly, without the slightest feeling, to produce these articles. In order to write poems, a man talented in literature needs only to train himself to be able in the place of each, one, real, necessary word to use, according to the demand of rhyme or measure, other ten words which have approxi- mately the same meaning, and to train himself to be able to say every sentence, which, to be clear, has only one proper arrangement of words, with all possible permuta- tions of words, so that it should resemble some sense : to 246 WHAT IS AKT? train himself besides, being guided by words which occur to him on account of their rhyming, to invent for these words a semblance of ideas, sentiments, and pictures, and then such a man may without interruption compose poems, according to the need, short or long ones, religious, amatory, or patriotic songs. But if the man with a talent for literature wants to write stories and novels, he need only elaborate a style, that is, train himself to describe everything he sees, and to remember or note down details. When he has mas- tered this, he can without cessation write novels or stories, according to his desire or according to demand, — historical, naturalistic, social, erotic, psychological, or even religious stories, such as there are a demand and fash- ion for. His subjects he can take from reading or from his own experiences, and the characters of the acting persons he may copy from his acquaintances. Such novels and stories, so long as they are decked out with well-observed and well-copied details, best of all, erotic details, will be regarded as productions of art, though there may not be a spark of sentiment in them. For the production of art in the dramatic form, a tal- ented man must, in addition to everything needed for the novel or story, learn also to put in the mouth of his act- ing persons as many bright and witty remarks as possible, make use of theatrical effects, and be able so to inter- weave the actions of persons that there shall not be one single long conversation on the stage, but as much bustle and motion as possible. If the writer is able to do so, he can without cessation write dramatic productions, one after another, choosing subjects from the criminal chroni- cles or from the last question which interests society, hke hypnotism, heredity, and so forth, or from the most an- cient and even fantastic splieres. A talented man in the sphere of painting or sculpture WUAT IS AUT? 247 can still more easily produce articles resembling art. For this purpose he need only learn to draw, paint, and sculpture, especially naked bodies. Having learned this, he may without cessation paint one picture after another, and sculpture one statue after another, according to his inclinations, choosing either mythological, or religious, or fantastic, or symbolical subjects ; or representing what they write about in newspapers, — a coronation, a strike, the Turko-Eussian War, the calamities of a famine ; or, what is most common, representing everything which seems beautiful, — from a naked woman to brass basins. For the production of musical art, a talented man needs even less that which forms the essence of art, that is, of a sentiment which may infect others ; but, on the other hand, physical, gymnastic labour he needs more than for any other art, unless it be the art of dancing. For a mu- sical production of art a man has to learn to move his fingers on some instrument as rapidly as those do who have reached the highest degree of perfection on it ; then he must find out how they used in antiquity to write music for many voices, which is called to learn counter- point, the fugue ; then he must learn to orchestrate, that is, to make use of the effects of the instruments. Having learned all this, a musician can without cessation write one production after another : either some programme music, or operas and romances, inventing sounds which more or less correspond to words, or chamber music, that is, taking other men's themes and working them over by means of the counterpoint and fugue within definite forms ; or, what is most common, he can write fantastic music, that is, take any combination of sounds that happens to occur to him and upon these accidental sounds build up all kinds of complications and adornments. Thus, adulterations of art, which the public of our higher classes accepts as real art, are produced in all the spheres of art according to a well-defined recipe. 248 WHAT IS ART? It is this substitution of adulterations of art for the productions of art that has been the third and most im- portant consequence of the segregation of the art of the highest classes from the national art. XII. There are three conditions which contribute to the pro- duction in our society of articles of adulterated art. These conditions are : (1) the considerable reward of the artists for their productions, and so the established professional- ism of the artists, (2) the criticism of art, and (3) the schools of art. So loDg as art was not divided, and nothing but religious art was valued and encouraged, while indifferent art was not encouraged, so long did there exist no adulterations of art; if they did exist, they immediately fell, as they were condemned by the whole people. But the moment this division took place, and every art, so long as it afforded enjoyment, was considered good by the men of the wealthy classes, and, affording enjoyment, began to be rewarded more than any other public activity, a greater number of men at once devoted themselves to this activity, and it assumed an entirely different character from what it had before, and became a profession. The moment art became a profession, the chief and most precious property of art, its sincerity, was consider- ably weakened and partially destroyed. The professional artist lives by his art, and so he must without cessation invent subjects for his productions, and he invents them. It is obvious what a difference tbere must be between the products of art, when they were created by men like the Jewish prophets, the authors of the psalms, Francis d'Assisi, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the authors of all the national fairy-tales, legends, songs, who not only received no reward for their 249 250 WHAT IS ART? productions, but even did not connect their names with them, or when art was produced at first by court poets, dramatists, and musicians, who received for it honour and rewards, and that art which later has been produced by official artists, who hve by their trade and receive rewards from journahsts, editors, impresarios, in general from mediators between the artists and the urban public, — the consumers of art. In this professionalism, the first condition is the difi"u- sion of the adulterated, false art. The second condition, is the lately arisen criticism of art, that is, the valuation of art, not by all, certainly not by simple, men, but by leaned, that is, by corrupted and, at the same time, self-confident men. A friend of mine, in expressing the relation of the critics to the artists, semi-jestingly defined it like this : " Critics are stupids, who are discussing the wise." This definition, however one-sided it is, is inexact and gross, but none the less includes a measure of truth and is in- comparably more correct than that according to which critics are supposed to explain artistic productions. " The critics explain." What do they explain ? An artist, if he is a real artist, has in his production conveyed to men the feeling which he has lived through ; what is there here to explain ? If the production is good, as art, the sentiment which the artist has expressed will, independently of its being moral or immoral, be communicated to other men. If it has been communicated to other men, they experience it, and all interpretations are superfiuous. But if the pro- duction does not infect men, no interpretations will make it infectious. It is impossible to interpret an artist's pro- duction. If it were possible to explain in words what the artist wanted to say, he would have said it in words. Rut he spoke by means of his art, because it was impos- sible in any other way to convey the sensation which he WHAT IS ART? 251 experienced. An interpretation in words of a product of art proves only that he who is iuterjjreting is unable to be infected by art. So it is and, no matter how strange it may seem, critics have always been men who less than any one else are able to be infected by art. For the most part they are men who write fluently, cultured, clever men, but with an 'absolutely corrupted or atrophied ability to be infected by art. And so these men have with their writings considerably contributed to the corruption of the taste of the public, which reads them and beheves in them. There has never been any art criticism, and there could have been none and can be none in a society where art has not divided and so is esteemed by the religious world conception of the whole nation. The art criticism arose and could have arisen only in the art of the higher classes who do not recognize the religious consciousness of their time. National art has a definite and indubitable inner cri- terion, — rehgious consciousness ; but the art of the higher classes does not have it, and so the appreciators of this art were inevitably compelled to hold to some external cri- terion. And as such criterion there appears to them, as the English a^sthetician has expressed it, the taste of " the best nurtured men," that is, the authority of the men who consider themselves cultured, and not only this authority, but also the tradition of the authority of these men. But this tradition is very faulty, because the judgments of these " best nurtured men " are frequently very faulty and because the judgments which were correct for a certain time cease to be such after awhile. But the critics, who have no foundations for their judgments, repeat them all the time. There was a period when the ancient tragic writers were considered good, and criticism regards them as such. Dante was thought to be a great poet, Ra- phael a great painter, Bach a great musician, and the 252 WHAT IS ART? critics, having no standard by which to separate good from bad art, not only regard these artists as great, but also all the productions of these artists do they regard as great and worthy of imitation. Notliing has to such an extent contributed to the corruption of art as these authorities, as estabhshed by criticism. A man produces some artistic production, like any arti«t, expressing in it in his peculiar way the sensations experienced by him, — and the majority of men are infected by the artist's sensations, and his production becomes famous. And criticism, in passing judgment on the artist, begins to say that his production is not bad, but he is none the less no Dante, no Shakespeare, no Gcithe, no Beethoven of the later period, no Raphael. And the young artist, hearing such judgments, begins to imitate those who are given him as models, and produces not only feeble, but even adulterated, false productions. Thus, for example, our Pushkin writes his minor poems, Evgeni Onyegin, TJie GijJsies, liis stories, and they are productions of various worth, but none the less produc- tions of true art. But under the influence of that false criticism which lauds Shakespeare he writes Boris Godu- nov, a reflectiugly cold production, and this production of criticism is praised and put up as a model, and there appear imitations of imitations, Ostrovski's Minin, A. Tol- stoy's Tsar Boris, and others. Such imitations of imita- tions fill all the hteratures with the most insignificant, absolutely useless productions. The chief harm of the critics consists in this, that, being men who are devoid of the ability to be infected by art (and all critics are such : if they were not devoid of this abihty, they could not undertake the impossible interpretation of artistic productions), the critics direct their attention to reflective, invented productions, which they laud and adduce as models worthy of imitation. For this reason they with such assurance praise the Greek WHAT IS ART? 253 tragic writers, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Gothe (nearly the whole of him without exception) ; of the moderns — Zola, Ibsen ; the nmsic of the latest period, Beethoven's, Wagner's. For the justification of their laudations of these reflective, invented productions they invent whole theories (such also is the famous theory of beauty), and not only dull, talented men accordiug to these theories compose their productions, but also true artists, using violence on themselves, frequently surrender themselves to these theories. Every false production which is lauded by the critics is a door through which the hypocrites of art at once make their way. Only thanks to the criticisms which in our day praise the gross, wild, and in our day senseless productions of the ancient Greeks, of Sophocles, Euripides, ^schylus, and especially Aristophanes, — or of the moderns, of Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare ; in painting — all of Eaphael, all of Michelangelo with his insipid " The Last Judgment ; " in music — all of Bach and all of Beethoven with his last period, there have become possible in our day men like Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Verlaine, Mallarm^, Puvis de Chavannes, Klinger, Bocklin, Stuck, Schneider ; in music — Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz, Brahms, Richard Strauss, and so forth, and all the enormous mass of entirely useless imitators of these imitators. As the best illustration of the harmful influence of criticism may serve its relation to Beethoven. Among his numberless productions, which are frequently written to order, there are, in spite of the artificiality of their forms, some artistic productions ; but he grows deaf, is unable to hear, and begins to write imaginary, unfinished productions, and so those which frequently are insipid and incomprehensible in a musical sense. I know that musicians can quite vividly imagine sounds and hear what they are reading ; but the imagined sounds can never take 254 WHAT IS ART? the place of the real ones, and every composer must hear his production, in order to be able to give it the finishing touches. Beethoven could not hear, could not give the finishing touches, and so sent out into the world these productions, which represented an artistic delirium. But criticism, having once recognized him as a great composer, takes special delight in sticking to these same monstrous productions, and discovers in them unusual beauties. As a justification of its laudations, it ascribes to musical art, distorting the very concept of musical art, the property of representing what it cannot represent, and there appear imitators, an endless number of imitators, of those mon- strous attempts at artistic productions which are written by deaf Beethoven. And there appears Wagner, who at first, in his critical essays, lauds Beethoven, particularly during his last period, and brings this music in connection with Schopenhauer's mystical theory, which is as insipid as Beethoven's music itself, — namely, that music is the expression of the will, — not of separate manifestations of the will on various stages of objectification, but of its very essence, — and then on the basis of this very theory writes his own music in coimection with a still falser system of the union of all the arts. After Wagner there appear still other imitators, who still more depart from art: a Brahms, a Eichard Strauss, and others. Such are the results of criticism. But the third con- dition for the corruption of art, — the schools which teach art, are, if anything, even more harmful. The moment art became art for the class of wealthy people, and not for the whole nation, it became a pro- fession, and as soon as it became a profession, there were worked out methods which teach this profession, and the men who chose for themselves the profession of art began to study these methods, and there appeared professional schools, — classes of rhetoric, or classes of literature, in WUAT IS ART? 255 the gymnasia, academies for painting, conservatories for music, theatrical schools of dramatic art. In these schools they teach art. But art is the con- veyance to other people of a special sensation experienced by the artist. How, then, is one to be taught this in schools ? No school can evoke in a man any sensation, and still less can it teach a man what the essence of art consists in, — the manifestation of sensations in his own, peculiar way. There is but one thing the school can teach, and that is, how to convey sensations experienced by other artists in the same way as the other artists conveyed them. It is precisely this that they teach in the schools of art, and this instruction not only does not contribute to the diffu- sion of true art, but, on the contrary, in disseminating adulterations of art, more than anything else deprives men of the possibihty of understanding true art. In the hterary art men are taught how, without wishing to say anything, to write a composition of many pages on a theme on which they have never reflected, and to write it in such a way that it may resemble the compositions of authors who are acknowledged to be famous. It is this that the pupils are taught in the gymnasia. In painting, the chief instruction consists in drawing and painting from originals and from Nature, particularly the naked body, which is never seen, and which a man who is occupied with true art hardly ever has occasion to represent, and to draw and paint as previous masters used to draw and to paint ; and they are taught to compose pic- tures, giving them themes the like of which have been treated before by acknowledged celebrities. Similarly, pupils in dramatic schools are taught to pronounce mono- logues just as they were pronounced by such as were considered to be famous tragedians. The same is true of music. The whole theory of music is nothing but a dis- 256 WHAT IS ART? connected repetition of those methods which the acknowl- edged masters of composition used for their musical themes. I have already somewhere mentioned the profound utterance of the Russian painter Bryulov about art, and I cannot refrain from quoting him again, because it shows better than anything what they can and what they ought to teach in the schools. In correcting a pupil's study, Bryulov barely touched it up in a few places, and the poor, dead study suddenly revived. " You have barely touched it up, and all is changed," said one of the pupils. " Art begins where the hardy begins," said Bryulov, giving with these words utterance to the most characteristic feature of art. This remark is true for all the arts, but its correctness is particularly noticeable in the execution of music. In order that a musical execution may be artistic, may be art, that is, that it may produce an infec- tion, three chief conditions have to be observed. (Besides these conditions, there are many other conditions for musical perfection : it is necessary that the transition from one sound to another should be abrupt or blending, tliat the sound should evenly increase or decrease, that it should combine with such a sound and not with another, that the sound should have such and such a timbre, and many other things.) But let us take the three chief con- ditions, — the height, the time, and the force of the sound. A musical execution is an art and infects a person, only when the sound is neither higher nor lower than what it ought to be, that is, when there is taken that infinitely small medium of the note demanded, and when the note shall be protracted precisely as much as it ought to be, and when the force of the note shall be neither stronger nor weaker than what is necessary. The least deviation in the height of the sound in either direction, the slightest increase or decrease of time, and the slightest intensifica- tion or weakening of the sound in comparison with what WHAT IS ART ? 257 is demanded, destroys the perfectiou of the execution, and so the infectiousness of the production. Thus the infection through the art of music, which it seems is so simple and so easily evoked, is received by us only when the per- former finds those infinitely small moments which are demanded for the perfection of music. The same is true of all arts : barely brighter, barely darker, barely higher, lower, more to the right, more to the left, — in painting ; barely weakening or intensifying the intonation, — in dramatic art ; or something is done just a little earlier, just a little later, barely underdone, overdone, exaggerated, — in poetry, and there is no infection. Infection is ob- tained only when, and to the extent in which, the artist finds those infinittdy small moments of which the produc- tion of art is composed. But there is no possibility of teaching one in an external way to discover these infinitely small moments : they are found only when a man aban- dons himself to a sensation. No instruction can make a dancer fall in with the beat of the music, and a singer or violin player take the infinitely small mean of a note, and a person who draws draw the one possible and necessary line, and a poet find the one needed permutation of the one needed series of words. All this is discovered by the feeling alone. And so the schools can teach only what is needed in order to do something which resembles art, but by no means art itself. The instruction of the schools stops where the hardy begins, consequently, where art begins. The training of men to do what resembles art disaccus- toms them to understand true art. From this results the fact that there are no duller persons in art than those who have passed through the professional schools of art and have made the best progress in them. These pro- fessional schools produce a hypocrisy of art, precisely like the religious hypocrisy which is produced by the schools which instruct preachers and all kinds of religious 258 WHAT IS ART? teachers in general. Just as impossible as it is to teach men to become religious teachers of men, so it is impos- sible to teach a man to become an artist. Thus the art schools are doubly pernicious to art : in the first place, by killing the ability of reproducing true art in the men who have had the misfortune of getting into these schools and taking a course of seven, eight, or ten years in them ; in the second, by breeding at an enor- mous rate that adulterated art which corrupts the taste of the masses, such as our world is full of. But in order that men, born artists, may be able to learn the methods of all kinds of arts, as they have been worked out by previous artists, all primary schools ought to have such classes of drawing and of music, — of singing, — so that any talented man, who has gone through them, may make use of the existing and accessible models and then independently perfect himself in his art. It is these three conditions, the professionalicm of the artists, the criticism, and the schools of art that have produced this result, that the majority of the men of our time absolutely fail to comprehend what art is and accept the grossest adulterations of art for art itcelf. XIII. To what extent the men of our circle and of our time have become devoid of the ability to perceive true art and have become accustomed to accept as art such objects as have nothing in common with it, can best of all be seen in the productions of Eichard Wagner, which of late have come to be esteemed and acknowledged more and more, not only by the Germans, but also by the French and the English, as the very highest art, which has opened new horizons. The peculiarity of Wagner's music, as is well known, consists in this, that music must serve poetry, by express- ing all the shades of a poetic production. The union of the drama with music, invented in the fifteenth century in Italy for the purpose of reestablish- ing the imagined old Greek drama with its music, is an artificial form, which has had success only among the highest classes, and then only when talented musicians, like Mozart, Weber, Eossini, and others, inspired by the dramatic subject, freely abandoned themselves to their inspiration, subordinating the text to the music, for which reason it was the music to a given text that in their operas was of importance to the hearer, and by no means the text, which, even though it was most senseless, as, for example, in the Magic Flute, none the less did not interfere with the artistic impression of the music. Wagner wants to improve the opera by subordinating the music to the demands of poetry and blending it with them. But every art has its definite sphere, which does not coincide with the other arts, but only touches upon 259 260 WHAT IS ART? them ; and so, if the manifestations, not only of many, but even of only two, arts, the dramatic and the musical, are united into one whole, the demands of one art will not give a chance to execute the demands of another, which indeed has always been the case with the common opera, where the dramatic art was subordinated, or rather, gave way, to the musical art. But Wagner wants the musical art to be subordinated to the dramatic, and both to manifest themselves in all their force. This is impossible, because every production of art, if it is a true production of art, is the expression of the artist's intimate feehugs, and exclusive, resemblmg nothing else. Such is the pro- duction of music, and such is the production of dramatic art, if it is true art. And so, for the production of one art to coincide with that of another, the impossible has to happen. Two productions of art from different spheres have to be absolutely exclusive and different from any- thing which has existed before, and at the same time they are to coincide and must absolutely resemble one another. This cannot be, just as there cannot be two men, or even two leaves on a tree, that are perfectly alike. Still less can two productions of various spheres of art — of the musical and the hterary — be absolutely alike. If they coincide, either one is an artistic produc- tion and the other an adulteration, or both are adultera- tions. Two living leaves cannot perfectly resemble one another, but two artificial leaves may. The same is true of productions of art. They can fully coincide only when neither the one nor the other is art, but both are an invented semblance of art. If poetry and music may unite more or less in a hymn, a song, a romance (and even then not in such a way that the music follows every verse of the text, as Wagner wants, but that each of them produces the same mood), this is due to the fact that poetry and music have partly one WHAT IS AET? 261 and the same aim, — the evoking of a mood, and the moods produced by lyrical poetry and music may more or less coincide. But even in these combinations the centre of gravity is always in one of the two produc- tions, so that only one produces an artistic impression, while the other remains unnoticed. Much less can there be such a union between epic or dramatic poetry and music. Besides, one of the chief conditions of artistic creation is the artist's complete liberty from all preconceived demands. But the necessity to adapt one's musical pro- duction to the production of poetry, or vice versa, is such a preconceived demand that every possibihty of creation is destroyed, and so productions of this kind, which are adapted to one another, have always been, and always must be, productions, not of art, but only of its semblance, like music in melodramas, legends under pictures, illus- trations, librettos in operas. And such also are Wagner's productions. We see the confirmation of this in the fact that in Wagner's new music there is absent the cMef feature of every true ar- tistic production, — completeness, organicalness, — when the least change of form impairs the meaning of the whole production. In a true artistic production, — in a poem, drama, picture, song, symphony, — it is impos- sible to take a single verse, or scene, or figure, or beat out of its place and put it into another without impairing the meaning of the whole production, just as it is impossible to avoid impairing the life of an organic being, if an organ is taken out of its place and is put into another. But with Wagner's music of the last period, with the exception of a few, quite insignificant passages, which have an independent, musical meaning, it is possible to make all kinds of permutations and transpose what was in the beginning to the end, and vice versa, without altering the musical sense. The reason why with this 262 WHAT IS ART? the sense of Wagner's music is not altered is because it lies in the words, and not in the music. The musical text of Wagner's operas is like what a versifier would do, — such as there are plenty of to-day, — who, having contorted his tongue in such a way that he is able for every theme, for every rhyme, for every measure to write verses which resemble verses that make sense, should take it into his head with his verses to illustrate some one of Beethoven's symphonies or sonatas, or a ballad by Chopin, by writing for the first beats of one character such verses as in his opinion correspond to these first beats ; and then should for the following beats of another character write other corresponding verses, without any inner connection with the first verses and, besides, without rhyme and without any measure. Such a production without music would in a poetical sense precisely resemble Wagner's operas in a musical sense, if they were listened to without any text. But Wagner is not only a musician, he is also a poet, or both at the same time, and so, to judge Wagner, we must also know his text, — that very text to which the music is to minister. Wagner's chief poetical production is the poetical elaboration of the Nihclung. This pro- duction has in our time received such an enormous importance and has such an influence on everything which is now given out as art, that it is necessary for every man of our time to have an idea about it. I have attentively read the four little books in which this pro- duction is printed, and have made a short extract from it, which I give in the second appendix, and I earnestly advise the reader, if he has not read the text itself, a thing which would be best of all, at least to read my exposition, in order to form an idea of this remarkable production. This production is a specimen of the grossest adulteration of poetry, so gross as even to be ridiculous. But, they say, it is not possible to judge Wagner's WHAT IS ART? 263 productions, unless one has seen them on the stage. This winter they gave in Moscow the second day, or the sec- ond act, of this drama, which, I was told, was the best of all, and I attended this performance. When I arrived, the immense theatre was already full from top to bottom. Here were grand dukes and the flower of the aristocracy, and of the merchant class, and of the learned profession, and of the middle class official urban public. The majority had librettos in their hands, trying to make out the meaning of the opera. The musicians, — some of them old, gray-haired men, — with the scores in their hands, followed the music. Appar- ently the execution of this production was an important event. I was a little late, but I was told that the short prelude, with which the act begins, has little significance, and that this omission was not important. On the stage, amidst scenery which was supposed to represent a cave in a rock, in front of an object which was supposed to repre- sent a blacksmith's arrangement, there sat an actor dressed in tights and in a mantle of skins, in a wig, with a false beard, and with his white, feeble hands, unwonted to work (by his agile movements, but cliiefiy by his belly and absence of muscles, the actor may be told), he was strik- ing with a hammer, such as never has existed, at a sword, such as can positively not exist, and he was striking in a manner in which no one ever strikes with a hammer, and, while doing this, he opened his mouth in a strange manner and sang something which could not be under- stood. Music from various instruments accompanied these strange sounds which he uttered. From the libretto one could learn that the actor was supposed to represent a mighty dwarf who was living in a grotto and forging a sword for Siegfried, whom he had brought up. You could tell that he was a dwarf, because he walked all the time bending at the knee his legs in the tights. Opening 264 WHAT IS ART? his mouth in the same strange manner, this actor for a long time did something intermediate between singing and shouting. The music at the same time ran over something strange, some beginnings of something, which did not last and did not end with anything. From the libretto one could learn that the dwarf was talking to himself about a ring which a giant had got possession of and which he wished to obtain through Siegfried ; now, Siegfried needed a good sword, and so the dwarf was busy forging that sword. After this character's long talk or singing to himself, other sounds are suddenly heard in the orchestra, and they, too, somehow have no beginning and no end. There appears another actor with a horn over his shoulder, and a man running on his hands and feet, disguised as a bear, and with this bear he attacks the blacksmith-dwarf, who runs away without unbending his knees in the tights. This other actor is supposed to represent the hero Sieg- fried himself. The sounds which are heard in the orchestra at the entrance of this actor are supposed to represent Siegfried's character and are called Siegfried's Leit-motiv. These sounds are repeated every time that Sieg- fried makes his appearance. There is one certain combi- nation of sounds into a Leit-motiv for every person. Thus the Leit-motiv is repeated every time when the person represented by it makes his appearance ; even at the mention of a person the Motiv corresponding to that person is heard. More than this : every object has its Leit-motiv or chord. There is a Motiv of the ring, a Motiv of the helmet, a Motiv of the apple, the fire, the spear, the sword, the water, etc., and the moment mention is made of the ring, the helmet, the apple, we get the Motiv or the chord of the helmet, the apple. The actor with the horn opens his mouth as unnaturally as the dwarf, and for a long time yells out his words in a singsong way, and is answered in the same singsong WHAT IS ART? 265 way by Mime, — that is the name of the dwarf. The meaning of this conversation, which one can learn only from the libretto, is this, that Siegfried was brought up by the dwarf and for this somehow despises him and wants to kill him. The dwarf has forged the sword for Siegfried, but Siegfried is dissatisfied with the sword. From the ten-page conversation (according to the li- bretto), which for half an hour is conducted with the same strange singsong openings of the mouth, it can be seen that Siegfried's mother bore him in the forest, and that of his father nothing is known but that he had a sword, which was broken and fragments of which are in Mime's possession, and that Siegfried knows no fear and wants to get out of the forest, while. IMime does not let him go. During this musical conversation there are never forgotten, at the mention of the father, the sword, and so forth, the Motivs of these persons and objects. After these conversations on the stage there resound new sounds, those of the God Wotan, and a pilgrim makes his appearance. This pilgrim is God Wotan. This God Wotan, himself in a wig and in tights, standing in a stupid attitude with his spear, for some reason is telling everything which Mime cannot help but know, but which the spectators have to be told about. He does not tell all this in a simple way, but in the form of riddles, which he commands to be put to him, for some reason pledging his head that he will guess them. With this the pilgrim strikes his spear against the ground, and every time he does so, fire issues from the earth, and in the orchestra are heard the sounds of the spear and of the fire. The conversation is accompanied by the orchestra, in which are artificially interwoven the Motivs of the persons and the objects spoken of. Besides, the sensations are in a most naive manner expressed by means of the music : the terrible, — those are the sounds of the bass ; the frivolous, — those are q^uick passages in soprano, and so forth. 266 WHAT IS ART? The riddles have no other meaning than to tell the spectators who the Nibelungs, the giants, the gods are, and what was before. This conversation, through strangely opened mouths, takes also place in a singsong manner, and lasts according to the libretto for eight pages, and correspondingly long on the stage. After this the pilgrim goes away, and Siegfried comes back and talks with Mime in thirteen pages. There is not a single tune, but all the time nothing but an interweaving of the Leit-motivs of the persons and objects of the conversation. The con- versation turns on this, that Mime wants to teach Sieg- fried what terror is, while Siegfried does not know what terror is. Having finished this conversation, Siegfried seizes what is to represent a fragment of a sword, saws it to pieces, puts it on what is supposed to represent the forge, melts it, and then forges it, and sings, " Heaho, heaho, hoho ! Hoho, hoho, hoho, hoho ; hoheo, haho, haheo, hoho," and the first act is ended. The question for which I had come to the theatre was for me answered indubitably, as indubitably as the ques- tion of the worth of the story by my lady acquaintance, when she read to me a scene between the maiden with the flowing hair in a white dress, and the hero with two white dogs and a feathered hat ^ la Quillaumc Tell. From an author who can compose such false scenes as I witnessed here, which cut the a?sthetic feeling as though with knives, nothing else could be expected ; a man may boldly make up his mind that everything which such an author mav write will be bad, because such an author does not apparently know what a true artistic production is. I wanted to go away, but my friends, with whom I was there, begged me to stay, assur- ing me that it is impossible to form an opinion by this one act, and that it would be better in the second, — and so I remained for the second act. The act — night. Then it dawns. The whole perform- WHAT IS ART ? 267 ance in general is full of dawnings, mists, moonshines, darkness, magic fires, storms, and so forth. The scene represents a forest, and in the forest there is a cave. Near the cave sits a third actor, representing another dwarf. It is dawning. God Wotan with the spear comes again, and again in the form of a pilgrim. Again there are his sounds, new sounds, the deepest bass that can be produced. These sounds indicate that the dragon is speaking. Wotan wakens the dragon. The same bass sounds are heard, but deeper and deeper down. At first the dragon says, " I want to sleep," but later he crawls out from the cave. The dragon is represented by two men dressed in a green skin in the form of scales ; on one side they wag a tail, and on the other they open the jaws, like a crocodile's, which is attached to them, and from which issues fire from an electric lamp. The dragon, which is supposed to be terrible, and, no doubt, may appear so to children of five years of age, pronounces certain words in bellowing bass. All this is so stupid and such a cheap show that one only marvels how people of more than seven years of age can seriously attend such a performance; but thousands of quasi-cultivated people sit and listen attentively, and look, and are delighted. Enter Siegfried with his horn and Mime. In the orchestra are heard sounds which indicate them, and Siegfried and Mime discuss as to whether Siegfried knows what terror is. After this Mime goes away, and there begins a scene which is supposed to be most poetical. Siegfried, in his tights, lies down in what is supposed to be a beautiful pose, and now is silent, and now talks to himself. He meditates, listens to the singing of the birds, and wants to imitate them. For this purpose he cuts a reed with his sword, and makes himself a pipe. Day dawns more and more, and the birds sing. Siegfried tries to imitate the birds. In the orchestra is heard an imita- tion of the birds, mingling with the sounds which corre- 268 WHAT IS ART? spond to the words which he speaks. But Siegfried is not successful with his playing on the pipe, and he blows his horn. This scene is unbearable. There is not even a sign of any music, that is, of the art which serves as a means for the communication of the mood experienced by the author. There is here something perfectly incomprehen- sible in a musical seuse. In a musical sense one con- stantly experiences hope, after which there immediately follows disappointment ; it is as though a musical thought began, but was immediately cut short. If there is some- thing resembling incipient music, these beginnings are so short, so obstructed with complications of harmony, orches- tration, and effects of contrasts, so obscure, so unfinished, and the falsity of what is taking place on the stage is withal so abominable, that it is difficult to notice them, to say nothing of being infected by them. But above all else, the author's intention is so audible and so visible in every note, from the beginning to the end, that one does not see and hear Siegfried or the birds, but only the narrow-minded, self-conceited, bad tone and taste of a German who has the most absolutely wrong ideas about poetry and who in the grossest and most primitive manner possible wants to convey to me these wrong con- ceptions of poetry. Everybody knows that feeling of distrust and opposi- tion which is provoked by the palpable intention of the author. A story-teller need but say in advance, " Get ready to weep or to laugh," and you will be sure not to w^eep or to laugh ; and when you see that the author pre- scribes admiration for what is not only not admirable, but even ridiculous or detestable, and when you at the same time see that the author is unquestionably sure that he has captivated you, you get a heavy, painful sensation, something like what a man would experience if an old, ugly woman should attire herself in a ball-dress and should smilingly circle around in front of him, being sure WHAT IS ART ? 269 of his sympathy. This impression was increased by the fact that all about me I saw a crowd of three thousand people, who not only submissively listened to this incred- ible insipidity, but even considered it their duty to go into ecstasies over it. I somehow managed to sit through the next scene with the appearance of the monster, which was accompanied by his bass notes, interwoven with Siegfried's Motiv, the struggle with the monster, all his bellowiugs, the fires, the swinging of the sword, but I was absolutely unable to stand it any longer, and ran out of the theatre with an expression of disgust, which I am even now unable to forget. As I listened to this opera, I involuntarily thought of an honourable, clever, literate village labourer, especially one of those clever, truly religious men whom I know among the masses, and I imagined the terrible perplexity at which such a man would arrive, if he were shown what I saw on that evening. What would he say, if he learned of all those labours which were spent on this performance, and saw the public, those mighty ones of this world, whom he was in the habit of respecting, those old, bald-headed men with gray beards, who sit six solid hours in silence, listening atten- tively and looking at aU these stupid things. But, to say nothing of a grown labourer, it is hard even to imagine a child of more than seven years, who could busy himself with tliis stupid, senseless fairy-tale. And yet an enormous audience, the flower of the cul- tured men of the highest classes, sit through these six hours of a senseless performance, and go home, imagining that, having paid their tribute to this piece of stupidity, they have acquired a new right to recognize themselves as a leading and enlightened audience. I am speaking of a Moscow audience. But what is a Moscow audience ? It is one hundredth part of that public 270 WHAT IS ART? which considers itself most enHghtened, and which re- gards it as its desert that it has to such an extent lost the ability to be infected by art, that it not only can without indignation be present at this stupid falsity, but even he in raptures over it. In Baireuth, where tliese performances began, people arrived from all the corners of the world, spending as much as one thousand roubles to each person, in order to see this performance, — people who consider themselves to be refined and cultivated, — and for four days in succes- sion they sat each day through six hours, in order to see and hear this insipidity and falsity. But why have people been travelling, and why do they even now travel, to see these performances, and why are they in raptures over them ? Involuntarily there arises the question : how is the success of Wagner's productions to be explained ? I explain to myself this success by this, that, thanks to the exclusive position in which Wagner was, having at liis command the king's means, he with great cleverness made use of all the methods of adulterated art, which had been worked out by a long practice in false art, and produced a model adulterated production of art. I purposely took this production as a model, because in none of the adulterations of art known to me is there such a masterly and forceful combination of all the methods by means of which art is adulterated, namely, borrowing, imitation, effectiveness, and entertainingness. Beginning with a subject taken from antiquity, and ending with mists and moon and sun rises, Wagner in this production makes use of everything which is re- garded as poetical. Here we find the sleeping beauty, and nymphs, and subterranean fires, and gnomes, and battles, and swords, and love, and incest, and a monster, and the singing of birds, — the whole arsenal of poetical- ness is brought into action. Siegfried fighting the dragon. WHAT IS ART? 271 With this, everything is imitative, — the scenery and the costumes are imitative. Everything is done in the way in which, from all the data of archceology, it must have l)een done in antiquity, — the very sounds are imi- tative. Wagner, who was not devoid of musical talent, invented such sounds as precisely imitate the strokes of the hammer, the hissing of iron at white heat, the singing of birds, and so forth. Besides, in this production everything is to the highest degree strikingly effective — striking by its very pecu- liarities, by its monsters, its magic fires, its actions which take place in the water, its darkness, in which the spectators are, the invisibility of the orchestra, its new, never before employed, harmonious combinations. Besides, everything is entertaining. The interest is not only in who will get killed, and by whom, who will get married and to whom, whose son this man is, and what will happen later — the interest is also in the relation of the music to the text : the waves roll in the Ehine, — how will this be expressed in music ? An evil dwarf makes his appearance, — how will the music ex- press the evil dwarf ? How will the music express the dwarf's sensuality ? How will valour, fire, apples be ex- pressed by music ? How does the Leit-motiv of the speaker interweave with the Leit-motivs of the persons and objects of which he speaks? Besides, the music itself is interesting. It departs from all formerly accepted laws, and in it appear the most unexpected and completely new modulations (which is very easy and quite possible in a music which has no inner legality). The dissonances are new, and they are solved in a novel way, and this, too, is interesting. This poeticalness, imitation, startling effects, and entertainingness are in these productions, thanks to the peculiarities of Wagner's talent and to that advantageous position in which he was, carried to the highest degree 272 WHAT IS ART? of perfection, and act upon the hearer by hypnotizing him, something in the way a man would be hypnotized who for the period of several hours should be listening to an insane man's delirium pronounced with great oratorical art. I am told, " You cannot judge, if you have not seen Wagner's productions at Baireuth, in the dark, where the music is not visible, being under the stage, and the execu- tion i« carried to the highest degree of perfection." This proves that the matter is not in the art, but in the hypno- tization. It is precisely what the spiritualists say. To con- vince one of the truth of their visions, they generally say : " You cannot judge ; investigate it, be present at several st- ances, that is, sit in silence in the dark for several hours in succession in the company of half -insane persons, and repeat this about ten times, and you will see everything we see." How can a man help seeing it ? Put yourself just under such conditions, and you will see everything you wish. It is still easier to attain this by drinking wine or smoking opium. The same is true of listening to Wagner's operas. Sit in the dark for four days in suc- cession, in the company of not quite normal men, subject- ing your brain to the most powerful influence, by means of the auditory nerves, of sounds most calculated to irritate the braiu, and you will certainly arrive at an abnormal state and will go into ecstasies over insipidities. How- ever, for this purpose one does not need four days : for this the five hours of one day, during which one perform- ance lasts, as was the case in Moscow, are sufficient. And it is not only the five hours that are sufficient ; one hour will do for men who have no clear conception of what art ought to be, and who have formed an opinion in advance that what they will see is beautiful, and that indifference and dissatisfaction with this production will serve as a proof of their lack of culture and of their back- wardness. WHAT IS ART ? 273 I watched the audience at the performance which I attended. The men who guided the whole audience and gave it tone were such as had been hypnotized in advance and who again surrendered themselves to a familiar hypnosis. These hypnotized men, being in an abnormal state, v^'ere in full ecstasy. Besides, all the art critics, who are devoid of the ability to be infected by art and so show especial appreciation of productions in which every- thing is a matter of reason, as in Wagner's opera, also profoundly approved of a production which gives rich food to mental processes. After these two divisions of men there came that great urban crowd, with princes, nabobs, and patrons of art at its head, with its corrupted and partly atrophied ability to be infected by art, and indifferent to it, always, like poor hunting-dogs, clinging to those who most determinately express their opinion. " Oh, yes, of course ! "What poetry ! Wonderful ! Par- ticularly the birds ! " — " Yes, yes, I am quite vanquished." These men repeat in all kinds of voices what they have just heard from men whose opinion seems to them to deserve confidence. If there are people who are offended by the insipidity and falsity, they timidly keep quiet, just as sober people are timid and keep quiet among those who are drunk. And thus a senseless, gi'oss, false production, which has nothing in common with art, thanks to the mastery of adulterated art, makes the round of the whole world, • costs millions in staging it, and more and more corrupts the tastes of the men of the higher classes and their con- ception of what art is. XIV. I KNOW that the majority of men who not only are considered to be clever, but who really are so, who are' capable of comprehending the most difficult scientific, mathematical, philosophical discussions, are very rarely able to understand the simplest and most obvious truth, if it is such that in consequence of it they will have to admit that the opinion which they have formed of a sub- ject, at times with great effort, — an opinion of which they are proud, which they have taught others, on the basis of which they have arranged their whole life, — that this opinion may be false. And so I have not much hope that the proofs which I adduce in regard to the cor- ruption of art and of taste in our society will be accepted or even seriously discussed ; still, I must finish telling what my investigation has inevitably led me to. This investigation has led me to the conclusion that nearly everything which is considered to be art, — good art and all art in our society, — is not only not true and good art, but not even art at all : it is only an adulteration of art. This proposition, I know, is very strange and sounds paradoxical, but if we only admit the correctness of the statement that art is a human activity by means of which one set of men convey their sensations to another, and not a ministration to beauty, or the manifestation of an idea, etc., we shall be obliged to admit it. If it is true that art is an activity by means of which one man, having experienced a sensation, consciously conveys it to another, we shall be forced to admit that in everything which among us is called the art of the higher classes, — 274 WHAT IS ART? 275 in all those novels, stories, dramas, comedies, pictures, sculptures, symphonies, operas, operettas, ballets, etc., which are given out as productions of art, hardly one in a hundred thousand is due to a sensation experienced by its author ; everything else is nothing but factory products, adulterations of art, in which borrowings, imitation, effect- iveness, and entertainingness take the place of infection by a sensation. That the number of true productions of art are to the number of these adulterations as one is to one hundred thousand and even more, may be proved by the following calculation. I read somewhere that in Paris alone there are thirty thousand painters. The same number there must be in England, the same in Germany, the same in Russia and Italy and the other minor countries. Thus there must be something like 120,000 painters in Europe ; there are, no doubt, as many musicians and as many artist authors. If these three hundred thousand men produce no more than three productions a year (many of them produce ten or more), each year will give one million productions of art. How many, then, have there been in the last ten years, and how many for the whole time that the art of the higher classes has been separated from that of the masses ? Obviously millions of them, Wlio of the greatest con- noisseurs of art has really received an impression from all these so-called productions of art ? To say nothing of all the working people, who have no conception about all these productions, the men of the higher classes cannot know one thousandth part, and do not remember those which they knew anything about. All these objects appear under the form of art, produce no impression on anybody, except at times the impression of a diversion on the idle crowd of rich men, and disappear without leaving a trace. In reply to this we are told that, if there were no enormous quantity of failures, there would also be no real productions of art. But such a reflection is like one 276 WHAT IS ART^ a baker would make in response to the reproach that his bread is good for nothiug, which is, that if there were not hundreds of spoiled loaves, there would not be one well- baked loaf. It is true that where there is gold there is also much sand ; but this can by no means serve as an excuse for saying a lot of insipid things m order to say something clever. We are surrounded by productions which are considered artistic. We have side by side thousands of poems, thou- sands of poetic stories, thousands of dramas, thousands of pictures, thousands of musical productions. All poems describe love or Nature, or the author's mental state, and measure and rhyme are observed in them all ; all dramas and comedies are exquisitely staged and beautifully per- formed by trained actors ; all novels are divided into chapters, and in all love is described, and there are effect- ive scenes, and correct details of life are described ; all symphonies contain an allegro, an andante, a scherzo, and a finale, and all of them consist of modulations and chords, and are performed by exquisitely trained musicians ; all pictures, in golden frames, give sharply outlined repre- sentations of persons and their accessories. But among these productions of all kinds of art there is one among hundreds of thousands, whicli is not exactlv a little better than any other, but is distinguished from all the others as a diamond is distinguished from glass. One cannot be bought at any price, so precious it is ; the other has not only no price, but even a negative value, because it de- ceives and corrupts taste. But in their appearance they are absolutely the same to a man with a corrupt and atrophied feehng. The difficulty of telling artistic productions in our society is increased by the fact that the external worth of the work in the false productions is not only not worse, but fr(>.quently even better than in the true productions ; an adulterated article often startles a person more than WHAT IS ART? 277 one which is real, and the contents of an adulterated article are more interesting. How is one to choose ? How is one to find this one out of a hundred thousand of produc- tions, which in appearance does in no way differ from such as are intentionally made to look like a real one ? For a man with an uncorrupted taste, for a labouring man, one who is not from the city, this is as easy as it is easy for an animal with an uncorrupted instinct to discover in the forest or the field the one track, out of thousands, which it needs. The animal wall find without fail what it needs ; even so a man, if only his natural qualities are not distorted in him, will out of a thousand objects un- erringly choose the true subject of art which he needs, infecting it with the sensation experienced by the artist ; but it is not so for people with a taste which is spoiled by education and by life. The sense which receives art is atrophied in them, and in the valuation of artistic pro- ductions thoy have to be guided by reflection and by study, and this reflection and this study completely con- fuse them, so that the majority of the men of our society are absolutely unable to distinguish a production of art from the coarsest adulteration of the same. People sit for hours at concerts and in theatres, listening to the pro- ductions of new composers, and feel themselves obliged to read the novels of famous new novelists and to ex- amine pictures, which represent either something incom- prehensible, or all the time exactly what they see much better in reahty ; and, above all, they consider it obligatory to go into raptures over all these things, imagining that all these things are objects of art, and pass by real products of art, not only without attention, but even with con- tempt, merely because in their circle these are not included among the objects of art. The other day I was coming home from a walk in an oppressed state of mind. As I approached the house, I heard the loud singing of a large choir of peasant 278 WHAT IS ART? women. They were welcoming my daughter, who had heen married and was visiting at my house. In this sing- ing, with their shouts and striking against the scythes, there was expressed such a definite feeling of joy, alacrity, energy, that I did not notice myself how I was infected by this sensation, and walked toward the house with greater vivacity and reached it all brightened up and happy. In the same state of excitation I found all the home folk who had heard the singing. That same even- ing we had a visit from a fine musician who was famous for his execution of classical productions, especially those by Beethoven, and he played for us Beethoven's sonata, Opus 101. I consider it necessary to remark, for the benefit of those who might refer my judgment in regard to this sonata of Beethoven to my lack of comprehension, that, being very susceptible to music, I understood as well as anybody everything which people understand in this sonata and in the other things of Beethoven's last period. For a long time I put myself into such a mood that I admired these formless improvisations, which make the contents of the compositions of Beethoven's last period ; but I needed only to assume a serious attitude to the matter of art, comparing the impression received from the productions of Beethoven's last period with that pleasant, clear, and strong musical impression which, for example, one receives from the melodies of Bach (his arias), Haydu, Mozart, Chopin, — where their melodies are not obstructed with complications and adornments, — and of the same Beethoven in the first period, but chiefly with the impression received from the Itahan, Norwegian, Kussian popular song, from the Hungarian Csardas, and so forth, and immediately there was destroyed that ob- scure and almost morbid irritation artificially evoked by me from the productions of Beethoven's last period. At the end of the performance, the persons present, WHAT IS ART? 279 though it was evident that it had all been tiresome to them, began, as such thiugs are generally done, vigorously to praise Beethoven's profound production, without forget- ting to mention that formerly people had not understood this last period, but that it really was the best. When I allowed myself to compare the impression produced on me by the singing of the peasant women, which had also been experienced by those who had heard that singing, with this sonata, the lovers of Beethoven only smiled con- temptuously, considering it unnecessary to answer such strange remarks. And yet the song of the women was true art, which conveyed a definite and strong sensation, while Beethoven's one hundred and first sonata was only an unsuccessful at- tempt at art, which contained no definite feeling and so could not infect any one. For my work on art I diligently and with much labour read this winter the famous novels and stories which are praised by all of Europe, those by Zola, Bourget, Huys- mans, Kipling. At the same time I came across a story in a children's periodical, by an entirely unknown writer, which told of the preparations which wei'e being made for Easter in a widow's poor family. The story tells with what dithculty the mother obtained some white flour, which she spread on the table, in order to knead it, after which she went to fetch some yeast, having told the children not to leave the room and to watch the flour. The mother went away, and the neighbouring children ran with a noise under the window, inviting them to come out into the street to play. The children forgot their mother's command, ran out into the street, and engaged in a game. The mother returns with the yeast ; in the room a hen is on the table, scattering on the earth floor the last of the flour to her chicks, which pick it out of the dust. The mother in despair scolds her children, the children yell. And the mother pities her children ; but 280 WHAT IS ART? there is no white flour left, and, to find help out of the calamity, the mother decides that she will bake Easter bread out of sifted black flour, smearing it with the white of an egg, and surrounding it with eggs. " Black bread — the white loaf's grandfather," the mother quotes the proverb to the children, to console them for not having an Easter bread baked of white flour. And the children suddenly pass • from despair to joyous raptures, and in different voices repeat the proverb and with greater merriment wait for the Easter bread. Well ? The reading of the novels and stories by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans, Kipling, and others, with the most pretentious of subjects, did not move me for a moment ; I was, however, all the time annoyed at the authors, as one is annoyed at a man who considers you so naive that he does not even conceal that method of deception with which he wishes to catch you. Erom the very first lines you see the intention with which the story is written, and all the details become useless, and you feel annoyed. Above all else, you know that the author has no other feeling than the desire to write a story or a novel, and that he never had any other feeling. And so you receive no artistic impression whatever ; but I could not tear my- self away from the story of tlie unknown author about the children and tlie chicks, because I wns at once infected by the sensation which obviously the author had gone through, experienced, and conveyed. We have a painter, Vasnetsov. He has painted images for the Kiev Cathedral ; all praise him as the founder of some high, new kind of Cliristian art. ■ He worked on these pictures for tens of years, he was paid tens of thou- sands for them, and all these images are a miserable imi- tation of an imitation of imitations, which does not contain a spark of any sentiment. This same Vasnetsdv painted for Turgc^nev's story. The Quail (it tells of how a father in the presence of his boy killed a quail and was WHAT IS ART? 281 sorry for it), a picture, in which is represented a boy sleeping with wide-open upper lip, while the quail is above him, as a vision. This picture is a true production of art. In the English Academy there are side by side two pictures, — one of these, by J. C. Dalmas, represents the temptation of St. Anthony. The saint is kneeling, and praying. Behind him stands a naked woman and some animals. It is evident that the painter took a fancy to the woman, but that he had no use for Anthony, and that the temptation was not only not terrible to him (the painter), but even in the highest degree enjoyable. And so, if there is any art in this picture, it is very bad and false. In the same book there is side by side with this a small picture by Langley, representing a transient beggar boy whom a woman, evidently taking pity on him, has called into the house. The boy is pitifully contracting his bare legs under the bench, and eating ; the woman is looking on, apparently supposing that the boy may want more, and a girl of seven years of age, leaning her head on her hand, is looking attentively and -seriously at the boy, without taking her eyes off him, having evidently come to understand for the first time what poverty is, and what the inequality of men is, and for the first time asking herself the question, why she has everythmg, while this one is barefoot and hungry. She both is sorry for him and feels joy. She loves the boy and the good. And one feels that the artist loved this girl and that wdiich she loved. And this picture, it seems, of a little known artist, is a beautiful, true production of art. I remember, I once saw Hamlet performed by Eossi ; both the tragedy and the actor who played the chief part are by our critics considered to be the last word of the dramatic art. And yet I experienced all the time, both from the contents of the drama, and from the performance, that pecuhar suffering which is produced by false iraita- 282 WHAT IS ART? tions of the productions of art. Lately I read an account of the theatre among the wild people of the Voguls. One of the persons present describes the following performance : one, a tall Vogul, the other, small, both dressed in deer- skins, represent, one, a doe, the other, her fawn. A third Vogul represents a hunter on snowshoes and with a bow ; a fourth by his voice represents a bird, which warns the doe of the danger. The drama consists in this, that the hunter is running on the track of the doe with her fawn. The deer run away from the scene and come back again. This performance is taking place in a small felt tent. The hunter comes nearer and nearer to the pursued animals. The fawn is worn out and presses close to his mother. The doe stops to take a rest, the hunter runs up and aims at her. Just then the bird squeaks, warning the deer of the danger. The deer run away. Again there is a pursuit, and again the hunter comes near, catches up with them, and discharges his arrow. The arrow strikes the fawn. The fawn cannot run, presses close to his mother, and she licks his wound. The hunter draws another arrow. • The spectators, so the eye-witness tells, become breathless, and in the audience are heard deep sobs and even weeping. I felt from the description alone that this was a true production of art. What I say will be accepted as a senseless paradox, at which one can only marvel, and yet I cannot help but say what I think, namely, that the people of our circle, of whom some compose verses, stories, novels, operas, sym- phonies, sonatas, paint pictures of all kinds, chisel sculp- tures, while others listen and look on, while others again value and criticize all this, discuss, condemn, celebrate, raise monuments to one another, and so for several genera- tions, — that all these people, with exceedingly few excep- tions, the artists, the public, and the critics, never, except in their first childhood and youth, when they have not yet heard any discussions about art, have experienced that WHAT IS ART? 283 simple sensation, familiar to the simplest man and even to a child, of infection by the sensations of another person, which makes one rejoice at another man's joy, weep at another man's sorrow, unite one's soul with that of another man, and which forms the essence of the art, and that, therefore, these men not only are unable to distinguish an object of true art from its adulteration, but always accept the worst and most adulterated art as true and beautiful, while they do not even notice true art, because the adulterations are always more painted up, while true art is always modest. XV. In our society art has become so much corrupted, that not only bad art has come to be regarded as good, but there has even been lost the very conception of what art is, so that, in order to speak of the art of our society, it is necessary first of all to segregate true art from the adul- terations. The sign which segregates true art from its adulterations is this indubitable one, — the infectiousness of art. If a man without any activity on his part and without any change of his position, in reading, hearing, seeing the pro- duction of another man, experiences a state of mind which unites him with that man and with others who, like him, apperceive the subject of art, then the subject which evokes such a state is a subject of art. No matter how poetical, how seemingly real, how effective or entertaining a subject may be, it is not a subject of art, if it does not evoke in man that sensation of joy which is distinct from all other sensations, that union of one's soul with another (the author) and with others (the hearers or spectators) who perceive the same artistic production. It is true, this sign is internal, and men who have forgotten the effect produced by true art and expect from art something different, — and there is an immense majority of such in our society, — may think that that feeling of diversion and of some excitement, which they experience from the adulterations of art, is the aesthetical feeUng, and although it is impossible to change the minds of these men, just as it is impossible to convince a colour- 284 WHAT IS ART? 285 blind person that green is not red, this sign none the less remains fully detiued for people with an uncorrupted and uuatrophied feeling in matters of art, and clearly determines the sensation produced by art from any other. The chief peculiarity of this sensation is this, that the receiver to such an extent blends with the artist that it seems to him that the subject perceived by him was not made by any one else, but by him, and that everything expressed by this subject is the same which he had been wanting to express for a long time. A true production of art has this effect, that in the consciousness of the per- ceiver, there is destroyed the division between him and the artist, and not only between him and the artist, but also between him and all men who are perceiving the same production of art. In this liberation of the person- ality, from its separation from other men, from its seclusion, in this blending of the personality with others does the chief attractive force and property of art consist. If a man experiences this sensation, is infected by the mental condition in which the author is, and feels his blending with other men, the subject which evokes this state is art ; if this infection is lacking, and there is no blending with the author and with those who perceive the production, there is no art. More than this : not only is the infectiousness a certain sign of art, but the degree of the infection is the only standard of the value of art. The stronger the infection, the better is the art as art, not to speak of its contents, that is, independently of the value of those sensations which it conveys. Art becomes more or less infectious in consequence of three conditions : (1) in consequence of a greater or lesser peculiarity of the sensation conveyed ; (2) in consequence of a greater or lesser clearness of the transmission of this sensation ; and (3) in consequence of the sincerity of the artist, that is, of the greater or lesser force with which 286 WHAT IS ARTV the artist himself experiences the sensation which he is conveying. The more the sensation to be conveyed is special, the more strongly does it act upon the perceiver. The per- ceiver experiences a greater enjoyment, the more special the condition of the mind is, to which he is transferred, and so he more willingly and more powerfully blends with it. But the lucidity of the expression of the sensation con- tributes to the infectiousness, because, blending in his consciousness with the author, the one who receives the impression is the more satisfied, the more clearly the sen- sation is expressed which, it seems to him, he has known and experienced for a long time, and for which he has just found an expression. Still more is the degree of the infectiousness of art in- creased with the degree of the artist's sincerity. The moment the hearer, spectator, reader, feels that the artist is himself infected by his production and writes, sings, plays for himself, and not for the purpose of acting upon others, this mental condition of the artist infects the per- son receiving the impression, and, on the other hand, as soon as the spectator, reader, hearer, feels that the author writes, sings, plays, not for his own satisfaction, but for him, the person receiving the impression, and does not himself feel what he wants to express, opposition makes its appearance, and the most special and the newest sen- sation and the most intricate technique not only fail to make an impression, but are even repulsive. I am speaking of three conditions of the infectiousness of art ; in reality there is but the last, which is, that the artist should experience an inner need of expressing the sensation which is communicated by him. This condition includes the first, for, if the artist is sincere, he will express the sensation as he has received it. And since no man resembles another, this sensation will be different for any one else, and the more peculiar and the WHAT IS ART? 287 deeper the source from which the artist draws, the more iutimate and sincere will it be. This sincerity will cause the artist to find a clear expression for the sensation which he wishes to convey. Therefore this third condition, sincerity, is the most important of the three. This condition is always present in national art, for wdiich reason it acts so powerfully, and is nearly always absent in our art of the higher classes wliich is continuously manufactured by the artists for their personal, selfish, or vain purposes. Sucli are the three conditions, the presence of which separates art from its adulterations, and at the same time determines the value of each production of art inde- pendently of its contents. The absence of one of these conditions has this effect, that the production no longer belongs to art, but to its adulterations. If a production does not render the in- dividual peculiarity of the artist's sensation, especially, if it is not clearly expressed, or if it did not arise from the author's inner necessity, it is not a production of art. But if all three conditions are present, even in the small- est degree, the production, however weak it may be, is a production of art. The presence of all three conditions, of peculiarity, clearness, and sincerity, in varying degrees, determines the worth of the objects of art as art, independently of its contents. All the productions of art are as to their worth classified in accordance with the presence of one of these three conditions. In one it is the peculiarity of the con- veyable subject which predominates ; in another it is the clearness of expression ; in a third — sincerity ; in a fourth — sincerity and peculiarity, but the absence of clearness ; in a fifth — peculiarity and clearness, but less sincerity, and so forth, in all possible degrees and combinations. Thus is art separated from what is not art, and the worth of art as art determined, independently of its 288 WHAT IS ART? contents, that is, independently of whether it conveys good or bad sensations. But by what is good or bad art, as regards its contents, determined ? XVI. By what is good or bad art, as regards its contents, determined ? Art is, together with speech, one of the instruments of intercourse, and so also of progress, that is, of humanity's forward movement toward perfection. Speech makes it possible for the men of the last living generations to know what the preceding generations and the best lead- ing contemporary men have found out by means of expe- rience and by reasoning ; art makes it possible for the men of the last living generations to experience all those sensations which men experienced before them and which the best and leading men are still experiencing. And as there takes place an evolution of knowledge, that is, as the truer and necessary knowledge crowds out and takes the place of faulty and unnecessary knowledge, so also does the evolution of feelings take place by means of art, crowding out the lower, less good feelings, which are less necessary for the good of men, to make place for better feelings, which are more necessary for this good. In this does the mission of art consist ; and so art is according to its contents better, the more it fulfils this mission, and worse, the less it fulfils it. But the valuation of feelings, that is, the acknowledg- ment of these or those feelings as better or less good, that is, as necessary for the good of men, is achieved by the religious consciousness of a certain time. In any given historic time and in every society of men there exists a higher comprehension of the meaning of 289 290 WHAT IS ART? life, attained by the men of this society, which determines the highest good after which this society is striving. This comprehension is the religious consciousness of a certain time and society. This rehgious consciousness is always clearly expressed by some leading men of the society, and is more or less vividly felt by all. Such a religious consciousness, corresponding with its expression, has always existed in every society. If it seems to us that the religious consciousness is absent in a society, it seems so to us, not because it is really lacking, but be- cause we do not wish to see it. And the reason we do not wish to see it is because it arraigns our life, which is not in accord with it. The religious consciousness in a society is the same as the direction of flowing water. If the water runs, there is a direction in which it flows. If a society lives, there is a religious consciousness, which indicates the direction along which all the men of that society are tending more or less consciously. For this reason the rehgious consciousness has always existed in every society. In correspondence with this re- ligious consciousness the sensations which are conveyed by art have always been valued. Only on the basis of this religious consciousness of its time was there segregated from the whole endlessly varied sphere of art that which conveys the sensations that realize in life the religious consciousness of a given time. And such art has always been highly esteemed and encouraged ; but the art which conveys sensations which result from the religious con- sciousness of a former time, which is obsolete and outlived, has always been condemned and despised. All other art, which conveys the most varied sensations, by means of which men commune with one another, has not been con- demned and has been admitted, so long as it has not conveyed any sensations which are contrary to the re- ligious consciousness. Thus, for example, the Greeks WUAT IS AKT? 291 evolved, approved, and encouraged the art which conveyed the sensations of beauty, strength, valour (Hesiod, Homer, Phidias), and condemned and despised the art which con- veyed the sensations of gross sensuality, dejection, effemi- nacy. The Jews evolved and encouraged the art which conveyed the sensations of loyalty and obedience to the God of the Jews, to His commandments (some parts of the Book of Genesis, the prophets, the psalms), and con- demned and despised the art which conveyed the sensa- tions of idolatry (the golden calf); all other art, — stories, songs, dances, the adornment of the houses, of the uten- sils, of the wearing apparel, — which was not contrary to the religious consciousness, was not thought of or con- demned at all. Thus has art always and everywhere been esteemed according to its contents, and so it ought to be esteemed, because such a relation to art results from the properties of human nature, and these properties do not change. I know that, according to the opinion which is current in our time, religion is a superstition which humanity has outhved, and that, therefore, it is assumed that in our time there is no religious consciousness common to all men, by which art may be valued. I know that such is the opinion which is diffused among the so-called cultured classes of our time. Men who do not recognize Chris- tianity in its true sense and so invent for themselves all kinds of philosophical and a^sthetical theories, which con- ceal from them the meaninglessness and sinfulness of their lives, cannot help but think thus. These men in- tentionally, and at times unintentionally, by confusing the concept of the rehgious cult with the concept of the religious consciousness, think that, by denying the cult, they thereby deny the religious consciousness. But all these attacks on religion and the attempts at establish- ing a world conception which is contrary to the religious consciousness of our time, prove more obviously than any- 292 WHAT IS ART? thing else the presence of this religious consciousness, which arraigns the lives of men who do not conform to it. If in humanity there is such a thing as progress, that is, a forward movement, there must inevitably exist an indicator of the direction of this movement. Eeligion has always been such an indicator. The whole of history proves that the progress of humanity has taken place only under the guidance of religion, not the religion of the cult, the Cath- ohc, the Protestant, and so forth, but the rehgious con- sciousness. And if the progress of humanity cannot take place without the guidance of religion, — the progress is taking place all the time, consequently also at present, — there must also exist a religion of our time. Thus, whether the so-called cultured people of our time like it or not, they must recognize the existence of rehgion as a necessary guidance to progress even in our time. But if there is among us a religious consciousness, our art must be valued on the basis of this religious consciousness ; and just as always and at all times, there was segregated from all indifferent art, cognized, liighly esteemed, and en- couraged that art which conveys sensations that arise from the religious consciousness of our time, and the art which is contrary to this consciousness was condemned and de- spised, and all other indifferent art was not segregated and not encouraged. The religious consciousness of our time, in its most general, practical application, is the consciousness of the fact that our good, the material and the spiritual, the in- dividual and the general, the temporal and the eternal, is contained in the fraternal life of all men, in our love-union among ourselves. This consciousness was not only ex- pressed by Christ and all the best men of the past, and is not only repeated in the most varied forms and from the most varied sides by the best men of our time, but has also served as a guiding thread in the whole complex work of humanity, which, on the one hand, consists in the WHAT IS ART ? 293 destruction of the physical and moral barriers, which in- terfere with the union of men, and, on the other, in the estabhshment of those principles, common to all men, which can and must unite all men into one universal brotherhood. On the basis of this consciousness we must estimate the value of all the phenomena of our life, among them also our art, segregating from its whole sphere that which conveys sensations arising from this re- ligious consciousness, esteeming highly and encouraging this art, rejecting what is contrary to this consciousness, and refraining from ascribing to other art that meaning which is not proper to it. The chief mistake made by the men of the highest classes of the so-called Eenascence, — a mistake which we are continuing at the present time, did not consist in their having ceased to value religious art and to ascribe any meaning to it (the men of that time could not have ascribed any meaning to it, because, like the men of the higher classes of our time, they could not believe in what was given out as religion), but in this, that in place of tliis absent religious art they put an insignificant art which had for its aim nothing but man's enjoyment, that is, in that they began to eliminate, value, and encourage as rehgious art what in no case deserved that valuation and encouragement. A father of the church said that men's chief trouble is not their not knowing God, but their having placed what is not God in the place of God. The same is true of art. The chief trouble of the men of the highest classes of our time is not so much that they have no religious art, as that in place of the highest religious art, separated from all the rest, as especially important and valuable, they have separated the most insignificant, for the most part harmful, art, which has for its aim enjoyment on the part of the few, which from the very fact of its exclusiveness is contrary to that Christian principle of a universal union, 294 WHAT IS ART? which forms the religious consciousness of our time. In the place of religious art has been put a trifling, frequently- corrupt art, and thus was concealed from men that neces- sity of a true, religious art, which has to be in life, in order to improve it. It is true, the art which satisfies the demands of the religious consciousness of our time does not resemble the former art, but, in spite of this dissimilarity, that which forms the rehgious art of our time is very clear and well defined to a man who does not intentionally conceal the truth from himself. In former times, when the highest religious consciousness united only a certain society of men which, no matter how large it was, was one among others, — the Jewish, Athenian, and Eoman citi- zens, — the sensations conveyed by the art of those times sprang from the desire for the power, grandeur, glory, and welfare of these societies, and the men who contributed to this welfare by means of force, cunning, cruelty (Ulysses, Jacob, David, Samson, Hercules, and all the bogatyrs) could be the heroes of art. But the religious conscious- ness of our time does not segregate any one society of men, — on the contrary, it demands the union of all, absolutely all men without exception, and places brotherly love for all men higher than all other virtues, and so the sensations which are conveyed by the art of our time not only cannot coincide with the sensations which were conveyed by the older art, but must even be contrary to them. Christian, true Christian art could not establish itself for a long time, and has not yet established itself, because the Christian rehgious consciousness was not one of those small steps by which humanity moves forward, but an enormous upheaval, which, if it has not yet changed, must finally change the whole life-conception of men and the whole inner structure of their lives. It is true, the life of humanity, as well as that of the individual man, moves WnAT IS ART? 295 evenly ; but in this even motion there are, as it were, turning-points, which sharply separate the previous hfe from the following. Such a turning-point for humanity was found in Christianity, — at least it must appear as such to us, who are living by the Christian consciousness. The Christian consciousness gave another new direction to all the sentiments of men, and thus completely changed the contents and the significance of art. The Greeks could make use of the art of the Persians, and the Romans of the art of the Greeks, and the Jews of the art of the Egyptians, — the fundamental ideals were one and the same. The grandeur and the good of the Persians, or the grandeur and the good of the Greeks, or of the Eomans, were such an ideal. One and the same art was transferred to other conditions and was good for newer nations. But the Christian ideal so changed and upturned everything that, as the Gospel says, what was great before man became an abomination before God. The ideal was no longer the grandeur of a Pharaoh or a Roman emperor, not the beauty of the Greek, nor the wealth of Phoenicia, but meekness, chastity, compassion, love. Not the rich man, but the beggar Lazarus became the hero ; Mary of Egypt, not in the time of her beauty, but in the time of her repentance ; not the acquirers of wealth, but those who distributed it ; not those who lived in palaces, but those who lived in catacombs and huts ; not those who held power over others, but those who recognized no power but God's. And the highest production of art was not a temple of victory with the statues of the victors, but the representation of the human soul, so transformed by love that the man who is being tortured and killed pities and loves his tormentors. And so the men of the Christian world find it hard to arrest, the inertia of the pagan art, with which their life has grown up. The contents of the Christian religious art are so new to them, so different from the contents of the older art, that it seems to them that the Christian art 296 WHAT IS ART? is a negation of art, and so they desperately hold on to the old art. But this old art, which in our time no longer has any source in religious consciousness, has lost all its meaning, and we are willy-nilly compelled to renounce it. The essence of the Christian consciousness consists in every man's recognition of his filial relation to God and the resulting union of men with God and among them- selves, as it says in the Gospel (John xvii. 21), and so the contents of the Christian art are sentiments which contribute to the union of men with God and with one another. The expression, " the union of men with God and with one another," may seem obscure to people who are accus- tomed to hear the frequent misuse of these words, and yet these words have a very clear meaning. These words signify that the Christian union of men, in contradis- tinction to the partial, exclusive union of only a few men, is that which unites all men without exception. Art, every art in itself, has the property of uniting men. Every art has this effect, that the men who re- ceive the sensation which the artist conveys unite their souls, in the first place, with the artist, and, in the sec- ond, with all men who have received the same impression. But non-Christian art, in uniting some men among them- selves, by this very union separates them from other men, so that this partial union frequently serves as a source, not only of disunion, but also of enmity toward other men. Such is all patriotic art, with its hymns, poems, monuments ; such is all ecclesiastic art, that is, the art of certain cults, with their images, statues, pro- cessions, services, temples ; such is the miHtary art ; such is all refined, in reality corrupt art, which is accessible only to men who oppress others, — the art of the idle rich. Such art is obsolete, non-Christian art, which unites some men for no other reason than that it may more sharply separate them from others, and even place WHAT IS ART? 297 them in an inimical relation to them. Christian art is only that which unites all men without exception, in that it evokes iu men the consciousness of the oneness of their position in regard to God and to their neighbours, or in that it evokes in them one and the same sentiment, be it the simplest, so long as it is not contrary to Chris- tianity, a sentiment which is natural to all men without exception. The Christian good art of our time may not be under- stood by men in consequence of the insufficiency of its form or in consequence of the inattention of men toward it, but it must be such that all men may experience the sensations which are conveyed by it. It has to be the art not of some one circle of men, not of one class, not of one nationality, not of one religious cult, that is, it is not to convey sensations which are only in a certain way comprehensible to an educated man, or only to a noble- man, a merchant, or only a Russian, a Japanese, or a Catholic, a Buddhist, and so forth, but to convey sensa- tions that are accessible to every man. Only such art may in our time be recognized as good art and segregated from all other art and encouraged. Christian art, that is, the art of our time, must be catholic in the direct sense of the word, that is, universal, and so must unite all men. But there are but two kinds of sensations which unite all men, the sensations which arise from the recognition of one's filial relation to God and of the brotherhood of men, and the simplest, vital sensations, which are accessible to all men without excep- tion, such as the sensations of joy, meekness of spirit, alacrity, calm, etc. It is only these two kinds of sensa- tions that form the subject of the art of our time which is good according to its contents. The action produced by these two apparently so differ- ent kinds of art is one and the same. The sensations arising from the consciousness of a filial relation to God 298 WHAT IS ART? and of a brotherhood of men, like the sensations of firm- ness in truth, loyalty to God's will, self-renunciation, respect for men and love of them, which arise from the Christian religious consciousness, and the simplest sensa- tions, — a meek or a happy mood resulting from a song, or from an amusing and all-comprehensible joke, or from a touching story, or from a drawing, or from a doll, pro- duce one and the same effect, — a love-union of men. It happens that men are together who, if not hostile, are strangers to one another as the result of their moods or feelings, and suddenly a story, or a performance, or a picture, even a building, and most frequently music, unites all these men as though by means of an electric spark, and all these men feel union and love of one another, in place of the former disunion, frequently even enmity. Everybody rejoices at the fact that another man experiences the same as he, — rejoices at the com- munion estabhshed, not only between him and all the persons present, but even with all the men who live at the same time with liim and who will receive the same impression ; more than this : everybody feels the myste- rious joy of an intercourse after the grave with all the men of the past, who ba,ve experienced the same feeling, and with the men of the future, who will experience it. This action is produced alike by the art which conveys the sentiment of love of God and one's neighbour, and by the vital art, which conveys the simplest sensations, com- mon to all men. The difference between the valuation of the art of our time and that of the past consists mainly in this, that the art of our time, that is. Christian art, being based on the religious consciousness which demands the union of men, excludes from the sphere of good art, as far as its contents are concerned, everything which conveys exclu- sive sentiments, which do not unite, but disunite, men, classifying such art as bad in contents, and, on the con- WnAT IS ART? 299 trary, includes in the sphere of good art, as far as its contents are concerned, the division (jf universal art, which formerly was not considered worthy of segrega- tion and respect, and which conveys the most insignifi- cant and simple sensations, but such as are accessible to all men without exception, and which, therefore, unite them. Such art cannot help but be considered good in our time, because it attains the same aim which the religious Christian consciousness of our time sets before humanity. The Christian art either evokes in men those sensa- tions which through love of God and our neighbour draw them to a greater and ever greater union and make them ready and capable of such a union ; or it evokes in them those sensations which show them that they are already united in the unity of the joys and sorrows of life. And so the Christian art of our time can be, and actually is, of two sorts: (1) the art which conveys sentiments which arise from the religious consciousness of man's position in the world, in r^jiation to God and to our neighbour, — religious art, and (2) the art wliich conveys the simplest sensations of life, such as are accessible to all men of the whole world, — vital, national, universal art. It is only these two kinds of art that in our time may be regarded as good art. The first kind of religious art, which conveys both the positive sentiments of love of God and of our neighbour as also the .negative indignations, the terrors in violating love, is manifested chiefly in the form of Hterature and partly in painting and sculpture; the second that of universal art, which conveys sensations that are accessible to all, is manifested in literature, and in painting, and in sculpture, and in dances, and in architecture, and chiefly in music. If I were required to point out in modern art the models of each of these kinds of art, I should point, as 300 WHAT IS ART? to models of a higher art, which arises from the love of God and of our neighbour, in the sphere of literature, to Schiller's Robbers ; from the moderns, to Hugo's Les Pauvres Gens and to his Les Miser ables ; to Dickens's stories and novels, Tale of Two Cities, Chimes, and others, to Uncle Tom's Cabin, to Dostoevski, especially his Dead House, to George Eliot's Adam Bede. In the painting of modern times there are, however strange this may seem, hardly any productions of the kind which directly convey the Christian sentiments of love of God and of our neighbour ; this is especially true among famous painters. There are gospel pictures, and of these there is a great quantity ; they all illustrate historical events with a great wealth of details, but do not convey, and cannot convey, that rehgious sentiment, which the authors do not possess. There are many pic- tures which represent the personal sentiments of various people, but there are very few pictures which reproduce acts of self-renunciation and Christian love, and these are only among little known painters and in unfinished pic- tures, but mainly in drawings. Such is Kramski's paint- ing, which is worth many of his pictures, and which represents a drawing-room with a balcony, past which solemnly march the regiments returning home. On the balcony is standing a nurse with a babe, and a boy. They are taking in the procession of the soldiers ; but the mother, covering her face with a handkerchief, falls sob- bing with her face against the back of the sofa. Such is also Langley's picture, which I have mentioned ; such is also the picture which represents a rescue boat hurry- ing in a heavy storm to save a drowning ship, by the French painter Morion. There are also some other pic- tures which approach this kind, and which express the labourer with love and respect. Such are Millet's pic- tures, especially his drawing, " The Digger Eesting ; " of the same cliaracter the pictures by Jules Breton, L'Her- WHAT IS ART? 301 mite, Defregger, and others. As samples of productions evoking indignation and terror at the violation of love of God and of our neighbour, may serve Gay's picture, " The Judgment," and Liezen Mayer's picture, " The Signing of the Sentence of Death." There are few pictures even of this category. The cares about the tecliuique and beauty for the most part overshadow the feeling. Thus, for example, Gerome's picture, " Pollice Verso," does not so much express horror at what is taking place, as infatua- tion with the beauty of the spectacle. It is even more difficult in the new art of the higher classes to point out models of the second kind, of good, universal, vital art, especially in literature and in music. Even if there are productions which by their inner con- tents^ hke Don Quixote, Molifere's comedies, Dickens's Copperjield and Pichivick Club, Gogol's and Pushkin's stories, and a few things by Maupassant, may be referred to this kind, these things on account of the exclusiveness of the sensations conveyed and on account of the special de- tails of time and place, and, chiefly, on account of their pov- erty of contents, as compared with the models of ancient universal art, as, for example, the history of Joseph the Fair, are for the most part accessible only to people of their own nation and even of their own circle. The incidents about Joseph's brothers, who, being jealous of him in respect to their father, sold him to merchantmen ; about Potiphar's wife wishing to tempt the young man ; about the youth's attaining a high position and pitying his brothers ; about the favourite Benjamin, and all the rest, — all those are sentiments which are accessible to a Ptus- sian peasant, and a Chinaman, and an African, and a child, and an old man, to an educated man, and to an illiterate person ; and all that is written with so much reserve, without superfluous details, that the story may be trans- ferred to any surroundings, and it will be just as compre- hensible and just as touching. But not such are the 302 WHAT IS ART? sentiments of Don Quixote or of Molifere's heroes (though Molifere is almost the most universal and so the most beautiful artist of modern art) and even less so are the sentiments of Pickwick and his friends. These senti- ments are very exclusive, not universally human, and so, to make them infectious, the authors surrounded them with copious details of time and place. The copiousness of the details, however, makes these stories more exclu- sive still and incomprehensible for those men who live outside the surroundings which the author describes. In the story of Joseph there was no need of giving a detailed description, as they now do, of Joseph's bloody shirt and of Jacob's house and garment, and of the atti- tude and attire of Potiphar's wife, how she, adjusting the bracelet of her left hand, said, " Come into my room," and so forth, because the contents of the sentiment in this story are so strong that all the details, — excluding those which are most necessary, such as, for example, that Joseph went into another room, in order to weep, — are superfluous and would only interfere with the transmission of the sensations, — and so this story is accessible to all men, moves the men of all nations, conditions, and ages, has reached us, and will Hve another thousand years. But take the details away from the best novels of our time, and what will be left ? Thus it is impossible in modern literary art to point out any productions which completely satisfy the demands of universality. Even those that exist are for the most part spoiled by what is called realism, which may more cor- rectly be called provincialism in art. In music the same happens as in literary art, and from the same reasons. On account of the poverty of their contents, the tunes of the modern musicians are strikingly barren. And so, to strengthen the impression produced by a barren tune, the modern musicians burden every most insignificant melody with tlie most complex modula- WHAT IS ART? 303 tions of their own national tunes, or only of such as are proper to a certain circle, a certain musical school. Melody — every melody — is free, and may be under- stood by all ; but the moment it is tied to a certain har- mony and is obstructed by it, it becomes comprehensible only to men who are familiar with that harmony, and becomes completely foreign, not only to other nationalities, but also to all men who do not belong to the circle in which men have trained themselves in certain forms of harmony. Thus music turns in the same vicious circle as poetry. Insignificant, exclusive tunes, to be made attractive, are obstructed with harmonic, rhythmical, and orchestric complications, and so become more exclusive still and fail to be universal and even national, that is, they are accessible to but a few men, and not to the whole nation. In music, outside of the marches and dances of com- posers, which approach the demands of universal art, there may be pointed out the popular songs of the various nations, from the Eussian to the Chinese ; but in the learned music there are but a very few productions, the famous violin aria by Bach, Chopin's Es dur nocturne, and, perhaps, a dozen things, not entire pieces, but pas- sages selected from the productions of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin.^ Though the same is repeated in painting as in poetry ^In presenting models of art which I regard as the best, I do not ascribe any especial weight to my selection, because I, besides being little versed in all the kinds of art, belong to the class of men with a taste which is corrupted by a false education. And so I may, from an old inherent habit, be mistaken when I ascribe an absolute worth to the impression produced on me by a thing in my youth. I call them models of this or that kind only for the purpose of more clearly elu- cidating my idea and showing how I, with my present view, under- stand the value of art from its contents. I must remark with this that I count my artistic productions as belonging to the sphere of bad art, with the exception of the story, God Sees the Truth, which belongs to the first kind, and The Prisoner of the Caucasus, which belongs to the second. 304 WHAT IS ART? and music, that is, that productions weak in conception, to he made more entertaining, are surrounded by minutely studied accessories of time and place, which give to these productions a temporary and local interest, but make them less universal, it is possible in painting, more than in any other kinds of art, to point out productions which satisfy the demands of a universal Christian art, that is, such as express sentiments which are comprehensible to all men. Such productions of the arts of painting and sculpture, universal as regards their contents, are all the pictures and statues of the so-called genre, the representations of animals, then landscapes, caricatures of comprehensible contents, and all kinds of ornaments. There are very many such productions in painting and in art (porcelain dolls), but the majority of such objects, as, for example, all kinds of ornaments, are not considered art, or if they are, are considered art of a lower order. In reality all such objects, if only they convey the artist's sincere sentiment (no matter how insignificant it may appear to us), and if they are comprehensible to all men, are the productions of true and good Christian art. I am afraid that here I shall be reproached because, having denied that the concept of beauty forms a subject of art, I here again acknowledge beauty as a subject of art. This reproach is unjust, because the contents of the art of all kinds of ornamentation does not consist in beauty, but in the sensation of delight, enjoyment of the combinations of lines and colours, which the artist expe- riences and mth which he infects the spectator. Art is, as it has been, and can be, nothing but the infection by one man of another or others with the sensation which the infecting person has experienced. Among these sen- sations is also that of enjoying what pleases the eye. Objects which please the eye can be such as please a small or a greater number of men, and such as please all WHAT IS ART ? 305 men. And such are chiefly all ornaments. The land- scape of a very exclusive locality, a very special genre may not please all men ; but ornaments, whether Yakut or Greek, are accessible to all and evoke enjoyment in all men, and so this neglected kind of art in Christian society ought to be esteemed much higher than the exclusive, pretentious pictures and sculptures. Thus there are but two kinds of good Christian art ; everything else, which does not come under these two kinds, must be considered bad art, which must not only not be encouraged, but ought to be expelled, rejected, and despised, as an art which does not unite, but disunites men. Such in the hterary art are all the dramas, novels, and poems which convey exclusive sensations, such as are inherent only in the one class of the idle rich, — the sensations of aristocratic honour, satiety, melancholy, pessimism, and the refined and corrupt sensations which arise from sexual love and which are completely incomprehensible to the vast majority of men. In painting, as such productions of bad art must be similarly regarded all pictures, false, religious, patriotic, and exclusive, in short, all pictures which represent amusements and deUghts of a wealthy and idle life, all so-called symbolical pictures, in which the meaning of the symbol itself is accessible only to people of a certain circle, and, above all else, all pictures with lascivious sul)- jects, all that horrible feminine nakedness, which fills all the exhibitions and galleries. To the same category belongs all chamber and opera music of our time, begin- ning in particular with Beethoven, — Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, — which by its contents is devoted to the expression of sensations which are accessible only to men who have nurtured in themselves a morbid nervous irrita- bility, excited by this exclusive and complicated music. " What, the ninth symphony belongs to the bad kind of art ? " do I hear voices of indignation. 306 WHAT IS ART? " Unquestionably," do I answer. Everything I have written, I have written for the purpose of finding a clear, rational criterion, by which to judge the values of the productions of art. This criterion, coinciding with simple common sense, shows to me indubitably that Beethoven's symphony is not a good production of art. Of course, the recognition of such a famous work as bad must be strange and startling to men who are educated in the adoration of certain productions and their authors, to men with a dis- torted taste, in consequence of an education which is based on this adoration. But what is to be done with the indications of reason and with common sense ? Beethoven's ninth symphony is regarded as a great pro- duction of art. To verify this assertion, I first of all put the question to myself : If this production does not belong to the highest order of religious art, has it any other prop- erty of good art of our time, — the property of uniting all men in one feeling ? Does it not belong to the Christian worldly universal art ? I cannot answer affirmatively, because I not only fail to see that the sensations con- veyed in this production are able to unite people who are not specially educated to submit to this complex hypnoti- zation, but I cannot even imagine a crowd of normal men that could make anything out of this long and confused artificial production, but some short passages drowned in a sea of the incomprehensible. And so I am involunta- rily obliged to conclude that this production belongs to bad art. What is remarkable is that to the end of the symphony there is attached Schiller's poem which ex- presses the idea, though not clearly, that sensation (Schiller speaks only of the sensation of joy) unites people and evokes love in them. Although this song is sung at the end of the symphony, the music does not cor- respond to the thought of the poem, since this music is exclusive and does not unite all men, but only a few, separating them from the rest of men. WHAT IS ART? 307 In precisely the same manner one would have to judge many, very many productions of art of every description, which among the higher classes of our society are con- sidered to be great. By the same, the only firm criterion one would have to judge the famous Divine Comedy and Jerusalem Delivered, and the greater part of the produc- tions of Shakespeare and Gothe, and in painting all the representations of miracles and Raphael's " Transfigura- tion," and so forth. No matter what the subject may be which is given out as a production of art, and no matter how it may be lauded by men, to find out its value, it is necessary to apply to it the question whether the subject belongs to real art or to its adulterations. Having on the basis of the sign of infectiousness of even a small circle of men recognized a certain object as belonging to the sphere of art, it is necessary on the basis of the sign of universal accessibility to decide the following question : whether this production belongs to the bad exclusive art, which is contrary to the religious consciousness of our time, or to the Christian art, which unites men. Having recognized a subject as belonging to the real Christian art, it is necessary on the basis of this, whether the pro- duction conveys sensations which arise from the love of God and of our neighbour, or only simple sensations which unite all men, to refer it to one class or another, to religious art or to profane universal art. Only on the basis of this verification shall we be able to segregate in the whole mass of what in our society is given out as art those subjects which form real, impor- tant, necessary spiritual food from every harmful and use- less art and its imitation, by which we are surrounded. Only on the basis of this verification shall we be able to free ourselves from the deleterious consequences of harm- ful art and to make use of the beneficent influence, so necessary for the spiritual life of man and of humanity, of true and good art, which forms humanity's destination. XVII. Art is one of the two organs of humanity's progress. Through words man shares his thoughts, through tlie images of art he shares his feelings with all men, not only of the present, but also of the past and the future. It is proper for man to make use of both these organs of communication, and so the distortion of even one of them cannot help but exert bad influences on that society in which this distortion has taken place. The consequences of this influence must be twofold : in the first place, an absence in society of that activity which ought to be per- formed by that organ, and, in the second place, the harm- ful activity of the distorted organ ; and it is these consequences which have appeared in our society. The organ of art was distorted, and so the society of the higher classes was in a large measure deprived of that activity which this organ ought to perform. On the one side, the enormously widespread adulterations of art in our society, which serve only for the aunisement and cor- ruption of men, and, on the other, the productions of an insignificant, exclusive art, which is esteemed as the highest, have in the majority of the men of our time distorted the ability of being infected by the true pro- ductions of art, and have thus deprived them of the possibility of knowing those higher sentiments which humanity has attained and which can be transmitted to men only through art. All the best which is done in art by humanity remains foreign for the men who have become devoid of the ability of being infected by art, and gives way to false 308 WHAT IS ART? 309 adulterations of art or to insignificant art, which is taken for the real. The men of our time take delight in a Baude- laire, Verlaine, Moreas, Ibsen, Maeterlinck in poetry ; in a Monet, Manet, Puvis de Chavannes, Burne-Jones, Stuck, Bockliu in painting ; in a Wagner, Liszt, Pdchard Strauss in music, and so forth, and are unable to understand either the highest or the simplest art. In the midst of the highest classes, in consequence of the loss of the abihty of being infected by the productions of art, men grow, are educated, and live without the miti- gating, beneficent influence of art, and so not only do not move toward perfection, do not become better, but, on the contrary, with a high development of external means become more savage, coarser, and more cruel. Such is the consequence of the absence of the activity of the necessary organ of art in our society. The conse- quences of the distorted activity of this organ are more harmful still, and there are many of them. The first startHng consequence is an enormous waste of the labours of working men for a work which is not only useless, but for the most part, even harmful, and, besides, an unrewarded waste of human lives for this useless and bad work. It is terrible to think with what tension, with what privations, millions of men, who have no time and no chance to do for themselves and for their families what is necessary, work for ten, twelve, and fourteen hours at night in order to set up so-called artistic books, which carry debauchery among men, or to work for theatres, concerts, expositions, galleries, which serve mainly the same debauchery ; but most terrible of all it is to think that live, good children, who are capable of everything good, devote themselves from their earliest years, some for ten or fifteen years, to playing the gamuts for six, eight, and ten hours each day ; others, to contorting their limbs, walking on tiptoe, and raising their legs above their heads ; others again, to singing solfeggios ; others, to making all 310 WnA.T IS ART? kinds of grimaces in declaiming verses ; others, to drawing from busts, from naked nature, to painting studies ; others, to writing compositions according to the rules of certain periods, — and in these occupations, which are unworthy of a man, and which are frequently continued after full maturity, lose every physical and mental force and all comprehension of life. They say that it is terrible and pitiful to look at the young acrobats, who throw their legs over their shoulders ; but it is not less pitiful to look at ten-year-old children who give concerts, and still more so at ten-year-old gymnasiasts who know by heart the ex- ceptions of Latin grammar. By this men are not only deformed physically and mentally, — they ^ve also deformed morally and become incapable of doing anything which is really needful to men. Occupying in society the role of amusers of the rich, they lose the feeling of their human dignity, and to such an extent develop in themselves the passion for public laudations that they always suffer from unsatisfied am- bition, which is in them developed to morbid dimensions, and use all their spiritual forces for nothing but the grati- fication of tliis passion. And what is most tragical of all is this, that these men, who for the sake of art are lost to life, not only ai'e of no use to art, but even do it the greatest harm. In the academies, gynmasia, conserva- tories, they teach how to adulterate art, and, learning this, the men are so corrupted that they completely lose the ability of producing real art and become purveyors of that adulterated, or insignificant, or corrupt art whicli fills our world. In this does the first startling consequence of the distortion of the organ of art lie. The second consequence is this, that the productions of art are amusements which are produced by an army of pro- fessional artists in stunning quantities, and which give the rich men of our time a chance to live a life which is not vnly not natural, but is even contrary to the principles of WHAT IS ART? 311 humaneness which these men themselves profess. It would be impossible to live as do the rich, idle people, especially tlie women, removed from Nature and from animals, in artificial conditions, with atrophied muscles or with muscles deformed by gymnastics and with a weakened energy of life, if there did not exist what is called art, if there were not that distraction, that amusement, which veils these people's eyes from the senselessness of their lives and saves them from tantahzing ennui. Take away from all these people the theatres, concerts, exhibitions, piano playing, novels, romances, with which they busy themselves, with the assurance that occupation with these subjects is a very refined, aesthetic, and therefore good occupation, take away from the Maecenases of art, who buy pictures, patronize musicians, commune with writers, their role of protectors of the important business of art, and they will not be able to continue their lives, and all will perish from ennui, tedium, and the consciousness of the meaninglessness and illegality of their lives. Only occupation with what among them is considered art gives them the possibility of continuing to live, though violating all the natural conditions of life, without noticing the meaninglessness and cruelty of their lives. This support of the false life of the rich is the second and by no means unimportant consequence of the distortion of art. The third consequence of the distortion of art is that confusion which it produces in the conceptions of the children and of the masses. The people who are not distorted by the false theories of our society, the working people, the children, possess a very definite conception as to what people may be respected and praised for. As a basis for extolling and honouring people, according to the conceptions of the masses and of the children, may serve either physical force, — Hercules, heroes, conquerors, — or moral, spiritual force, — Sakya-Muni, who abandons his beautiful wife and his kingdom, in order to save men, or 312 WHAT IS ART? Christ, who goes to the cross for the human race, and all the martyrs and saints. Either is comprehensible to the masses and to the children. They understand that one cannot avoid respecting physical force, because it compels respect ; nor can an uncorrupted man help respecting the moral force of goodness, because his whole spiritual being draws him toward it. And these people, — the children and the masses, — suddenly see that, besides the men who are praised, respected, and rewarded for their physical and their moral force, there are also people who are praised^ respected, and rewarded to an even far greater extent than the heroes of force and of goodness, for no other reason than that they sing well, compose verses, and dance. They see that singers, authors, painters, dancers, make millions, that greater honours are conferred upon them than upon the saints, and the men of the masses and the children are perplexed. Fifty years after Pushkin's death, when simultaneously cheap editions of his works were disseminated among the masses, and a monument was reared to his memory in Moscow, I received more than ten letters from various peasants, asking me why Pushkin was honoured so much. The other day I had a visit from a literate burgher from the Government of Saratov, who had apparently gone mad on this question, and was on his way to Moscow to arraign the clergy for having cooperated in the erection of the " moniment " to Mr. Pushkin. . Indeed, we may imagine the state of such a man from the masses, when he learns from the newspapers and the rumours which reach him that in Eussia the clergy, the authorities, all the best men of the country, with solemnity erect a monument to a great man, a benefactor, the glory of Eussia, — to Pushkin, of whom he has not heard anything heretofore. On all sides he reads or hears of this, and he supposes that if such honours are be- stowed on a man, he must certainly have done something WHAT IS ART? 313 unusual, either something strong or something good. He tries to find out who Pushkin was, and having learned that Pushkin was not a hero or a general, but a private person and an author, he draws the conclusion that Push- kin must have been a holy man and a teacher of goodness, and hastens to read his works and to hear something about his life. But what must his perplexity be, when he learns that Pushkin was a man of more than light manners, that he died in a duel, that is, during an en- deavour to take another man's life, and that his whole desert consists in nothing but this, that he wrote verses about love, which frequently were quite indecent. He understands that Alexander of Macedon, Dzhiugis Khan, or Napoleon was great, because any of them could have crushed him and thousands like him. He also understands that Buddha, Socrates, and Christ are great ; that Buddha, Socrates, and Christ are great, he also under- stands, because he knows and feels that he and all men should be such ; but why a man is great for having writ- ten verses about feminine love, is something which he cannot understand. The same must take place in the head of a Breton, a Norman peasant, who learns of the erection of a monu- ment to Baudelaire, " une statue," like one to the Virgin Mary, and hears the Fleurs du Mai read, or is told of its contents, or, more markedly still, when he learns of one to Verlaine, and hears of that miserable, dissipated life which this man led, and reads his verses. And what confusion must take place in the heads of the people from the masses, when they learn that a Patti or Taglioni receives one hundred thousand roubles for the season, or an artist receives just as much for a picture, and authors of novels, who describe love-scenes, receive even more. The same takes place with children. I remember how I experienced that amazement and perplexity, and how I made my peace with these laudations of artists on a par 314 WHAT IS ART? with physical and moral heroes only by lowering in my consciousness the meaning of moral worth and by recog- nizing a false, unnatural meaning in the productions of art. Precisely the same takes place in the soul of every child and every man from the masses, when he learns of those strange honours and rewards which are bestowed on artists. Such is the third consequence of the false rela- tion of our society to art. The fourth consequence of such a relation consists in this, that the men of the higher classes, meeting more and more frequently with the contradictions between beauty and goodness, set up as the highest ideal the ideal of beauty, thus freeing themselves from the demands of morality. These men distort the roles and, instead of rec- ognizing, as they ought to, the art which they serve as obsolete, recognize morality as obsolete and as incapable of having any meaning for men who stand on that high level of development on which they imagine they are standing. This consequence of the false relation to art has long ago shown itself in our society, but has of late been expressed with extraordinary boldness by its prophet Nietzsche and his followers and the decadents and the English aesthetes who coincide with them. The deca- dents and the sesthetes, like Oscar Wilde, choose as the theme of their productions the denial of morality and the laudation of debauchery. This art has partly begot a similar philosophic teaching, and partly coincided with it. Lately I received from America a book under the title of Tlie Survival of the Fittest, Philosophy of Power, by Eagnar Redbeard, Chicago : 1896. The essence of this book, as expressed in the publisher's preface, is this, that it is madness to value goodness according to the false philosophy of the Jewish prophets and weeping Messiahs. All the laws, command- ments, teachings about not doing to another what you do WHAT IS ART? 315 not wish to have done you, have in themselves no mean- ing whatsoever and receive a meaning only from the scourge, the prison, and the sword. A truly free man is not obliged to obey any injunctions, — neither human nor divine. Obedience is a sign of degeneration ; disobedi- ence is a sign of a hero. The whole world is a slippery field of battle. Ideal justice consists in this, that the conquered should be exploited, tortured, despised. The free and brave man can conquer the whole world. And so there ought to be an eternal war for life, for land, for love, for women, for power, for gold. (Something similar was a few years ago expressed by the famous and refined French academician, Vogii^.) The land with its treasures is " the prey of him who is bold." The author has evidently, independently of Nietzsche, come unconsciously to the same conclusions which the modern artists profess. These propositions, expounded in the form of a doctrine, startle us. In reality, these propositions are included in the ideal of the art which serves beauty. The art of our higher classes has fostered in men this ideal of the over- man, in reality the old ideal of Nero, St^nka Eazin, Dzhingis Khan, Robert Macaire, Napoleon, and all their fellows in thought, abettors, and flatterers, and with all its power confirms this ideal in them. It is in this substitution of the ideal of beauty, that is, of enjoyment, for the ideal of morahty, that the fourth, terrible consequence of the distortion of the art of our society is to be found. It is terrible to contemplate what would happen with humanity if such art were dissemi- nated among the masses of the people. It is, indeed, beginning to be disseminated among them. Finally, the fifth and most important consequence is this, that the art which flourishes in the midst of our higher classes of European society, directly corrupts people by infecting them with the very worst sentiments. 316 WHAT IS AKT? most harmful to humanity, of superstition, — patriotism, — and, above all, voluptuousness. Look attentively at the causes of the ignorance of the popular masses, and you will see that the chief cause is by no means the scarcity of schools and libraries, as we are accustomed to think, but those superstitions, both ecclesiastic and patriotic, with which they are saturated, and which are incessantly produced by all the means of art: the ecclesiastical superstitions by the poetry of the prayers and hynms, by the painting and sculpture of images and statues, by singing, organs, music, and archi- tecture, and even by the dramatic art in the church ser- vices ; the patriotic superstitions by the poems and stories which are communicated in schools, by music, singing, festive processions, receptions, mihtary spectacles, monu- ments. If it were not for this constant activity of all the branches of art for the support of the ecclesiastic and patriotic obfuscation and deterioration of the people, the masses would have long ago attained true enlighten- ment. But it is not only the ecclesiastic and patriotic cor- ruption that is achieved by art. Art serves in our time as the chief cause of the corruption of people in the most important question of social life, — in the sexual relations. We all know this in our own case, and parents know from their children what terrible spiritual and physical suffer- ings, wbat useless waste of forces, men experience through the mere dissipation of the sexual lust. Ever since the world has existed, from the time of the Trojan War, which arose from sexual dissipation, up to the suicides and murders of lovers, accounts of which they print in almost any newspaper, the greatest part of the sufferings of the human race have been due to this dissipation. Well ? All art, both the real and the adulterated, is with the rarest exceptions devoted to nothing but the de- WHAT IS ART ? 317 scription, representation, excitation of every kind of sexual love, in all its forms. One needs but to recall all those novels with their lust-exciting descriptions of love, both such as are most refined and such as are most gross, with which the literature of our society is filled, — all those pictures and statues which represent the nude female body, and all those abominations which have been intro- duced in the illustrations and advertisements, — one needs but recall all those lascivious operas, operettas, songs, romances, with which our world teems, in order to think involuntarily that the existing art has but one definite aim, — the widest possible dissemination of debauchery. Such are, if not all, at least the most certain conse- quences of that distortion of art which has taken place in our society. Thus, what in our society is called art not only does not contribute to the forward movement of humanity, but almost more certainly than anything else interferes with the realization of the good in our life. And so to the question which involuntarily presents itself to evcy man who is free from the activity of art, and who, therefore, has no interested connection with the existing art, — a question which was put by me in the beginning of this writing as to the justice of making sacrifices in human labours, and human lives, and moral- ity, such as are made to what we call art, which forms the possession of but a small portion of society, — to this question we get the natural answer: No, it is not just, and it ought not to be so. Thus answers common sense and the uncorrupted moral sense. Not only ought it not to be, not only ought we make no sacrifices to what among us is acknowledged to be art, but, on the contrary, all the efforts of the men who wish to live well ought to be directed to the destruction of this art, because it is one of the most cruel evils and weighs heavily upon our humanity. Thus, if the question were put as to whether it is better for our Christian world to be deprived of 318 WHAT IS ART? everything which is now called art together with the false art, and of everything good, as it now exists, I think that every rational and moral man would again solve the question as Plato solved it for his republic and as all the ecclesiastic Christian and Mohammedan teachers of humanity have solved it ; that is, he would say, " It would be better if there were no art at all, than that the present corrupt art, or its semblance, should be continued." For- tunately, this question is not put to any man, and no one has an occasion to solve it in one way or another. Every- thing which a man may do and we can and must do, we, the so-called cultured people, who by our position are enabled to understand the significance of the phenomena of our life, — is to understand that error in which we are, and not to persist in it stubbornly, but to search for a way out from it. XVIII. The cause of the lie into which the art of our society has fallen consisted in this, that the men of the higher classes, having lost faith in the truths of the ecclesiastic, so-called Christian, teaching, did not make up their minds to accept the true, Christian teaching in its true and chief significance, as the filial relation to God and the brother- hood of men, but continued to live without any faith, trying to substitute for the absent faith, either hypocrisy, pretending that they still believed in the absurdities of the ecclesiastic faith, or a bold proclamation of their un- belief, or a refined skepticism, or a return to the Greek worship of beauty, a recognition of the legality of egotism, and its elevation to the dignity of a rehgious teaching. The cause of the disease was the non-acceptance of Christ's teaching in its true, that is, in its full, meaning. The cure of this disease consists only in one thing, — in the recognition of this teaching in its full force. This recognition is in our time not only possible, but also in- dispensable. It is impossible in our time for a man who stands on the level of the knowledge of our time to say, be he Catholic or Protestant, that he believes in the dogmas of the church, the trinity of God, the divinity of Christ, the redemption; and it is also impossible for him to be satisfied with a proclamation of unbelief, skep- ticism, or a return to the worship of beauty and to egotism, and, above all else, it is impossible for him to say that we do not know the true significance of Christ's teaching. The significance of this teaching has not only become accessible to all men of our time, but the whole life of 319 320 WHAT IS ART? the men of our time is permeated by the spirit of this teaching and is consciously and unconsciously guided by it. No matter how differently in form the men of our Christian world may determine man's destination, whether they understand by this destination the progress of hu- manity, no matter in what sense, the union of all men in a socialistic government or commune, or whether they recognize a universal union to be this destination, or whether they recognize this destination to consist in the union with a fantastic Christ or the union of humanity under the one leadership of the church, — no matter how varied in form these definitions of the destination of the human life may be, all the men of our time recognize that man's destination is the good ; now the highest good of life, which is accessible to men, is obtained through the union of men among themselves. No matter how much the men of the higher classes, feeling that their significance is based on their segregation, — the segregation of the rich and the learned from the labouring men and the poor and the unlearned, — may try to invent new world conceptions, by which they may retain their prerogatives, — now the ideal of a return to antiquity, now mysticism, now Hellenism, now over- manhood, — they are willy-nilly compelled to recognize the truth, which unconsciously and consciously is being established in life, that our good is to be found only in the union and brotherhood of men. Unconsciously this truth is confirmed by the establish- ment of roads of communication, telegraphs, telephones, the press, the ever-growing accessibility of all the goods of the world for all men ; and consciously, by the aboli- tion of superstitions which separate men, by the dissem- ination of the truths of science, by the expression of the ideal of the brotherhood of men in the best productions of the art of our time. WHAT IS ART? 321 Art is a spiritual organ of human life and cannot be destroyed, and so in spite of all the efforts which are made by the men of the higher classes to conceal that religious ideal by which humanity lives, this ideal is more and more recognized by men and is more and more fre- quently expressed within our corrupt society partly in art and in science. Beginning with the present century, there have with increasing frequency appeared in litera- ture and in painting such productions of the highest rehgious art, which are permeated by the true Christian spirit, like the productions of the universal worldly art which is accessible to all men. Thus art itself knows the true ideal of our time, and strives after it. On the one hand, the best productions of the art of our time convey sentiments which draw men toward union and brother- hood (such are the productions of Dickens, Hugo, Do- stoevski ; in art — Millet, Bastien Lepage, Jules Breton, L'Hermite, and others) ; on the other hand, they strive after conveying not only such sentiments as are peculiar to the men of the higher classes, but such as might unite all men without exception. There are at present but few such productions, but the need of them is already recog- nized. Besides, of late there appear ever more frequently attempts at popular editions, pictures, concerts, theatres. All this is so far, very far from what it ought to be, but we already see the direction along wliich art itself is moving in order to enter upon its proper path. The religious consciousness of our time, which consists in recoguizing the aim of hfe, both the common and the individual, in the union of men, has been sufficiently elucidated, and the men of our time need only reject the false theory of beauty, according to which enjoyment is recognized as the aim of art, in order that the religious consciousness may naturally become the guide of the art of our time. And as soon as the religious consciousness, which is 322 WHAT IS ART? already unconsciously guiding the life of the men of our time, shall be consciously recognized by men, there will immediately of its own accord be destroyed the division of art into that of the lower and that of the higher classes. There will be, instead, a fraternal art ; in the first place, there will naturally be rejected the art which conveys sentiments which are incongruous with the religious con- sciousness of our time, — sentiments which do not unite, but disunite men, and, in the second place, there will be destroyed that insignificant, exclusive art, which now holds a place which is unbecoming to it. And as soon as this shall happen, art will cease to be what it has been of late, — a means for dulling and cor- rupting people, and will become what it has always been and ought to be, — a means for moving humanity toward union and the good. It is terrible to say so, but what has happened to the art of our time is what happens to a woman who sells her feminine charms, which are intended for motherhood, for the enjoyment of those who are prone to such enjoy- ments. The art of our time and of our circle has become a harlot. And this comparison is correct to the minutest details. It is just as unlimited in time, just as painted up, just as venal, just as enticing, and just as pernicious. The true production of art will but rarely be manifested in the soul of the artist, as a fruit of his previous life, just like the conception of the child by a mother. But adulterated art is uninterruptedly produced by masters and artisans, so long as there are customers for it. True art, like the wife of a loving husband, does not need any adornments ; but adulterated art, like a prosti- tute, must always be painted up. As a cause for the manifestation of true art appears the inner necessity to express the accumulated sentiment, just as love is the cause for a mother's sexual conception. WHAT IS ART? 323 But greed is the cause of adulterated art, just as it is the cause of prostitution. The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new sentiment into the routine of life, just as the consequence of a wife's love is the birth of a new man into the world. The consequence of adulterated art is the corruption of man, the insatiability of enjoyments, the weakening of man's spiritual forces. It is this that the men of our time and circle must understand in order that they may free themselves from the dirty stream of this corrupt harlot art, which is over- whelming us. XIX. People speak of the art of the future, meaning by it a special, refined, new art, which is supposed to be worked out in time from the art of the one class which is now considered to be the highest. But there can be no such new art of the future, and there will be none. Our ex- clusive art of the higher classes of the Christian world has come to a blind alley. On the path on which it has travelled it can go no farther. Having once departed from the chief demand of art (wliich is, that it should be guided by the religious consciousness), becoming more and more exclu- sive and so more and more corrupt, this art has reached the impossible point. The art of the future — the one which will actually exist — will not be a continuation of the present art, but will be reared on entirely different, new foundations, which have nothing in common with those by which our present art of the highest classes is guided. The art of the future, that is, that part of art which will be segregated from the whole art disseminated among men, will not consist in the transmission of sensations accessible only to a few people of the wealthy classes, as is the case at present, but will be only that art which realizes the highest religious consciousness of the people of our time. Only such productions will be considered art as will convey sentiments which draw men toward brotherly union, or such universal sentiments as will be able to unite all men. Only such art will be segregated, admitted, approved of, disseminated. But the art which conveys sentiments which result from the obsolete re- 324 WHAT IS ART? 325 ligious teaching that men have outlived, — the ecclesiastic, patriotic, amorous arts, which convey sensations of super- stitious awe, pride, vanity, worship of heroes, arts which evoke exclusive love for one's nation or sensuaHty, will be considered bad, harmful arts, and will be condemned and despised by public opinion. All other art, which con- veys sensations accessible to but a few men, will not be considered important, and will neither be condemned nor approved of. And not a separate class of wealthy men, as is now the case, but the whole nation, will be the apprais- ers of art, so that, for a production to be recognized as good, to be approved of, and disseminated, it will have to satisfy the demands, not of a few men, who live under similar and frequently under unnatural conditions, but of all men, of the great masses of men, who live under natural conditions of labour. And the artists, the producers of art, will not, as at present, be those exceptional few, selected from a small part of the people, the men of the wealthy classes or those who are near to them, but all those talented men of the whole people who will prove capable and inclined toward an artistic activity. Then the artistic activity will be accessible to all men. And this activity will become accessible to all men, be- cause, in the first place, in the art of the future there will be demanded not only no complicated technique which disfigures the productions of art of our time and demands great tension and great loss of time, but, on the contrary, clearness, simplicity, and brevity, — those conditions which are not acquired by means of mechanical exercises, but by the education of the taste. In the second place, the artistic activity wall become accessible to all men of the masses, because instead of the present professional schools, which are accessible to but a few men, all will in primary popular schools study music and painting (singing and drawing) on a par with reading and writing, so that 326 WHAT IS ART? every man, having received his first foundations of paint- ing and of musical science, and feeling in himself the ability and the calling for any one art, would be able to perfect himself in it ; and, in the third place, all the forces which now are wasted on false art will be used for the dissemination of true art among the masses. People think that if there shall be no special schools of art, the technique of art will be weakened. It certainly will, if by technique is meant those complications of art which now are considered to be its distinguishing features ; but if by technique is meant lucidity, beauty, and sim- plicity, — a conciseness of the productions of art, — the technique will not only not be weakened, as is proved by all popular art, but will be improved a hundred times, even if there shall be no professional schools, and even if they did not teach drawing and music in the public schools. It will be made perfect, because all the talented artists, who now are concealed among the masses, will become participants in art and will give, having no need, as at present, of the complex technical instruction, and having models of true art before them, new models of true art, which, as always, will be the best school of technique for the artists. Every true artist even now does not study at school, but in life, from the models of the great masters ; but when the most gifted of the whole people shall be participants in art, and there shall be more such models, and the models shall be more accessible, the instruction in school, of which the future artist will be deprived, will be made up for a hundred times over by that instruction which the artist will receive from the numerous models of the good art which will be disseminated in society. Such will be one of the distinctions between the future and the present art. Another distinction will be this, that the art of the future will not be produced by pro- fessional artists, who receive rewards for their art and do not busy themselves with anything else but their own art. WHAT IS ART? 327 The art of the future •will be produced by all the people from the masses, who will busy themselves with it when they feel a need for this activity. In our society people think that an artist will work better if his material existence is made secure. This opinion would again prove with complete obviousness, if there were still any need of such a proof, that what among us is regarded as art is not art, but only its sem- blance. It is quite true that for the production of boots or rolls the division of labour is very advantageous, — that the bootmaker or baker who is not compelled to prepare his own dinner and firewood will be able to produce more boots or rolls than if he himself had to care for his din- ners and his wood. But art is not an artisanship ; it is the conveyance of a sensation experienced by the artist. Now a sensation can be born in a man only when he lives with all sides of his natural life as is proper to all men. And so the provision for all the material needs of the artists is a most pernicious condition for their productive- ness, since it frees them from the conditions of struggling with Nature, for the purpose of providing for their own lives and for those of others, conditions common to all men, and so deprives them of the possibility and of the opportunity of experiencing the most important sensations which are proper to all men. There is no more pernicious position for the productiveness of an artist than the posi- tion of complete security and luxury in which the artist generally lives in our society. The artist of the future will live the usual life of men, earning his living by some labour. The fruits of that highest spiritual force which passes through him he will strive to give to the greatest number of men, because in this transmission of the sensations arising in him to the greatest number of men is his joy and his reward. The artist of the future will not even understand how an artist, whose chief joy consists in the greatest dissemina- 328 WHAT IS ART? tion of his work, can give his productions only at a certain price. So long as the merchants are not sent out of the tem- ple, the temple of art will not be a temple. The art of the future will drive them out. And so the contents of the art of the future, as I imagine it, will be absolutely different from what it is now. The contents of the art of the future will not form the expression of exclusive sensations, such as ambition, dejection, satiety, and amorousness in all its possible forms, which are accessible and interesting to only such people as have freed themselves by force from the labour which is proper to men ; it will form the expression of sensations experienced by a man who lives the habitual life of all men, and resulting from the religious conscious- ness of our time, or of sensations which are common to all men without exception. To the men of our circle, who do not know and who cannot or will not know those sensations which must form the contents of the art of the future, it seems that such are very poor contents in comparison with those finesses of the exclusive art with which they are busying themselves. " What new thing can we express in the sphere of the Christian sentiments of love of our neigh- bour ? The sentiments which are common to all men are so insignificant and monotonous," they think. But in re- ality it is only the religious. Christian sentiments and those which are accessible to all that in our time can be truly new sentiments. Sentiments which arise from the religious consciousness of our time, the Christian senti- ments, are infinitely new and varied ; only not in the sense in which many imagine it, which is, to represent Christ and Gospel episodes, or in a new form to repeat the Christian truths of union, brotherhood, equahty, love, but in the sense that the very oldest habitual, thoroughly known phenomena of life evoke the newest, most unex- WHAT IS ART? 329 pected, and most touching sentiments, the moment a man looks upon these phenomena from the Christian point of view. What can be older than the relations of husband and wife, of parents to their children, of children to their parents, of men to their countrymen, to foreigners, to attack, to defence, to property, to the land, to the ani- mals ? But the moment one looks upon these phenomena from the Christian point of view, there immediately arise infinitely varied, extremely new, most complicated, and most touching sentiments. Even so there is no narrowing, but a widening of the sphere of the contents of that art of the future which conveys the simplest, most accessible worldly sensations. In our former art only the expression of such seusatious as are proper to men of a certain exclusive condition was considered worthy of transmission, and that only under the condition of transmitting them in the most refined manner, which is not accessible to the majority of men ; but that whole immense sphere of the national child's art, jokes, proverbs, riddles, songs, dances, children's games, imitations, was not considered to be worthy of being a subject of art. The artist of the future will understand that it is infi- nitely more important and more fruitful to compose a little fairy tale, a song, which touches people, a saw, a riddle, which amuses them, a joke, which makes them laugh, and to draw a picture which will give pleasure to dozens of generations or to millions of children and adults, than to compose a novel, a symphony, or to draw a pic- ture, which for a short time will divert a few of wealthy classes and will be for ever forgotten. Now the sphere of this art of simple sensations, accessible to all men, is immense and almost untouched. Thus the art of the future will not only not be poorer, but, on the contrary, will be infinitely richer in contents. 330 WHAT IS ART? Just so the form of the art of the future will not be lower than the present form of art, but will be incomparably higher, — not higher in the sense of a refined and compli- cated technique, but in the sense of being able briefly, simply, and clearly to convey, without superfluity, the sensation which the artist has experienced and wishes to communicate to others. I remember that once when speaking with a famous astronomer who was giving public lectures on the spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way, I said to him how nice it would be if he with his knowledge and his ability to lecture would deliver a pubhc lecture on cosmography about the most important motions of the earth, since amidst the hearers of his lectures on the spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way there were very many people, especially women, who did not exactly know what pro- duces day and night, winter and summer. The clever astronomer smiled, and said to me, " Yes, it would be nice, but that is very hard. It is much easier to lecture on the spectrum analysis of the Milky Way." The same is true of art : it is much easier to write a poem in verse about the times of Cleopatra, or to paint a picture of Nero burning Kome, or to compose a sym- phony in the sense of Brahms and Eichard Strauss, or an opera in the spirit of Wagner, than to tell a simple story without anything superfluous and yet in such a way that it may convey the sentiment of the narrator, or to draw with pencil a picture which would touch and amuse the spectator, or to write four measures of a simple and clear tune, without any accompaniment, which may convey a mood and may be remembered by the hearers. " It is impossible for us now, with our development, to return to primitive conditions," say the artists of our time. " It is impossible for us now to write such stories as the story of Joseph the Fair, as the Odyssey ; to sculp- WHAT IS ART? 331 ture such statues as the Venus of Melos ; to compose such music as the national songs." And, indeed, this is impossible for the artists of our time, but not for the artist of the future, who will not know all the debauch of technical perfections that con- ceal the absence of contents, and who, not being a profes- sional artist, and receiving no reward for his activity, will reproduce art only when he feels an irrepressible inner necessity for it. So entirely different from what now is considered art will be the art of the future, both in contents and in form. As contents for the art of the future will serve only sucli sentiments as draw men toward union or already unite them in the present ; and the form of the art will be such as will be accessible to all men. And so the ideal of the future perfection will not be in the ex- clusiveness of the sentiment which is accessible to but a few, but, on the contrary, in its universality : and not in the bulk, obscurity, and complexity of form, as it is con- sidered at present, but, on the contrary, in the brevity, lucidity, and simplicity of expression. And only when art shall be such, will it not amuse and corrupt people, as is the case at present, demanding for this a waste of their best forces, but be what it ought to be, — a tool for the transference of the religious Christian consciousness from the sphere of reason and intellect into that of feehng, thus bringing people actually in life itself, nearer to that perfection and union which the religious consciousness indicates to them. XX. CONCLUSION I HAVE performed my task in regard to a subject which is near to me, — art, — and which has interested me for fifteen years, as well as I could. When I say that this subject has interested me for fifteen years, I do not mean to say that I have been fifteen years writing this work, but only that about fifteen years ago I began to write about art, thinking, when I took hold of this work, that I should end it at once without interruption ; but it turned out that my ideas respecting this subject at that time were yet so little clear that I was unable satisfactorily to myself to expound them. Since then I have uninter- ruptedly thought about this subject and have six or seven times started to write on it, but every time, after I had written quite a little, I felt unable to finish the work and so abandoned it. Now I have finished it, and, no matter how badly I may have done it, I hope that my funda- mental idea about the false path on which the art of our time is standing and proceeding, and about its cause, and about what the true mission of art consists in, is correct, and that, therefore, my labour, though far from being complete, and demanding, many, many elucidations and additions, will not be spent in vain, and that art sooner or later will abandon that false path on which it now stands. But that this may happen and that art may take the new direction, it is necessary that another, a just as important spiritual activity, — science, — on which art 33a WHAT IS ART? 333 has always been closely dependent, should, like art, leave the false path on which it now is. Science and art are as closely related as the lungs and the heart, so that if one organ is distorted, the other cannot perforin its regular functions. True science studies and introduces into the conscience of men that knowledge which by the men of a certain time and society is considered most important. But art transfers these truths from the sphere of knowledge into the sphere of feeling. And so, if the path on which science is proceeding is false, the path of art will be equally false. Science and art are like those barges with two anchors, so-called machines, which used to navigate the rivers. Science, like those boats which carry the anchors forward and moor them, prepares the motion whose direction is given by religion ; and art, like the capstan which works on the barge, drawing it nearer to the anchor, performs the motion itself. And so the false activity of science draws after it a similarly false activity of art. Just as art in general is the conveyance of all kinds of sensations, while by art in the narrower sense of the word we mean that which conveys sensations which we consider important, so science in general is a conveyance of every kind of knowledge, while by science in the narrower sense of the word we mean only that which conveys knowledge that is recognized by us to be im- portant. What determines for people the degree of the impor- tance, both of the sensations conveyed by art and of the knowledge conveyed by science, is the religious conscious- ness of a certain time and society, that is, the common comprehension by the men of that time and society as to what the destination of their lives is. What more than anything else cooperates with the accomplishment of this destination is considered the chief 334 WHAT IS ART? science ; what cooperates less, is less important ; what does not at all cooperate with the accomplishment of the desti- nation of man's life is not studied at all, or if it is studied at all, it is not considered to be a science. Thus it has always been, thus it ought to be now, because such is the property of human knowledge and of human life. But the science of the higher classes of our time, by fail- ing to recognize any religion and even considering every religion nothing but a superstition, has not been able to accomplish this. And so the men of science of our time assert that they indifferently study everything, but as there is too much of everything (everything is the infinite number of objects) and it is impossible to study everything indifferently, this assertion is made only in theory ; in reahty they do not study everything and by no means all indifferently, but only what, on the one hand, is most important and, on the other, most agreeable to those men who busy them- selves with science. What is most important of all to the men of science, who belong to the higher classes, is to retain the order under which these classes enjoy their prerogatives ; and most agreeable is that which gratifies idle curiosity, does not demand great mental efforts, and cannot be practically applied. And so one division of the sciences, which includes philosophy that is adapted to the existing order, and a similar history and political economy, busies itself chiefly with proving that the existing order of life is such as it ought to be, such as has originated and continues to exist according to unchangeable laws, which are not subject to the human will, and that, therefore, every attempt at violating it is illegal and useless. Another division, that of experimental science, which includes mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, physics, botany, and all the natu- ral sciences, busies itself only with what has no direct relation to human life, what is curious, and what admits WHAT IS AKT ? 335 of applications convenient to the life of the higher classes. For the justification of that choice of subjects of study which the men of science of our time have made in con- formity with their position, they have invented, precisely like the theory of art for art's sake, a theory of science for science's sake. As it follows from the theory of art for art's sake that occupation with all those subjects which please us is art, so it follows from -the theory of science for science's sake that the study of subjects which interest us is science. Thus one part of science, instead of studying how men should live in order to fulfil their destination, proves the legality and the unchangeability of the bad and false existing order of life ; and another part, experimental science, busies itself with questions of simple curiosity or with technical improvements. The first division of the sciences is harmful, not only in that it confuses the concepts of men and gives them false solutions, but also in that it exists and occupies a place which ought to be occupied by true science. It is harmful, because every man, to take up the study of the most important questions of life, must, before solving them, overthrow those structures of falsehood in every most essential question of life, accumulated through ages and supported with every inventiveness of the mind. The second division, the one on which modern science prides itself so much and which by many is considered to be the one true science, is harmful in that it distracts the attention of men from actually important subjects and leads them to such as are insignificant ; besides, it is harmful in that, with the false order of things which is justified and supported by the first division of the sciences, a great part of the technical acquisitions of this division of science is not directed toward the use, but toward the harm of humanity. It is only to the men who have devoted their hves to 336 WHAT IS ART? this study that it seems that all the discoveries which are made in the sphere of the natural sciences are very im- portant and useful matters. This seems so to them, only because they do not look about themselves and do not see what is really important. They need only tear themselves away from that psychological microscope under which they observe the subjects of their study, and look about in order to see how insignificant all the science is which affords them such naive pride, — I do not speak of imaginary geometry, the spectrum analysis of the Milky Way, the form of the atoms, the dimension of the crania of the men of the stone period, and similar trifles, — but even the science of the micro-organisms, X-rays, and so forth, in comparison witli that knowledge which we have rejected and have turned over to be corrupted by professors of theology, jurisprudence, political economy, the science of finances, and others. We need only look about in order to see that the activity wliich is proper to true science is not the study of what has accidentally inter- ested us, but of how tha human life is to be arranged, — those questions of religion, morality, social life, without solving which all our knowledge of Nature is harmful and insignificant. We rejoice very much and pride ourselves on this, that our science gives us the possibility of utilizing the energy of the waterfall and of compelling this force to do work in factories, or that we have cut tunnels through moun- tains, and so forth. But the trouble is that we do not cause this force of the waterfall to work for the good of humanity, but for the enrichment of capitalists, who pro- duce articles of luxury or instruments for the destruction of men. The same dynamite with which we tear down mountains in order to dig tunnels through them is used by us in war, which we not only do not wish to re- nounce, but even consider indispensable, and for which we prepare ourselves uninterruptedly. WHAT IS ART? 337 Even though we are now able to inoculate preventive diphtheria, with the aid of X-rays to find a needle in the body, to straighten out a curved spine, to cure syphilis, to perform marvellous operations, and so forth, we should not pride ourselves on these acquisitions, supposing them to be incontestable, if we fully understood the actual significance of true science. If only one-tenth of those forces which are now wasted on articles of mere curiosity and practical application were spent on true science, which establishes men's lives, the greater half of the people who now are sick would have none of the diseases a tiuy part of which is being cured in clinics and hospitals ; there would not be brought up in factories antemic, hunchbacked children ; there would not be, as there is now, a mortality of fifty per cent, of the children ; there would not be any degen- eration of whole generations ; there would be no prostitu- tion ; there would be no syphilis ; there would be no slaughter of hundreds of thousands at war ; there would not be those terrors of madness and suffering which modern science now considers to be an indispensable con- dition of human life. We have so distorted the concept of science that it seems strange to the men of our time to hear mentioned sciences which would abolish the mortality of children, prostitution, syphilis, the degeneration of whole genera- tions, and the mass murder of men. It seems to us that science is science only when a man in the laboratory pours hquids from one glass into another, decomposes a spectrum, cuts up frogs and guinea-pigs, in a peculiar scientific jargon spins out dim, barely comprehensible even to him, theological, philosophical, liistorical, jurid- ical, economical laces of conventional phrases, the purpose of which it is to prove that what is ought to be. But science, true science, — a science which would really command the respect which the men of the one, least important part of science now demand, — does not 338 WHAT IS ART? at all consist in this ; true science consists in finding out what we should believe, and what not, — in finding out how the aggregate life of men ought to be arranged, and how not : how to regulate the sexual relations, how to educate the children, how to make use of the land, how to work it witliout oppressing other men, how to act toward foreigners, how to treat animals, and many other things which are of importance in the life of men. Such has true science always been, and such it ought to be. And such science is germinating in our time ; but, on the one hand, such true science is denied and rejected by all those learned men who defend the exist- ing order of things ; on the other hand, it is considered to be an empty, unnecessary, unscientific science by those who busy themselves with the experimental sciences. There have appeared, for example, works and sermons which prove the obsoleteness and insipidity of the relig- ious fanaticism, the necessity for establishing a rational religious world conception in conformity with the times, and many theologians are busy overthrowing these works and ever anew sharpening their wits for the support and justification of long outlived superstitions. Or there appears a sermon which preaches that one of the chief causes of the calamities of the masses is the landlessness of the proletariat, as it is found in the West. One would think that science, true science, would acclaim such a sermon and would work out the farther deductions from this proposition. But the science of our time does not do anything of the kind ; on the contrary, political economy proves the reverse, namely, that the ownership of land, like any other ownership, ought more and more to be con- centrated in the hands of a small number of landowners, as is, for example, asserted by the modern Marxists. Even so, it would seem, it is the business of true science to prove the irrationality and profitlessness of war, of capital punishment, or the inhumanity and perniciousness WHAT IS ART? 339 of prostitution, or the senselessness, harm, and immorality of the use of narcotics and of auimal food, or the irra- tionality, harmfulness, and obsoleteness of the patriotic fanaticism. There are such works, but they are all considered unscientific. Scientific are considered those which prove that all these phenomena ought to be, or those which busy themselves with questions of idle curi- osity, which have no relation to human life. Most striking is the deviation of the science of our time from its true mission, when we view the ideals which some men of science set up for themselves and which are not denied and are acknowledged by the ma- jority of the learned. These ideals are not only expressed in foolish fashion- able books, which describe the world one thousand or three thousand years hence, but also by sociologists who consider themselves to be serious scholars. These ideals consist in this, that the food, instead of being obtained by agriculture and cattle-raising from the land, will be pre- pared chemically in laboratories, and that human labour will nearly all give way to the utilized forces of Nature. A man will not, as now, eat an egg laid by a hen which he has raised, or bread which has grown in his field, or an apple from a tree which he has for years cared for and which has blossomed and matured in his sight ; he will eat savoury, nourishing food which will be pre- pared in laboratories by the combined labours of many men, in which he will take a small part. There will hardly be any need of work, so that all men will be able to devote themselves to that very idle- ness to which the highest, ruling classes abandon them- selves now. Nothing shows more obviously than these ideals to what extent the science of our time has departed from its true path. The men of our time, an enormous majority of men. 340 WHAT IS ART? have no good or sufficient nourishment (precisely the sarue refers to tlie habitation, the attii-e, and all the prime necessities). Besides, this same enormous majority of men is compelled without cessation to work above its strength at the cost of its well-being. And either calam- ity is very easily set aside by the abolition of the mutual struggle with luxury, with the irregular distribution of wealth, in general, by the abolition of the false, harmful order of things and the establishment of the rational life of men. But science takes the existing order of things to be as variable as the motion of the luminaries, and con- siders that, therefore, the problem of science is not the elucidation of the falseness of this order and the estab- lishment of a new rational order of life, but how under the existing order to feed all men and give them a chance to be as idle as are now the ruling classes of those who live a debauched life. With this they forget that feeding on bread, vegetables, fruit, raised by one's own labour on the land, is an exceed- ingly agreeable and wholesome, easy and natural manner of alimentation, and that the work of exercising one's muscles is just as indispensable a condition of life as the oxidation of the blood by means of breathing. To invent means for people, with that false distribution of property and labour, to be able to feed well on chemi- cally prepared foods and at the same time to compel the forces of Nature to work for them, is the same as invent- ing means for pumping oxygen into the lungs of a man who is in a closed apartment with foul air, when all that is necessary is not to keep this man in the closed apart- ment. The laboratory for the production of food is established in the world of plants and animals, and is such that no professors will ever build any better ones, and in order to enjoy the fruits of this laboratory and to take part in it, a man has only to abandon himself to the ever joyous WHAT IS ART ? 341 necessity of labour, without which life is agonizing. And now the men of science of our century, instead of using all their forces for the removal of everything wliich keeps man from utilizing these benefactions which are estab- lished for him, recognize the condition in which man is deprived of these benefactions as invariable, and, instead of arranging the lives of men in such a way that they may work with joy and live on the products of the earth, they invent means for making artificial monstrosities of them. It is the same as though, instead of bringing a man out from confinement into the fresh air, they were to invent means for pumping into liim as much oxygen as possible, and make it possible for him to live in a close basement, instead of hving in a house. There could not exist such false ideals, if science were not following a false path. And yet the sensations which are conveyed by art are conceived on the basis of the data of science. What sensations can such a science, which is following a false path, evoke ? One division of this science evokes obsolete sensations, which humanity has outhved, and wliich are bad and exclusive for our time. The other division, which busies itself with subjects that have no relation to human life, can by its very essence not serve as a foundation for art. Thus the art of our time, to be art, must itself, in spite of science, lay out a path for itself, or make use of indica- tions by the unsanctioned science which is denied by the orthodox part of science. It is precisely this that art does, when it even partially performs its mission. It is to be hoped that the work which I have attempted concerning art, will also be done in respect to science ; that the incorrectness of the theory of science for science's sake will be indicated to men ; that the necessity of recognizing the Christian teaching in its true significance will be clearly judioated ; and that on the basis of this teaching a new 342 WHAT IS ART? valuation will be made of the science which we possess and on which we pride ourselves ; that the secondary im- portance and insignificance of the experimental sciences, and the prime importance and significance of the reUgious, moral, and social sciences will be shown, and that these sciences will not, as at present, be left to the guidance of the higher classes alone, but will form the chief object of all those free and truth-loving men who, not always at one w^th the higher classes, but diametrically opposed to them, have promoted the true science of life. But the mathematical, astronomic, physical, chemical, and biological sciences, just hke the technical and medical sciences, will be studied ouly in that proportion in which they contribute to the liberation of men from religious, juridical, and social deceptions, or will serve for the good of all men, and not of one class. Only then will science cease to be what it is now, — on the one hand, a system of sophisms, necessary for the support of the obsolete order of life, on the other, a form- less heap of all kinds of sciences, for the most part httle or not at all necessary, — and be a harmonious organic whole, which has a definite, comprehensible and rational destina- tion, which is, to introduce into the consciousness of men those truths which result from the religious consciousness of our time. Only then will art, which is always dependent on science, be what it can and should be, — just as important an organ of life and of the progress of humanity as is science. Art is not an enjoyment, a diversion ; art is a great thing. Art is an organ of the life of humanity, which transfers the rational consciousness of men into feeling. In our time the common religious consciousness of men is the recognition of the brotherhood of men and of their good in their mutual union. True art must indicate the different manners of applying this consciousness to life. Art must transfer this consciousness into feeling. WHAT IS ART? 343 The problem of art is enormous ; true art, which by means of science is guided by religion, ought to have this effect, that the peaceable cohabitation of men, which now is sustained by external means, by courts, the police, chari- table institutions, inspection of labour, and so forth, might be attained through the free and joyous activity of men. Art should remove violence. And it is only art which can do it. Everything which now, independently of the terror of violence and punishment, makes possible the common life of men (and in our time a very large portion of the order of hfe is already based upon it), has been accomplished by art. If art has transmitted the custom of treating religious subjects in this way, and parents, children, wives, relatives, strangers, foreigners, elders, superiors, sufferers, enemies, animals, — and this custom has been observed by genera- tions of millions of men, not only without the least sign of violence, but also in such a way that it cannot in any way be shaken, except by art, — then the same art may be able to evoke other customs, which are more in keeping with the religious consciousness of our time. If art could transmit to us the sentiment of awe before an image before communion, before the person of the king, shame before treason to friendship, loyalty to the flag, the necessity of vengeance for an offence, the demand for the sacrifice of one's labours for the erection and adornment of tem- ples, the obligation of defending one's honour or the glory of one's country, — the same art is able to evoke a feel- ing of awe before the dignity of every man, before the hfe of every animal, shame in the presence of luxury, of violence, of vengeance, of the use for one's pleasure of such articles as are indispensable to other men ; it is able to make people freely and joyously, without noticing it, sacrifice themselves for the service of men. Art must effect this, that the sentiments of the brother- hood and the love of one's neighbour, which now are ac- 344 WHAT IS ART? cessible only to the best men of society, should become habitual sentiments, instiucts of all men. Evoking in men, under imaginary conditions, sentiments of brother- hood and love, religious art will teach people in reality, under the same conditions, to experience the same senti- ments, to lay in the souls of men those rails on which naturally will proceed the acts of the lives of men who are educated by that art. By uniting all the most varied men in one feeliug and destroying the disunion, the uni- versal art will educate men for uniou, and will show them, not through reflectiou, but through life itself, the joy of the universal union outside the obstacles placed by life. The mission of art in our time consists in transferring from the sphere of reason into the sphere of feeling the truth that the good of men is in their union among them- selves, and in establishing in place of the now existing violence that kingdom of God, that is, of love, which to all of us appears as the highest aim of the life of human- ity. Maybe, in the future, science will open up to art other new, higher ideals, and art will realize them ; but in our time the mission of art is clear and definite. The problem of Christian art is the realization of the brotherly union of men. APPENDIX I. l'accueil Si tu veux que ce soir, a r&,tre je t'accueille Jette d'abord la fleur, qui de ta main s'eft'euille; Son clier parf um ferait nia tristesse trop sombre ; Et ne regarde pas derriere toi vers I'ombre, Cai" je te veux, ayaut oubli6 la foret Et le vent, et I'echo et ce qui parlerait Voix a ta solitude ou pleui's a ton silence I Et debout, avec ton ombre qui te devance, Et hautaine sur mon seuil, et pale, et v6nue Comnie si j'6tais mort ou que tu fusses nue ! — Henri de Regnier : Les jeux rustiques et divins. Oiseau bleu couleur du temps." Sais-tu I'oubli D'un vain doux reve Oiseau nioqueur De la foret ? Le jour palit, La imit se leva, Et dans mon coeur L'onibre a pleur6; O, chante moi Ta folle gamme, Car j'ai dormi Ce jour durant; Le lache 6moi Oil flit mon Tune Sanglote emmi Le jour mourant. — Francis Viel^ - 345 Sais-tu le chant De sa parole Et de sa voix, Toi qui redis Dans le coucliant Ton air f rivole Comme autrefois Sous les midis? O, chante alors La m^lodie De son amour, ]\Ion fol espoir, Parmi les ors Et I'incendie Du vain doux jour. Qui meurt ce soir. Griffin : Polmes et Poesies. 346 APPENDIX IX. ]6none, j'avais cru qu'en aimant ta beauts Oil Fame avec le corps trouvent leur iinit^, J'allais m'affermissant et le coem- et I'esprit, Monter jusqu'a cela, qui jamais ne p6rit, N'ayant 6t6 cr66, qui n'est froidure ou feu, Qui n'est beau quelque part et laid en autre lieu ; Et me flattais encore d'une belle harmonie. Que j'eusse compost du meilleur et du pire, Ainsi que le chanteur que ch^rit Polymuie, En accordant le grave avec I'aigu, retire Un son bien 61ev6 sur les nerfs de sa lyre. Mais nion courage, h^las ! se pamant comme raort, M'enseigna que le trait qui m'avait fait amant Ne fut pas de cet arc que courbe sans effort La V^nus qui naquit du male seulement, Mais que j'avais souffert cette V^nus derniere Qui a le coeur couard, n6 d'une faible mere. Et pourtant, ce mauvais garcon chasseur habile, Qui charge son carquois de sagette subtile, Qui secoue en riant sa torche, pour un jour. Qui ne pose jamais que sur de tendres fleurs, C'est sur un teint charmant qu'il essuie les pleurs, Et c'est encore un Dieu, Enone, cet Amour. Mais, laisse, les oiseaux du printemps sont partis, Et je vois les rayons du soleil amortis. Enone, ma douleur, harmonieux visage, Superbe humility, doux-honngte langage, Hier me remirant dans cet ^tang glac6 Qui au bout du jardin se couvre de feuillage, Sur ma face je vis que les jours out pass6. — Jean Mori^as : Le Pe'lerin Passions. XVI. BERCEUSE d'OMBRE Des formes, des formes, des formes Blanche, bleue, et rose, et d'or Descendront du haiit des ormes Sur I'enfant qui se rendort. Des formes I APPENDIX 347 Des plumes, des plumes, des plumes Pour composei' un doux nid. Midi Sonne : les enclumes Cessent; la rumeur fiiiit. . . . Des plumes 1 Des roses, des roses, des roses Pour embaumer son sommeil Vos p^tales sont raoroses Pres du sourire vermeil. O roses ! Des ailes, des ailes, des ailes Pour bourdonner a son front. Abeilles et demoiselles, Des rythmes qui berceront. Des ailes ! Des branches, des branches, des branches Pour tresser un pavilion Par ou des clart6s moins franches Descendront sur I'oisillon. Des branches ! Des songes, des songes, des songes. Dans ses pensers entr'ouverts Glissez un peu de mensonges A voir la vie au tr avers. Des songes \ Des f^es, des f^es, des f^es Pour filer lem-s ^cheveaux De mirages, de bouff^es Dans tous ces petits cerveaux. Des f 6es I Des anges, des anges, des anges Pour emporter dans I'^ther Les petits enfants ^tranges Qui ne veulent pas rester Non anges. . . . APPENDIX II. Here are the contents of the Ring of the NibeliLng. In the first part we are told that the nymphs, the daughters of the Ehiue, are for some reason guarding some kind of gold in the Ehine, and singing, " Weia Waga, Woge du Welle, Welle zur Wiege, Wage zur Wiege, Wage la Weia, Wala la Weele, Weia," and so forth. The nymphs who are singing in this manner are persecuted by the dwarf Nibelung, who wants to get possession of them. The dwarf is unable to catch even one of them. Then the nymphs who are guarding the gold tell the dwarf what they ought to conceal, namely, that he who declines the love can steal the gold which they are guarding. And the dwarf dechues their love and seizes the gold. This is the first scene. In the second scene, in a field, in the sight of a city, lie a god and a goddess ; then they awake and admire the city which giants have built for them, and they discuss about giving Goddess Freia to the giants for their work. The giants come to get their pay; but God Wotan does not want to give up Goddess Freia. The giants are angry. The gods learn that the dwarf has stolen the gold, and they promise to take this gold back and to give it to the giants for their work. But the giants do not believe them and seize Goddess Freia, whom they hold as a pledge. The third scene takes place underground. Dwarf Alberich, who has stolen the gold, for some reason beats 348 APPENDIX 349 the dwarf Mime and takes away his helmet, which has the property of making man invisible and changing him into other beings. There arrive the gods, Wotan and others, and they scold one another and the dwarfs ; they want to take away tlie gold, but Alberich does not give it to them, and, as all of them are doing all the time, acts in such a way as to bring ruin on himself : he puts on the helmet, and is changed into a dragon, and later into a frog. The gods catch the frog, take the helmet down from it, and carry Alberich off with them. The fourth scene consists in this, that the gods have Alberich brought in, ordering him to command his dwarfs to bring all the gold to them. The dwarfs bring it. Al- berich gives up all the gold, but keeps for himself a magic ring. The gods take the ring away, too. For this Albe- rich curses the ring and says that it will bring misfortune to all who shall own it. There amve the giants, bringing with them Goddess Freia and demanding a ransom. Stakes, of the size of Freia's stature, are put up and covered with gold, — that is the ransom. There is not enough gold ; the helmet is thrown on the heap ; the ring is demanded. Wotan does not give it, but there appears Goddess Erda, who commands that the ring be given up, because misfortune comes from it. Wotan gives it. Freia is liberated, but the giants, having received the ring, quarrel, and one of them kills another. This is the end of the Vorspiel, — there begins the first day. A tree is placed in the middle of the stage. Siegmund comes running in ; he is tired, and he lies down. Enter Sieglinde, the hostess, Hundiug's wife ; she gives him a love-potion, and they fall in love with one another. Enter Sieglinde's husband ; he learns that Siegmund be- longs to an unfriendly race, and intends to fight him the next day ; but Sieglinde gives her husband an intoxicating potion and goes to Siegmund. Siegmund learns that Sieglinde is his sister and that his father struck a sword 350 APPENDIX into a tree, so that no one is able to take it out. Sieg- mund pulls out the sword and commits incest with his sister. In the second action Siegmund is to fight with Hun- ding. The gods discuss to whom to give the victory. Wotan wants to take care of Siegmund, approving of the act of incest with his sister, but, under the influence of his wife Fricka, he orders the Valkyrie Brlinnhilde to kill Siegmund. Siegmund proceeds to fight. Sieghnde faints. Briiuuhilde arrives ; she wants to starve him ; Siegmund wants to kill Sieglinde, but Brlinnhilde commands him not to do so, and he fights with Hunding. Brlinnhilde defends Siegmund, but Wotan defends Hunding, and Siegmund's sword is broken and Siegmund is killed. Sieglinde runs away. Third act. The Valkyries on the stage. They are heroines. Valkyrie Brlinnhilde on horseback arrives with Siegmund. She runs away from Wotan, who is angry with her on account of her disobedience. Wotan catches up with her and to punish her for her disobedience dis- charges her from her Valkyrie-ship. He puts a charm on her, so that she has to fall asleep and remain asleep until a man wakes her. When she is on the point of waking, she will fall in love with a man. Wotan kisses her, and she falls asleep. He discharges fire, and the fire surrounds her. The contents of the second day consist in this, that the dwarf Mime is forging a sword in the forest. Enter Siegfried. He is the son who was born from the incest of the brother Siegmund and the sister Sieglinde, and who was brought up in the forest by a dwarf. Siegfried learns of his origin and that the broken sword is his father's sword, and orders Mime to forge it, and himself goes away. Enter Wotan in the form of a pilgrim ; he says that he who has not learned to be afraid will forge a sword and will conquer all. The dwarf guesses that this APPENDIX 351 is Siegfried, and wants to poison him. Siegfried returns, forges his father's sword, and runs away. The second action of the second act consists in this, that Alberich sits and watches the giant, who, in the form of a dragon, watches the gold which he has received. Enter Wotan, who for some unkuowa reason tells that Siegfried will come and will kill the dragon. Alberich wakes the dragon and asks the ring of him, promising for this to defend him against Siegfried. The dragon does not give up the ring. Exit Alberich. Enter Mime and Siegfried. Mime hopes that the dragon will teach Sieg- fried fear ; but Siegfried is not afraid, drives away Mime, and kills the dragon ; after that he puts to his lips his linger, un which is the blood of the dragon, and from this he learns the secret thoughts of men and the language of the birds. The birds tell him where the treasure and the ring are, and that Mime wants to kill him. Enter Mime, who says aloud that he wants to poison Siegfried. These words are to mean that Siegfried, having tasted the dragon's blood, understands the secret thoughts of men. Siegfiied finds out his thoughts, and kills him. The birds tell him where Briinnhilde is, and Siegfried goes to her. In the third act Wotan sends for Erda. Erda prophe- sies to Wotan, and gives him advice. Enter Siegfried, who exchanges words with Wotan and fights. Suddenly it appears that Siegfried's sword breaks that spear of Wotan, which was more powerful than anything. Sieg- fried goes into the fire where Briinnhilde is ; he kisses Briinnhilde ; she awakens, bids farewell to her divinity, and throws herself into Siegfried's embrace. Third day. Three Nomas are weaving a golden rope and talking of the future. The Nomas go away, — and there appears Siegfried with Briinnhilde. Siegfried bids her good-bye, gives her the ring, and goes away. First act. On the Khine a king wants to get married 352 APPENDIX and to get his sister married. Hagen, the king's bad brother, advises him to take Brlinnhilde, and to marry his sister off to Siegfried. Siegfried makes his appearance. He is given a love-potion, as a result of which he forgets the whole past, and falls in love with Guthrun and travels with Gunther to get Brlinnhilde for him as a wife. Change of scenery. Briinnhilde is sitting with the ring ; a Valkyrie comes to her ; she tells how Wotan's spear was broken, and advises her to give the ring to the nymphs of the Ehine. Enter Siegfried, who by means of the magic helmet is changed into Gunther ; he demands the ring from Briinnhilde, tears it away from her, and drags her along to sleep with him. . Second act. On the Rhine Alberich and Hagen dis- cuss how to obtain the ring. Enter Siegfried ; he tells of how he obtained a wife for Gunther and of how he had slept with her, but had placed his sword between them. Briinnhilde arrives ; she recognizes the ring on Siegfried's hand, and accuses him of having been with her, instead of Gunther. Hagen provokes everybody against Siegfried, and decides that he will kill him the next day at the hunt. Third act. Again the nymphs in the Pthine tell every- thing that has been ; enter Siegfried, who has lost his way. The nymphs ask the ring of him, but he does not give it. Enter hunters. Siegfried tells his story. Hagen gives him a drink, as a result of which his memory returns to him ; he tells how he awoke and obtained Briinnhilde, and all are surprised. Hagen strikes Siegfried in the back and kills him, and the scenery is changed. Guthrun meets Siegfried's body ; Gunther and Hagen quarrel about the ring, and Hagen kills Gunther. Brlinnhilde weeps. Hagen wants to take the ring off Siegfried's finger, but the hand raises itself ; Briinnhilde takes the ring off Sieg- fried's hand and, as Siegfried's body is being carried to the funeral pyre, she mounts her horse and rushes into the APPENDIX 353 pyre. The Ehine rises and comes to the pyre. In the river are three nymphs. Hagen rushes into the fire, in order to fetch the ring, but the nymphs seize him and draw him along. One of them holds the ring. The production is finished. The impression which one gets from my story is natu- rally not complete. But, no matter how incomplete it is, it is certainly incomparably more advantageous than the one which is received from the reading of the four books in which it is printed. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 1897 FROM A LETTER TO THE RUSSIAN EDITOR Of course, I consider this writing incomplete, and far from satisfying those demands which I myself would have made on it twenty years ago. But now I know that I shall not have the time to finish it, to bring it to a desired degree of lucidity ; at the same time I think that even in this form there will be found something which will be of use to men, and so print and edit it as it is. God willing, and if I shall be free from other work and shall have the strength for it, I shall return to this writing and shall try to make it simpler, clearer, and briefer. Lev Tolstoy. September 2, 1897. INTRODUCTION I LIVED to my fiftieth year, thinking that the life of man which passes from birth to death is all his life, and that, therefore, man's aim is happiness in this mortal life, and I tried to receive this happiness ; but the longer I lived, the more obvious did it become to me that there is no such happiness, and that there can be none. The happiness which I was looking for did not come to me, and the one which I attained immediately stopped bemg happiness. At the same time my misfortunes grew more and more, and the iuevitableuess of death became more and more obvious, aud I understood that after this senseless and unhappy life nothing was awaiting me but suffering, diseases, old age, aud annihilation ; I asked myself what this was for, and I received no answer. And I arrived at despair. What some people told me aud what I at times tried to convince myself of, that it was necessary to wish hap- piness not to oneself alone, but also to others, to friends, and to all men, did not satisfy me, in the first place, because I could not as sincerely desire happiness for other men as for myself, and, in the second place, and chiefly, because other men were like myself doomed to unhappi- ness and death. And so all my sufferings about their good were in vain. I began to despair. But I thought that my despair might be due to the fact that I was a peculiar man, and that other men knew why they lived and so did not arrive at despair. And I began to observe other people, but the other 359 o 360 INTRODUCTION people knew as little as I why they were hving. Some tried to drown this ignorance in the bustle of life ; others persuaded themselves and others that they believed in different rehgious, which were impressed upon them in childhood ; but it was impossible for me to beheve in what they beheved, it was so stupid ; and many of them, it seemed to me, only pretended that they believed, whereas in the depth of their hearts they did not believe. I was no longer able to continue bustling about: no amount of bustling concealed the question which con- stantly stood before me, and I could not begin anew to believe in the faith which 1 had been taught in my child- hood and which, when I grew strong in mind, fell off me by itself. But the more I studied, the more did I con- vince myself that there could be no truth in it, that there was here nothing but hypocrisy and the selfish views of deceivers, and the weak-mindedness, stubbornness, and terror of the deceived. To say nothing of the inner contradictions of this teach- ing, of its baseness and cruelty in recognizing God as punishing men with eternal torments,^ the chief thing which did not permit me to believe in this teaching was this, that I knew that side by side with this Orthodox Christian teaching, which asserted that it alone had the truth, there was another, a Catholic Christian, a third, a Lutheran, a fourth, a Eeformed teaching, — and all other kinds of Christian teachings, — each of which asserted in regard to itself that it alone possessed the truth ; I knew also this, that side by side with these Christian teachings there existed also non-Christian religious teachings, — Buddhism, Brahmanism, Mohammedanism, Confucianism, and others, — which similarly considered themselves alone in the truth and all other teachings in error. 1 All these contradictions, insipidities, and cruelties I expounded in detail in a book, Critique of Dogmatic Theology, in whicli all the church dogmas of Ortliodox Theology are analyzed, proposition after proposition. — Authofs Note. INTRODUCTION 361 And so I could not return to the faith in which I had been instructed from my childhood, nor believe in any- one of those which otlier nations professed, because in all of them were the same contradictions, insipidities, mir- acles, which denied all other faiths, and, above all else, the same deception of demanding blind faith in their teaching. Thus I became convinced that in the existing faiths I should not find a solution to my question and an allevia- tion of my sufferings. My despair was such that I was near to committing suicide. But here I found salvation. This salvation was due to this, that I had from childhood retained the idea that in the Gospel there was an answer to my question In this teaching, in the Gospel, in spite of all the distortions to which it has been subjected in the doctrine of the Chris- tian church, I felt there was the truth. And I made a last effort : rejecting all the interpretations of the Gospel teaching, I began to read and study the gospels, and to penetrate their meaning ; and the more 1 penetrated the meaning of this book, the more something new became clear to me, something which did not at all resemble that which the Christian churches teach, but which answered the question of my life. And finally the answer became quite clear. Aud this answer was not only clear, but also indubi- table, in the first place, in that it completely coincided with the demands of my reason aud of my heart ; in the second, in that when I understood it, I saw that this answer was not my exclusive interpretation of the Gospel, as might seem, and not even the exclusive revelation of Christ, but that this same answer to the question of life had more or less clearly been expressed by all the best men of humanity before and after the Gospel, beginning with Moses, Isaiah, Confucius, the ancient Greeks, Buddha, Socrates, and ending with Pascal, Spinoza, Fichte, Feuer- 362 INTRODUCTION bach, and all those often unnoticed and inglorious men who have thought and talked of the meaning of life in a sincere manner, without taking any teachings upon faith. Thus, in the knowledge which I drew from the truth of the gospels, I was not only not alone, but in agreement with all the best men of the past and the present. And I became firm in this truth, and was calmed after that, and have joyfully lived twenty years of my hfe, and joyfully approach death. And this answer to the meaning of my life, which gave me complete peace and joy of life, I wish to com- municate to men. By my age and the condition of my health I stand with one foot in the grave, and so human considerations have no meaning for me, and if they had, I know that the ex- position of my faith not only will not contribute to my well-being, nor to people's good opinion of me, but, on the contrary, can only agitate and embitter, not only the non- believers, who demand of me literary writings, and not discussions of faith, but also the believers who are pro- voked by all my religious writings and scold me for them. Besides, in all probability this writing will become known to people only after my death. And so I am not incited by personal advantage to do what I am doing, nor by fame, nor by worldly considerations, but only by the fear lest I may not fulfil what is wanted of me by Him who sent me into this world and to whom I expect to return any moment. And so I beg all those who will read this, to read and understand my writing, by rejecting as I do all worldly considerations and having in view nothing but the eternal principle of truth and the good, by the will of which we came into this world and very soon will disappear as bodily beings, and without haste or irritation to under- stand and discuss what I am giving utterance to, and in case of disagreement to correct me, not with contempt INTKODUCTION 363 and hatred, but with sympathy and love ; and in case of a disagreement with me to remember that if I speak the truth, this truth is not mine, but God's, and that only fortuitously a part of it is passing through me, just as it passes through every one of us, when we find out the truth and communicate it to others. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING PART THE FIRST THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND THE NEW CONCEPT OF LIFE I. THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS 1. At all times, since most remote antiquity, people have felt the wretchedness, insecurity, and meaningless- ness of their existence and have tried to find a salvation from this wretchedness in the belief in God or gods who might free them from the various evils of this life and might in the future life give them that good which they wished for, and could not receive in this hfe. 2. And so, since most remote antiquity and among all the nations, there have existed all kinds of preachers who taught men about what God or the gods were who could save men, and about what ought to be done in order to please this God or these gods in order to receive a reward in this or in the future life. 3. Some religious teachings taught that this God is the sun and is personified in various animals ; others taught that the gods are the heaven and the earth ; others — that God created the world and chose one favourite people from among all the nations ; others — that there are many gods, and that they take part in the 365 366 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING affairs of men ; others — that God, having assumed a human form, came down upon earth. And all these teachers, mixing truth with the he, demanded from men, not only the desistance from acts which were considered bad and the performance of such as were considered good, but also sacraments, and sacri- fices, and prayers, which more than anything else were to guarantee to people their good in this world and in the world to come. II. THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS 4. But the longer people lived, the less and less did these religions satisfy the souls of men. 5. Men saw that, in the first place, happiness, after which they were striving, was not attained in this world, in spite of satisfying the demands of God or of the gods. 6. In the second place, in consequence of the dissemina- tion of enlightenment, the confidence in what the religious teachers preached about God, about the future life, and about the rewards in it, grew weaker and weaker, since it did not coincide with the more enlightened conceptions of the world. 7. If formerly men could be unhampered in their belief that God created the world six thousand years ago, that the earth is the centre of the universe, that under the earth there is hell, that God came down upon earth and then flew back to heaven, and so forth, they can no longer believe in it, because they know for sure that the world has existed, not six thousand, but hundreds of thousands of years, that the earth is not the centre of the universe, but only a very small planet in comparison with other celestial bodies, and thev know that there can be nothing under the earth, since the earth is a globe ; they know that it is impossible to fly to heaven, because there is no heaven, but only a seeming vault of heaven. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING o67 8. In the third place, and chiefly, the confidence in these various teachings was undermined by this, that men, entering into closer interrelations, learned that in every country the religious teachers preach their par- ticular doctrine, recognizing their own as true, and reject- ing all the others. And men, knowing this, naturally drew the conclusion from it that not one of these doctrines is more true than any other, and that, therefore, none of them can be ac- cepted as an undoubted and infallible truth. III. THE NEED FOR A NEW RELIGION, TO CORRESPOND WITH THE DEGREE OF HUMANITY'S ENLIGHTENMENT 9. The unattainableness of happiness in this world, the progressing enlightenment of humanity, and the inter- course of people among themselves, in consequence of which they learned of the religions of other nations, had this effect, that the confidence of people in the religions transmitted to them grew weaker and weaker. 10. At the same time, the need of explaining the meaning of hfe and of solving the contradiction between the striving after happiness and life on the one hand, and the ever growing consciousness of the inevitableness of misery and death on the other, became more and more insistent. 11. Man wishes the good for himself, sees in this the meaning of his hfe, and, the longer he lives, the more he sees that the good is impossible for him ; man wishes for life, for its continuation, and sees that he and everything existing around him are doomed to inevitable destruction and disappearance ; man possesses reason and seeks for a rational explanation of the phenomena of life, and does not find any rational explanation for his own life or for that of another being. 12. If in antiquity the consciousness of this contradic- 368 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING tion between human life, demanding the good and its own continuation, and the inevitableness of death and suffering was accessible to the best minds only, such as Solomon, Buddha, Socrates, Lao-tse, and others, this has of late be- come a truth which is accessible to all men ; and so the solution of this contradiction has become more necessary than ever. 13. And exactly at a time when the solution of the contradiction between the striving after the good and life and the consciousness of their impossibility became ex- ceedingly vexing and necessary for humanity, it was given to men through the Christian teaching in its true signifi- cance. IV. WHAT THE SOLUTION OF THE CONTRADICTION OF LIFE AND THE EXPLANATION OF ITS MEANING, AS GIVEN BY THE CHRISTIAN EELIGIOUS DOCTRINE IN ITS TRUE SIGNIFICANCE, CONSISTS IN 14. The ancient religions endeavoured, with their assur- ances about the existence of God the creator, the provider, and the redeemer, to conceal the contradiction of the human life ; but the Christian teaching, on the contrary, shows men this contradiction in all its force ; it shows them what it ought to be, and from the recognition of the contradiction draws the solution of it. The contradiction consists in the following : 15. Indeed, on the one hand man is an animal, so long as he lives in the body, and on the other he is a spirit- ual being, denying all the animal demands of man. 16. Man lives during the first part of his life without knowing that he lives, so that it is not he who lives, but through him that life force which lives in everything we know. 17. Man begins to live only when he knows that he is living ; and he knows that he is living, when he knows THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 369 that he wishes the good for himself, aud that the other beings wish the same. This knowledge is given to him by his awakened reason. 18. When he learns that he lives and wishes the good for himself, and that the other beings wish the same, he inevitably learns also this, that the good which he wishes for his separate being is inaccessible to him, and that instead of the good which he wishes there await him inevitable suffering and death. The same await all the other beings. There appears the contradiction, for which man seeks a solution with which his life, such as it is, may have a rational meaning. He wants life to con- tinue to be what it was previous to the awakening of his reason, that is, completely animal, or that it may be entirely spiritual. 19. Man wants to be an animal or an angel, but can be neither the one nor the other. 20. Aud here appears the solution of the contradiction, which is given by the Christian teaching. It tells man that he is neither an animal, nor an angel, but an angel born of an animal, — a spiritual being born of the animal, — and that our sojourn in this world is nothing but this birth. V. WHAT DOES THE BIRTH OF THE SPIRITUAL BEING CONSIST IN ? 21. The moment man awakens to rational conscious- ness, this consciousness tells him that he wishes the good ; and since his rational consciousness has awakened in his separate being, it seems to him that his desire for the good has reference to his separate existence. 22. But the same rational consciousness, which shows him to himself as a separate being wishing his good, sliows him also that this separate being does not corre- spond to that desire for the good and for life which lie 370 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING ascribes to it ; he sees that this separate being can have neither the good nor hfe. 23. "What, then, has the true hfe?" he asks himself, and he sees that neither he nor the beings that surround him have the true life, but only that he wishes for the good. 24. Having learned this, man ceases to recognize his bodily and mortal existence as separate from the rest, but recognizes that spiritual and so non-mortal existence, in- separable from the rest, which is revealed to him by his rational consciousness. In this consists the birth of the new spiritual being in man. VI. WHAT IS THAT BEING WHICH IS BORN IN MAN? 25. The being which is revealed to man by his rational consciousness is the desire for the good, the same desire for the good which even before formed the aim of his life, but with this difference, that the desire for the good of the former being had reference to the separate bodily being alone, and was not conscious of itself, but the pres- ent desire for the good is conscious of itself and so does not refer to anything separate, but to everything in existence. 26. During the first period of the awakening of reason it appeared to man that the desire for the good which he recognizes in himself has reference only to the body in which it is enclosed. 27. But the clearer and firmer reason became, the clearer it grew that the true being, man's true ego, the moment it becomes conscious of itself, is not his body, which has no true life, but the desire for the good in itself, in other words, the desire for the good for every- thing in existence. 28. But the desire for the good for everything in exist- ence is what gives life to everything in existence, that which we call God. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 371 29. Thus the being which is revealed to man by his consciousness, the being which is being born, is what gives life to everything in existence, — is God. VII. GOD, ACCORDING TO THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING COG- NIZED BY MAN IN HIMSELF 30. According to the former doctrines about the cog- nition of God, man had to believe what other people told him about God, about how God created the world and men, and then made himself manifest to men ; but accord- ing to the Christian teaching, man by means of his con- sciousness cognizes God immediately in himself. 31. In himself consciousness shows to man that the essence of his life is the desire for the good for everything in existence, something inexplicable and inexpressible, and at the same time something most near and compre- hensible to man. 32. The beginning of the desire for the good appeared in man in the beginning, as the life of his separate animal existence : then as the life of those beings whom he loved ; then, from the time that the rational consciousness awoke in him, it appeared as the desire for the good for every- thing in existence. But the desire for the good for everything in existence is the beginning of all life, is love, is God, as it says in the Gospel that God is love. VIII. GOD, ACCORDING TO THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING COG- NIZED BY MAN OUTSIDE HIMSELF 33. But outside of God as recognized, according to the Christian teacliing, in oneself, as a desire for the good for everything in existence, as love, man, according to the Christian teaching, recognizes God also outside of himself in everything in existence. 372 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 34. While recognizing in his separate body God's spiritual and indivisible existence, and seeing the pres- ence of the same God in everything living, man cannot help but ask himself why God, a spiritual, one, and indi- visible God, has enclosed himself in the separate bodies of the beings and in the body of the separate man. 35. Why has the spiritual and one being, as it were, divided itself up in itself ? Why has the divine essence been imprisoned in conditions of separation and corpo- reality ? Why is the immortal contained in the mortal ? bound up with it ? 36. There can be but one answer: there is a higher will, whose aims are inaccessible to man. And it is this will which placed man and everything in existence under the conditions in which all is. It is this cause which for some aims, that are incomprehensible to man, enclosed it- self, — the desire for the good for everj'thing in existence, — love, — in beings distinct from the rest of the world, that is, that very God whom man recognizes in himself, who is recognized by man without himself. Thus God, according to the Christian religion, is that essence of life which man recognizes in himself and in everything in the world, as the desire for the good ; and, at the same time, that cause through which this essence is enclosed in conditions of separate and corporeal life. God, according to the Christian teaching, is that father, as is said in the Gospel, who has sent into the world his son who is like him, in order to fulfil in it his will, — the good of everything in existence. IX. THE CONFIRMATION OF THE TRUTH OF THE CHRIS- TIAN CONCEPT OF LIFE BY THE EXTERNAL CONFIR- MATION OF GOD. 37. God is manifested in rational man as the desire for the good for everything in existence, and in the THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 373 world, iu separate beings, each of which is striving after its good. 38. Though it is not known, and cannot be known, to man why it was necessary for the one spiritual being, God, to manifest himself in rational man as the desire for the good for everything in existence and in the sepa- rate beings as the desire for the good for each one in particular, man cannot help but see that both reduce themselves to one nearest, definite, accessible, and joyous aim for man. 39. This aim is revealed to man through observation, and tradition, and reflection. Observation shows that all motion in the lives of men — in so far as it is known to them — consists only in this, that formerly divided and mutually hostile beings and men are more and more being united and bound with one another in concord and inter- action. Tradition shows man that all the sages of the world have taught humanity must from division pass to union, that, as the prophet says, all men are to be taught by God, and that the spears and swords are to be forged into pruning-hooks and ploughshares, and that, as Christ said, all shall be united, as I am one with my Father. Keflection shows man that the greatest good of men, toward which all men strive, can be attained only with the greatest union and concord of men. 40. And so, although the final end of the life of the world is concealed from man, he none the less knows wherein consists the nearest work of the life of the world, in which he is called to take a part : this work is the sub- stitution of union and concord for division and discord. 41. Observation, tradition, reason show man that in this consists God's work, in which he is called to take part, and the inner striving of the spiritual being which is being born iu him draws him toward the same. ■ 42. The inner striving of the spiritual being which is being born in man is only this : the increase of love in 374 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING himself. And it is this increase of love which alone cooperates with the work that is being done in the world, — the substitution of union and concord for disunion and struggle, — what in the Christian teaching is called the establishment of the kingdom of God. 43. So, if there could even be any doubt as to the truth of the Christian definition of the meaning of life, the coincidence of man's inner striving, according to the Christian teaching, with the course of the whole world's life, would confirm this truth. X. IN WHAT DOES THE LIFE IN THIS WORLD, AS RE- VEALED TO MAN BY THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING, CON- SIST ? 44. Being born into the new life, man is conscious that in his existence, which is separate from all other beings, there is contained the desire for the good, not for himself alone, but also for everything in existence, — love. 45. If this desire for the good for everything in exist- ence, this love, were not found in the separate being, it would not know of itself, and would remain always equal to itself : but being qontained within the hmits of the separate being, man, it recognizes itself and its limits, and strives to tear asunder what binds it. 46. From its property, love, the desire for the good, strives to embrace everything in existence. Naturally, it expands its limits through love, — at first to the family, to wife and children, then to friends and countrymen ; but love is not satisfied with this, and strives to embrace every- thing in existence. 47. In this unceasing expansion of the limits of the sphere of love which forms the essence of the birth of the spiritual being, is contained the essence of man's true life in this world. Man's whole sojourn in this world, from birth until death, is nothing but the birth in him of THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 37-5 the spiritual being. This unceasing birth is what in the Christian teaching is called the true life. 48. We may imagine that what forms our body, which now presents itself as a separate being, which we love preferably above all other beings, in its former, lower life was only a collection of beloved objects, which love united into one in such a way that in this Kfe we feel it as our own self ; and that similarly our present love for what is accessible to us will in the future life form one indivisible whole, which will be as near to us as now our body is (in your Father's house are many mansions). XI. IN WHAT WAY DOES THE TRUE LIFE, AS KEVEALED BY THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING, DIFFER FROM THE PREVIOUS LIFE ? 49. The difference between the personal life and the true life consists in this, that the aim of the personal life consists in the increase of the enjoyments of the external life and its continuation, and this aim, in spite of all efforts, will never be attained, because man has no power over ex- ternal conditions, which interfere with enjoyment, or over all kinds of miseries, which may beset one at any time ; but the aim of the true life, which consists in the expan- sion of the sphere of love and its increase, cannot be inter- fered with in any way, since all external causes, such as violence, diseases, sufferings, which interfere with the attainment of the aims of the personal life, contribute to the attainment of the aim of the spiritual life, 50. The difference is the same as between the labourers who, having been sent to the master's vineyard, as it says in the Gospel parable, decided that the vineyard belonged to them, and those who recognize themselves as labourers, and do what the master has commanded them. PART THE SECOND OF SINS XII. WHAT HINDEKS MAN FROM LIVING THE TRUE LIFE? 51. In order to fulfil his mission man must increase love in himself and manifest it in the world, — and this increase of love and its manifestation in the world is what is needed for the accomplishment of God's work. But what can man do for the manifestation of love ? 52. The basis of man's life is the desire for the good for everything in existence. Love in man is contained within the limits of the separate being, and so naturally tends to expand its limits ; consequently man has nothing to do in order to manifest love in himself : it strives itself after its manifestation, and man needs but remove the obstacles to its progress. In what, then, do these obstacles consist ? 53. The obstacles which hinder man from manifesting love are contained in man's body, in his separation from other beings ; in this, that, beginning his life with baby- hood, during which time he lives only the animal life of his separate existence, he even later on, when reason is awakened in him, can never fully renounce the striving after the good for his separate existence, and so commits acts which are contrary to love. XIII. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE OBSTACLES TO THE MANIFESTATION OF LOVE 54. The desire for the good for everything in existence, — love, — striving after its manifestation, encounters ob- 377 378 THE ClIEISTIAN TEACHING stacles to this manifestation iii tliis, that man's reason, which sets love free, does not awaken in man at his appearance in the world, but after a certain time, when he has already acquired certain habits of the animal life. Why so ? 55. Man cannot help asking himself this : Why is the spiritual being, love, enclosed in man's separate being ? And to this question various teachings have replied vari- ously. Some, the pessimistic, answer by saying that the shutting up of the spiritual being in man's body is a mistake which has to be corrected by the destruction of the body, by the destruction of the animal hfe. Other teachings answer by saying that the assumption of the existence of a spiritual being is a mistake which has to be corrected by recognizing only the body and its laws as actually existing. Neither teaching solves the contra- diction ; they only fail to recognize, one — the legality of the body, the other — the legality of the spirit. It is only the Christian teaching that solves it. 56. In reply to the advice given by the tempter to Christ to destroy his life, if it is not possible for him according to his will to satisfy all the demands of his animal nature, Christ says that it is not right for us to oppose the will of God, who sent us into the world in the form of separate beings, but that in this hfe of the separate being we must serve one God only. 57. According to the Christian teaching, it is necessary for the solution of the contradiction of life not to destroy the life of the separate being itself, which would be con- trary to the will of God who sent it, and not to submit to the demands of the animal life of each separate being, which would be contrary to the spiritual principle form- ing man's true ego, but it is necessary for me to serve the one God in the body in which this true human ego is enclosed. 58. Man's true ego is the infinite love which forms the THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 379 basis of his life, and which lives in him and constantly strives to be increased. This love is contained within the limits of the animal life of the separate being, and always strives to be liberated from it. 59. In this liberation of the spiritual being from the animal personality, in this birth of the spiritual being hes the true life of each separate man and of all humanity. 60. Love in each separate man and in humanity is hke steam which is compressed in a boiler: the steam, striving to expand, pushes the pistons and produces work. Just as there have to be the obstacles of the walls, in order that the steam may do its work, so love, to produce its work, must have the obstacle of the limits of the separate being in which it is contained. XIV. WHAT MUST MAN NOT DO, IN ORDER THAT HE MAY LIVE THE TRUE LIFE ? 61. During his infancy, childhood, and sometimes even later, man lives as an animal, doing God's will, which is cognized by him as the desire for the good for his separate being, and knows no other Hfe. 62. Awakening to the rational consciousness, man, though knowing that his life is in the spiritual existence, continues to feel himself in the separate body, and, from his acquired habit of the animal life, commits acts which have for their aim the good of the separate personality and which are contrary to love. 63. Acting in this way, man deprives himself of the good of the true life and does not attain that aim of the good of the separate existence toward which he is striving, and so, acting thus, he commits sins. In these sins are contained the inherent obstacles to the manifesta- tion of love in man. 64. These obstacles are increased by this, that men o 80 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING who lived before and committed sins transmit the habits and manners of their sins to future generations. 65. Thus every man, both because in his childhood he acquired the habit of the personal hfe of the separate being, and because these habits of the personal life are transmitted to him by tradition from his ancestors, is always subject to sins which interfere with the manifesta- tion of love. XV. THREE KINDS OF SIN 66. There are three kinds of sins which impede love : (a) sins which arise from the ineradicable tendency of man, while he is living in the body, toward the good of his personality, — inborn, natural sins ; (b) sins which arise from the tradition of human institutions and cus- toms, which are directed to the increase of the good of separate persons, — inherited, social sins ; and (c) sins which arise from the tendency of the separate man toward a greater and greater increase of the good of his separate being, — personal, invented sins. 67. Inborn sins consist in this, that men assume the good to lie in the preservation and increase of the animal good of one's own personality. Every activity which is directed to the increase of the animal good of one's own personality is such an inborn sin. 68. Inherited sins are sins which are committed by people when making use of the existing methods for the increase of the good of the separate personality, as estab- lished by men who lived before them. Every use of institutions and customs established for the good of one's personality is such an inherited sin. 69. Personal invented sins are such as people commit, inventing, besides the inherited methods, new means for the increase of the good of their separate personality. Every newly invented means for the increase of the good of one's separate being is a personal sin. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 381 XVI. THE DIVISION OF THE SINS 70. There are six sins which impede the manifestation of love in men. 71. The sin of lust, which consists in preparing for oneself pleasures from the gratification of necessities. 72. The sin of idleness, which consists in freeing one- self from labour necessary for the gratification of neces- sities. 73. The sin of greed, which consists in preparing for oneself the possibility of the gi-atification of one's necessi- ties in the future. 74. The sin of the love of power, which consists in subjecting one's like to oneself. 75. The sin of fornication, which consists in preparing for oneself enjoyments from the gratification of the sexiial passion. 76. The sin of intoxication, which consists in producing an artificial excitation of one's bodily and mental forces. XVII. THE SIN OF LUST 77. Man has to satisfy his bodily needs, and in the unconscious state he, like any animal, fully satisfies them without restraining or intensifying them, and in this gratification of his need he finds his good. 78. But having awakened to a rational consciousness, it appears to man at first that the good of his separate being is contained in the gratification of his needs, and he invents means for the increase of enjoyment from the gratification of his needs, and tries to maintain the means, invented by men who hved before, for an agreeable grati- fication of needs, and himself invents new, still more agreeable means for their gratification. In this consists the sin of lust. 79. When a man eats, without being hungry, when he 382 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING dresses himself, not iu order to defend himself against the cold, or builds a house, not in order to seek shelter in it from bad weather, but in order to increase the pleasure from the gratification of needs, he commits the inborn sin of lust. 80. But when a man is born and brought up in habits of superabundance in drink, food, raiment, habitation, and continues to use his superabundance, maintaining his habits, he commits the inherited sin of lust. 81. And when a man, living in luxury, invents still more new and agreeable means for the gratification of needs, such as are not employed by men around him, and in the place of his former simple food and drink introdr.ces new, more refined ones, and in the place of his former raiment which covered his body provides himself with new, more beautiful garments, and instead of the former small, simple house builds himself a new one, with now adornments, and so forth, — he commits the personal sin of lust. 82. The sin of lust, whether inborn or inherited or per- sonal, consists in this, that, striving after the good of his separate being, by means of the gratification of his needs, man, by intensifying these needs, impedes his birth to the new spiritual hfe. 83. Besides, the man who acts thus does not attain the aim toward which he is striving, because every intensifi- cation of his needs makes less probable the possibility of the gratification of lust and weakens the enjoyment from the gratification itself. The more frequently a man quenches his thirst, the more refined the food used by him is, the less enjoyment will he get from his eating. The same is true in relation to the gratification of all other animal needs. XVIII. THE SIN OF IDLENESS 84. A man, like an animal, must exercise his strength. This strength is naturally directed to the preparation of TUE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 383 objects necessary for the gratification of his needs. After the labour directed upon this, man, like any animal, needs rest. 85. In his unconscious state man, like an animal, while preparing for himself objects that are necessary for life, alternates labour with rest, and in this natural rest finds his good. 86. But having awakened to a rational consciousness, man separates the labour from the rest and, finding his rest more agreeable, tries to diminish his labour and to prolong his rest, compelling, through force or cunning, other people to serve his needs. In this consists the sin of idleness. 87. When a man, employing the labours of others, rests when he is still able to work, he commits the inborn sin of idleness. 88. But when a man is born and lives in such a state that he makes use of the labours of otlier men, without being put to the necessity of working himself, and main- tains such an order of things, without working, making use of the labours of others, he commits the inherited sin of idleness. 89. But when a man, having been born and living among men who are accustomed without labour to exploit the work of other men, himself invents means for freeing himself from labours which he formerly performed him- self, and imposes this work upon others ; when a man, who used to clean his own clothes, makes another person do it, or who used to write letters himself, or kept his own accounts or himself attended to his affairs, makes others do all this, and himself uses his free time for rest or amusement, he commits the personal sin of idle- ness. 90. The fact that each man cannot do everything for himself, and tliat the division of labour frequently perfects and hghtens labour, cannot serve as a justification of the 384 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING liberation of oneself from labour in general or from hard labour, by substituting what is easy for it. Every pro- duction of labour which man employs demands from him a corresponding labour, and not a lightening of his labour or a complete liberation from it. 91. The sin of idleness, whether inborn, or inherited, or personrJ, consists in this, that, by stopping his labour and exploiting the labour of others, man does what is contrary to what he is destined to do, since the true good is acquired only through the activity of service. 92. Besides, a man who acts like this does not even attain what he is striving after, since the enjoyment from rest is obtained only after work. And the less work there is, the less there are enjoyments of rest. XIX. THE SIN OF GREED 93. The position of a man in the world is such that his bodily existence is made secure by general laws, to which man is subject together with all animals. Surren- dering himself to his instinct, man must v/ork, and the natural aim of liis work is the gratification of needs, and this work always secures his existence with a surplus. Man is a social being, and the fruits of his work accumu- late so much in society that, if there were not the sin of greed, every man who cannot work could always have what he needs for the gratification of his needs. And so the Gospel utterance about not taking any thought of the morrow, but hving as the fowls of the air, is not a meta- phor, but the assertion of an existing law of every animal social life. Even so it says in the Koran that there is not one animal in the world to whom God does not give sustenance. 94. But man, even after his awakening to rational consciousness, continues to imagine that his life consists in the good of his separate being, and since this being THE CllKISTIAN TEACHING 385 lives in time, man cares for the special security of the gratification of his needs in this future for himseK and for his family. 95. But the special security in the future of the gratifi- cation of needs for himself and for his family is possible only by withholding from other people the objects of the needs, what is called property. And it is to the acquisi- tion, retention, and increase of property that man directs his forces. In this consists the sin of greed. 96. When a man regards the food prepared or received by him for the morrow, or the raiment, or the cow for the winter for himself or for his family as exclusively his own, he commits the inborn crime of greed. 97. But when man with awakened consciousness finds himself under such conditions that he considers certain objects as exclusively his own, although these objects are not needed for the security of his life, and withholds these objects from others, he commits the inherited sin of greed. 98. And when man, who already has the objects which he wants for the security of his needs in his future and in the future of his family, and owns objects which are superfluous for the support of his life, keeps acquiring new objects, and withholds them from others, he commits the personal sin of greed. 99. The sin of greed, whether inborn, or inherited, or personal, consists in this, that, trying to secure in the future the good of his separate being, and so acquiring objects and withholding them from others, man does what is contrary to what he is destined for ; instead of serving men, he takes from them what is needed. 100. Besides, a man who acts thus never attains the aim toward which he is striving, since the future is not in man's power, and man may die at any moment. But by wasting on the unknown and the possibly unreahzable future, he obviously commits an error. 386 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING XX. THE SIN OF LOVE OF POWER 101. Man, like the animal, is placed under such con- ditions that every gratification of his needs causes him to enter into a struggle with other beings. 102. Man's animal hfe is sustained only at the cost of other beings. Struggle is the natural property and law of the animal life. And man, hving an animal life previous to the awakening of consciousness in him, finds the good in this struggle. 103. But when in man there awakens the rational consciousness, it appears to him during the first of this awakening that his good is increased if he vanquishes and conquers as many beings as possible, and he uses his strength for the subjugation of men and beings. In this consists the sin of the love of power. 104. When man, in order to defend his personal good, considers it necessary to struggle, and struggles against those people and beings who want to subjugate him, he commits the inborn sin of the love of power. 105. But when man is born and brought up under certain conditions of power, whether he be born a son of a king, a nobleman, a merchant, or a rich peasant, and, remaining in this position, does not put a stop to this struggle, which is at times imperceptible, but always necessary for the maintenance of one's position, he com- mits the inherited sin of the love of power. 106. And when man, finding himself in certain con- stant conditions of struggle, and wishing to increase his good, does enter also into new conflicts with men and other beings, wishing to increase his power ; when he attacks his neighbour, in order to take possession of his property, his lands, or tries, by obtaining rights, a diploma, a rank, to occupy a higher position than he is occupying, or, wishing to increase his estate, enters into a struggle with his rivals and labourers, or enters into a struggle with THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 387 other nations, he commits the personal sin of the love of power. 107. The sin of love of power, whether inborn, or inherited, or personal, consists in this, that, using his strength for the attainment of the good of his separate being by means of struggle, man does what is directly opposed to what is proper to the true life. Instead of increasing love in himself, that is, of destroying the barriers which separate him from other beings, he in- creases them. 108. Besides, by entering into a struggle with men and beings, man obtains the very opposite to what he is striving after. By entering into the struggle, he increases the probability that other beings will attack him, and that, instead of subjugating other beings, he will be vanquished by them. The more a man is successful in the struggle, the more tension is demanded of him in this struggle. XXI. THE SIN OF FORNICATION 109. In man is implanted the need for preserving the species, — the sexual need, and man in his animal state, in surrendering liimself to it, and cohabiting, thus fulfils his destiny, and in this fulfilment of his destiny finds his good. 110. But with the awakening of consciousness, man imagines that the gratification of this need may increase the good of his separate being, and he enters into sexual intercourse, not for the purpose of continuing the race, but of increasing his personal good. In this consists the sin of fornication. 111. The sin of fornication differs from all other sins in this, that while with all other sins a full continence from inborn sin is impossible, and only a diminution of the inborn sin is possible, in the sin of fornication a full continence from sin is possible. This is due to the fact 388 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING that complete abstinence from the gratification of the needs of personality, from food, raiment, shelter, destroys the personality itself, just as the personality is destroyed by the absence of all rest, of all property, and of all struggle, but the continence from the sexual need — chastity, of one or of several — does not destroy the human race, what the sexual need is to support, since the continence of one, of several, and of many men from sexual intercourse does not destroy the human race. Thus the gratification of the sexual need is not obligatory for all men : to each individual man is given the possi- bility of continence from this need. 112. Man is, as it were, presented with the choice of two ways of serving God : either, remaining free from the marital life and its consequences, with his life to perform in this world everything man is destined by God to fulfil, or, having recognized his weakness, to transmit part of the fulfilment, or, at least, the possibility of the fulfilment of what is unfulfilled, to his begotten, nurtured, and reared posterity. 113. From this peculiarity of the sexual need, which is distinct from all the rest, there result two different degrees of the sin of fornication, according to which of the two destinations man chooses for himself. 114. With the first destination, when man wants, remaining chaste, to devote all his strength to the service of God, every sexual intercourse will be a sin of fornica- tion, even though it have for its aim the begetting and bringing up of children ; the purest and chastest marriage will be such an inborn sin for the man who has chosen the destination of virginity. 115. An inherited sin for such a man will be every continuation of such sexual relations, even though in marriage, which have for their aim the begetting and bringing up of children ; a liberation from the inherited sin will for such a man be the cessation of sexual intercourse. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 389 116. A personal, invented sin for such a man will be the entrance into sexual relation with another person than the one to whom he is married. 117. In choosing as his destination the service of God through the continuation of the race, man's inborn sin will consist in every sexual intercourse which has not the continuation of the race for its aim, as is the case in prostitution, accidental unions, and in marriages contracted from calculation, connections, and love. 118. An inherited sin for a man who has chosen as his destination the continuation of the race will be a sexual intercourse from which no children can be born, or in cases where the parents cannot or do not wish to bring up the children who are born from their union. 119. But when a person, having chosen the second destination of serving the continuatiou of the race, be it a man or a woman, who is already in sexual intercourse with one person, enters into such an intercourse with other persons, not for the production of a family, but for the increase of enjoyment from sexual intercourse, or tries to prevent childbirth^ or abandons himself to unnatural vices, he commits the personal sin of fornication. 120. Sin, that is, the error of fornication, for a man who has chosen the destination of virginity, consists in this, that man, who might have chosen a higher destina- tion and used all his forces in the service of God, and consequently for the continuation of love and the attain- ment of the highest good, descends to a lower stage of life and is deprived of this good. 121. And for a man who has chosen the destination of the continuation of the race, the sin, the error, of fornication consists in this, that, depriving themselves of the begetting of children, or, at least, of domestic communion, people deprive themselves of the highest good of the sexual life. 122. Besides, people who try to increase the good from 390 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING the sexual intercourse, as in all the gratifications of needs, diminish the natural enjoyment in proportion as they abandon themselves to this lust. XXII. THE SIN OF INTOXICATION 123. In his natural state it is proper for man, as for any animal, to arrive through external causes at a condi- tion of excitation, and this temporary excitation gives the good to a man who is in this animal condition. 124. But having awakened to consciousness, man no- tices the causes that lead him to this condition of excita- tion, and tries to reproduce and intensify these causes, for the purpose of evoking this condition in himself ; and for this purpose he prepares for himself and takes into his stomach or inhales substances which produce this excita- tion, or creates for himself the surroundings, or makes those peculiar intensified motions, which bring him into that state. In this does the sin of intoxication consist. 125. The peculiarity of this sin consists in this, that while all those sins only distract the- man born to the new life from the activity which is proper to him, by in- creasing in him his tendency to prolong his animal life, and do not weaken or impair the activity of reason, the sin of intoxication not only weakens the activity of the mind, but for a time, and often for all times, destroys it ? so that a man who gets himself into an excited state through smoking, wine, certain solemn surroundings, or intensified motions, as the dervishes and other religious fanatics do, under these conditions frequently not only performs acts which are proper to animals, but even such as, by their madness and cruelty, are not proper to animals. 126. The natural inborn sin of intoxication consists in this, that, having received pleasure from a certain condi- tion of excitation, whether it be produced by food or THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 391 drink, surroundings which affect vision or hearing, or by- certain motions, a man does not abstain from that which produces this intoxication. When a man, without notic- ing it himseK, excites himself without intention, eats sweetmeats, drinks tea, kvas, or mash, adorns himself or his habitation, or dances, or plays, he commits the inborn, natural sin of intoxication. 127. But when a man is born and brought up in cer- tain habits of intoxication, in the habits of the use of tobacco, wine, opium, in habits of solemn spectacles, — public, domestic, ecclesiastic, — or in the habits of cer- tain kinds of motions, gymnastics, dancing, obeisances, leaps, and so forth, and keeps up these habits, he commits the inherited sin of intoxication. 128. And when a man is brought up in certain habits of periodic intoxication, and is used to them, and, by imi- tation of others or through his own invention, introduces new methods of intoxication, — after tobacco begins to smoke opium, after wine drinks whiskey, introduces new festive celebrations with a new intensified effect of pic- tures, dances, light, music, or introduces new methods of exciting bodily motions, of gymnastics, of bicycle riding, and so forth, he commits the personal sin of intoxica- tion. 129. The sin of intoxication, whether inborn, or in- herited, or personal, consists in this, that a man, instead of using all the power of his attention in removing every^- thing which may bedim his consciousness, that reveals to him the meaning of his true life, tries, on the contrary, to weaken and to shroud this consciousness with external means of excitation, 130. Besides, a man who acts in this manner attains the opposite to what he has been striving after. The excitation which is produced by external means weakens with every new method of excitation and, in spite of the intensification of the methods of excitation, which 392 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING destroys health, the abiHty of the excitation grows weaker and weaker. XXIII. THE CONSEQUENCES OF SINS ' 131. Sins serve as an impediment to the manifestation of love. 132. But not only do sins serve as an impediment in the manifestation of love ; they also produce in men the greatest calamities. The calamities produced by sins are of two kinds : one class of calamities are those from which men suffer who are subject to sin ; the others are those from which others suffer. The calamities which befall those who commit sins are : effeminacy, satiety, tedium, despondency, apathy, care, terror, suspicion, malice, envy, fury, jealousy, impotence, and all kinds of agonizing diseases. The calamities from which others suffer are : thieving, robbery, torture, riots, murder. 133. If there were no sins, there would be no poverty, nor satiety, nor dissipation, nor thieving, nor robbery, nor murder, nor executions, nor wars. 134. If there were no sin of lust, there would be no want on the part of the dispossessed, no tedium and no fear on the part of those who live luxuriously, no use- less loss of force for the safeguarding of the pleasures of those who live luxuriously, no debasement of the spiritual forces of the needy, no constant, concealed struggle be- tween both, which begets envy and hatred in the one class, and contempt and terror in the other ; and this enmity would not from time to time break forth in violence, murders, and revolutions. 135. If there were no sin of idleness, there would not be, on the one side, any men who are exhausted from work, and on the other, men who are distorted through inaction and constant amusements ; there would be no division of men into two inimical camps, of men filled THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 393 to satiety and of the hungry, of the idle and of those who are worn out by work. 136. If there were no sin of ownership, there would not be all those acts of violence which are committed by one class of men on the other for the purpose of acquir- ing and retaining objects ; there would be no thieving, robbery, incarceration, exile, hard labour, and executions. 137. If there were no sin of power, there would be none of those enormous, useless wastes of human force in vanquishing one another and for the support of power ; there would be no pride and no dulling of the victors, and no flattery, deceit, and hatred of the conquered ; there would be no divisions of family, classes, nations, and the dis- putes, quarrels, murders, and wars, which result from them. 138. If there were no sin of fornication, there would be no slavery of woman, no torture of woman, and, at the same time, no spoiling and no corruption of her ; there would be no disputes, quarrels, murders from jealousy, no reduction of woman to the level of an instrument of the gratification of the flesh, no prostitution ; there would be no unnatural vices ; there would be no weakening of bodily and spiritual forces, none of those terrible diseases, from which men suffer now ; there would be no waifs and no infanticide. 139. If there were no intoxication by means of to- bacco, wine, opium, exciting intensified motions, and festivities, there would be no dissipation of men in sins. There would not be one hundredth part of the disputes, quarrels, robberies, acts of lust, murders, which take place now, especially under the influence of the weakening of men's spiritual forces ; there would not be that useless waste of energy, not only on unnecessary, but on directly harmful acts : there would not be any dulling and dis- figurement of men, often the best, who pass through life without being of any use for others, and a burden to themselves. PART THE THIRD OF OFFENCES XXIV. THE OFFENCES 140. The pernicious consequences of sins for the sepa- rate individuals who commit them, as also for the society of men, among whom the sins are committed, are so obvious that from remotest antiquity men have seen the calamities which arise from them, and have issued laws against the sins and have punished them : there was a prohibition against steaUng, killing, committing debauch, slandering, getting drunk, but in spite of the prohibition and the punishments, men have continued to sin, ruining their own lives and those of their nearest friends. 141. This is due to the fact that for the justification of the sins there exist false reflections, from which it follows that there are certain exclusive circumstances according to which sins are not only venial, but also nec- essary. These false justifications are what is called the offences. 142. Offence is in Greek a-KcivhaXov, which means noose, trap. Indeed, an offence is a trap into which a man is enticed by the similitude of the good, and, having fallen into it, he perishes in it. For this reason it says in the Gospel that the offences must enter into the world, but woe to the world from the offences, and woe to him through whom they enter. 143. It is because of these offences of the false justifi- 395 396 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING cations of the sins that men do not mend from their sins, but continue to sink in them and, what is worse than anything, educate their young generations in them. XXV. THE OEIGIN OF THE OFFENCES 144. The birth of man to the new life does not take place at once, but gradually, just hke carnal birth : the efforts of birth alternate with arrests and returns to the former condition, and the manifestations of the spiritual life — with the manifestations of the animal life ; man now abandons himself to the service of God and in this service sees the good, and now returns to the personal hfe and seeks the good of his separate being and commits sins. 145. Having committed these sins, man recognizes the non-correspondence of the act with the demands of his conscience. So long as man only wishes to commit a sin, this non-correspondence is not completely clear ; but as soon as the sin is committed, the non-correspondence is made obvious, and man wishes to destroy it. 146. The non-correspondence of the act and the posi- tion into which man enters in consequence of sin may be destroyed only by using reason for the justification of the act committed and the position. 147. The contradiction of the sin with the demands of the spiritual life can be justified only by explaining the sin by the demands of the spiritual life. This is pre- cisely what men do, and this mental activity ^is that which is called an offence. 148. Ever since there has appeared in men the con- sciousness of the contradiction between their animal and their spiritual life, ever since men began to commit sins, they began to invent their justification, that is, offences, and so there have established themselves among men THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 397 traditions of ever the same justifications of sins, that is, of offences, so that a man does not need to invent his own justifications for his sins, — they were invented before him, and he needs only accept ready, established offences. XXVI. THE DIVISION OF THE OFFENCES 149. There are five offences which ruin men : the per- sonal offence, or the offence of preparation ; the family offence, or the offence of the continuation of the race; the offence of work, affairs, or of profit ; the offence of companionship, or of loyalty ; the offence of state, or of the common good. 150. The personal offence, or the offence of prepara- tion, consists in this, that a man, committing a sin, jus- tifies himself by saying that he is preparing himself for an activity which in the future is to be useful to men. 151. The family offence, or the offence of the continua- tion of the race, consists in this, that man, commit- ting sins, justifies them as being for the good of his children. 152. The offence of work, affairs, or of profit, consists in this, that a man justifies his sins by the necessity of conducting and finishing an affair which he has begun and which is useful for men. 153. The offence of companionship, or of loyalty, con- sists in this, that man justifies his sins as being for the good of those men with whom he has entered into exclu- sive relations. 154. The offence of state, or of the common good, con- sists in this, that men justify the sins committed by them as being for the good of many men, of the nation, of humanity. This is the offence which is expressed by Caiaphas, who demanded the killing of Christ in the name of the good of many. 398 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING XXVII. THE PEKSONAL OFFENCE, OR THE OFFENCE OF PREPARATION 155. "I know that the meaning of ray life is in serv- ing not myself, but God or men ; but, in order that my serving of men may be successful," says the man who has fallen into this offence, " I can admit some departures from the demands of my conscience, if they are necessary for my perfection, which is preparing me for my future activ- ity that is useful to men ; I must first study, must first serve the term of my office, must first improve my health, must first get married, must first secure the means of my life in the future, and before I attain this, I cannot fully follow the demands of my conscience, and when I have finished it, I shall begin to live exactly as my conscience demands." 156. Having recognized the necessity of caring for his personal life for the more real service of men and the consequent manifestation of love, man serves liis per- sonality, committing sins of lust, and of idleness, and of property, and of power, and of debauchery even, and of intoxication, without considering those sins important because he permits them to himself but for a time, for that time when all his forces are directed upon the prep- aration of himself for the active service of men. 157. Having begun to serve his personality, preserving, intensifying, and perfecting it, man naturally forgets the aim for which he is doing it, and gives his best years, and frequently his whole life, to such a preparation for service, which never arrives. 158. In the meantime the sins which he permits him- self for the sake of the beneficent aim, become more and more habitual, and, instead of the proposed useful activity for men, man passes all his life in sins, which ruin his own life and offend others and do them harm. In this lies the offence of preparation. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 399 XXVIII. THE OFFENCE OF FAMILY, OR OF THE CONTINU- ATION OF THE RACE 159. On entering into a family union, people, especially women, are prone to think that their love to their family, to their children, is precisely that which their rational consciousness asks of them, and that therefore, if in their family life they have to commit sins for the gratification of the needs of their family, these sins are venial. 160. Having come to recognize this, such people con- sider it possible in the name of the love of their family not only to free themselves from the demands of justice toward other men, but also, with the assurance that they are doing right, to commit the greatest cruelties against others for the good of their children. 161. " If I had no wife, no husband, or no child," say people who have fallen into this offence, " I should be liv- ing quite differently and should not be committing these sins ; but now, in order to bring up my children, I cannot live otherwise. If we did not hve thus, if we did not commit any sins, the human race could not be con- tinued." 162. And, having made such a reflection, the man calmly takes away men's labour, compels them to labour to the disadvantage of their lives, takes away the land from people, and — the most striking example — takes away the milk from the child, in order that the child's mother may nurse his babe, and does not see the evil which he is doing. In this consists the offence of family, or of the continuation of the race. XXIX. THE OFFENCE OF AFFAIRS 163. From the property of his nature, man must exer- cise his mental and bodily powers, and for their exercise he chooses some work. 400 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 164. But every work demands certain acts at a certain time, so that if these acts are not performed at the given time, the work which is useful to men is destroyed, with- out being of any use to any one. 165. "I have to finish ploughing the field with the seed sowed in it. If 1 do not do it, the seed and the work will be lost, without being of any use to any one. I must finish a certain work by a given time ; if I do not finish it, the work which might have been useful will be lost for nothing. My factory is running ; it is producing articles which are indispensable to men, and it gives the chance to work to tens of thousands of people ; if I interrupt the work, the articles will not be manufactured, and the people will be deprived of work," say the men who have fallen into this offence. 166. And having made this reflection, a man not only does not abandon the unfinished ploughing, in order to pull his neighbour's horse out of the bog, not only does not give up his work which is set for a certain time, in order to sit a day at the bed of a patient, not only does not stop his factory, in which work ruins the health of men, but is ready to take advantage of his neighbour's misfortune, in order to finish ploughing his field, is ready to take a man away from attending on a patient, in order to be sure to finish his work by a given time, is ready to ruin the health of several generations, in order that he may produce well-manufactured articles. In this does the offence of affairs, or of profit, consist. XXX. THE OFFENCE OF ASSOCIATION 167. Placing themselves accidentally or artificially under certain identical conditions, men are prone to segre- gate themselves with the men who are under the same conditions, from all other men, and to consider them- selves obliged, for the purpose of safeguarding the ad- THE CURISTIAN TEACHING 401 vantages of these men who are placed under the exclusive conditions, to depart from the demands of their reason, and not only to prefer these advantages of their own to those of others, but also to do evil to men, merely so as not to impair their loyalty to their own people. 168. " Men do obviously a bad deed, but they are our associates, and so we must conceal and justify their bad deed. What is proposed for me to do is bad and senseless, but all my associates have decided to do so, and I cannot fall behind them. For strangers this may be suffering, a misfortune, but it will be agreeable for us and for our association, and so we must act thus." 169. There are all kinds of such associations. Such is the association of two murderers or thieves, who are going out to do their work and consider their loyalty to their associates more obligatory for the performance of the deed which they have undertaken than the loyalty to their conscience, which condemns their undertaking ; such is the association of pupils of educational institutions, work- men's societies, regiments, scholars, clergymen, kings, nationalities. 170. All these men consider the loyalty to the institu- tion of their association more obligatory than the loyalty to the demands of their conscience in relation to all other men. In this does the offence of association, or loyalty, consist. 171. The peculiarity of this offence consists in this, that in its name are committed the most savage and insensible of acts, such as the masquerading in special, strange garments and ascribing to these garments a spe- cial significance, and acts of poisoning oneself by means of wine or beer, and very frequently terribly cruel acts, such as fights, duels, murders, and so forth, in the name of this very offence which provokes the enmity of one class of associations against another- 402 • THE CHKISTIAN TEACHING XXXI. THE OFFENCE OF STATE 172. Men live in a certain social order, and this order, like everything else in the world, changes continually in proportion as the consciousness grows in men. 173. But men, especially those for whom the existing order is more advantageous than for others (and the exist- ing order is always more advantageous to some than to others), think that the existing order is good for all men, and so, in order to maintain this good for all men, not only consider it possible to violate love in respect to some men, but also think it just and good to commit the greatest malefactions in order to maintain this existing order. 174. Men established the right of property, and some own land and the instruments of labour, while others have neither. This unjust possession of the land and the in- struments of labour by certain idle people is regarded as that order which must be protected, and for the sake of which it is considered right and good to lock up and punish people who violate this order. Similarly, in view of the danger that a neighbouring people or potentate may attack our nation and conquer and destroy and cliange the established order, it is considered right and good, not only to cooperate with the establishment of the army, but also to be ready oneself to murder people of another nation and to proceed against them, in order to kill them. 175. The peculiarity of this offence is this, that, while in the name of those four first offences men depart from the demands of their conscience and commit separate bad acts, in the name of this offence of state there are com- mitted the most terrible mass malefactions, such as exe- cutions and wars, and there are supported the most cruel crimes against the majority, like slavery in former times, and the present dispossession of the workingmau's land. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 403 Men would not be able to commit these evil deeds, if there were not invented methods by means of which the responsibility for the commission of these crimes is so distributed among men that no one feels its burden. 176. The method of the distribution of this responsi- bility in such a way that no one may feel the burden consists iu this, that men recognize the necessity of power which for the good of subject men must prescribe these malefactions ; but the subjects are obliged to fulfil the prescriptions of the power for the good of all. 177. "I am very sorry to be obliged to prescribe the seizure of the products of labour, incarceration, exile, hard labour, execution, war, that is, mass murder, but I am obliged to do so, because this is demanded of me by the men who have vested me with power," say the men who are in power. " If I take away men's property, detach them from their families, lock them up, send them into exile, have them executed, if I kill men of another nation, ruin them, shoot into cities upon women and children, I do not do so upon my own responsibihty, but because I am doing the will of the higher power whom I have promised to obey for the common good." In this does the offence of state, or of the common good, consist. XXXII. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE OFFENCES 178. Sins are consequences of habits (mertia, animal life). Animal hfe running at full speed cannot stop, even when reason has wakened in man, and he understands the senselessness of the animal life. Man knows that the animal life is senseless and cannot do him any good, but from old habit he seeks a meaning and the srood in the joys of the animal life, — the gratification of com- plex artificial needs, in constant rest, in the increase of property, in dominion, in dissipation, in intoxication, 404 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING and uses his reason for the purpose of attaining these ends. 179. But the sins punish themselves : very soon a man feels that the good which he is trying to find on this path is not accessible to him, and the sin loses its attrac- tiveness. Thus, if there did not exist any justifications of sins, — offences, — men would not abide in sins, and would not carry them to the limit to which they have been carried. 180. If there were no offences of preparation, no of- fences of family, no offence of affairs, no offence of state, not a man, not even the most cruel one, would be able among needy men dying in want to make use of that superabundance which now the rich enjoy; the rich would not be able to arrive at that condition of complete physical idleness, in which, experiencing ennui, they now pass their life, compelling frequently the old, the very young, the sick to perform the labour which they need. If there were no offences which justify property, men could not senselessly and aimlessly waste all the forces of their lives for a greater and ever greater acquisition of property, which cannot be made use of, and people who suffer from struggle would not be able to provoke it in others. If there were no offence of association, there would not be even one-hundredth part of that corruption which now exists : people would not be able so obviously and senselessly to ruin their bodily and their mental forces by means of intoxicating substances, which neither increase nor diminish their energy. 181. From the human sins come the poverty of some and their crushed condition through labour, and the satiety and the idleness of others; from the sins come the inequality of possessions, struggle, quarrels, lawsuits, punishments, wars ; from the sins come the calamities of men's debauch and brutalization ; but from the offences comes the establishment, the sauctification of all this, — THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 405 the legalization of poverty and of the crushed condition of some, and of the satiety and the idleness of others, the legalization of violence, of murders, wars, debauch, intoxi- cation, and their expansion to those terrible dimensions which they now have reached. PART THE FOURTH THE DECEPTIONS OF EAITH AND THE LIBEKATION FROM IT XXXIII. THE DECEPTIONS OF FAITH 182. If there were no offences, people could not con- tinue to live in sins, since every sin punishes itself : the men of the former generations would show to posterity the perniciousness of sin, and the subsequent generations would be educated without falling into the habit of sin. 183. But man has used the intellect which is given him not for the purpose of finding out sin and freeing himself from it, but of justifying it, and so there appeared the offence, and sin became legitimized and took root. 184. But how could man with awakened reason recog- nize the lie as truth ? In order that a man may be able not to see the lie and take it for truth, his reason must be distorted, because the uncorrupted reason faultlessly dis- tinguishes the lie from the truth, wherein, indeed, its destination consists. 185. Indeed, men's reason, as educated in human society, is never free from corruption. Every man who is educated in human society is inevitably subject to corruption, which consists in the deception of faith. 186. The deception of faith consists in this, that the men of former generations by means of all kinds of arti- 407 408 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING ficial methods impress upon the subsequent generations the comprehension of the meaning of Ufe, which is not based on reason, but on blind faith. 187. The essence of the deception of faith consists in this, that men intentionally confound the concepts of faith and trust, and substitute one for 'the other : they assert that men cannot live and think without faith, which is quite correct, and in the place of faith, that is, the recog- nition of the existence of what is cognized, but cannot be defined by reason, such as God, soul, goodness, they put the concept of trust in the existence of God, namely, such and such a one in three persons, who at such and such a time created the world and revealed this or that to men, in such a place and at such a time and through such and such prophets. XXXIV. THE ORIGIN OF THE DECEPTIONS OF FAITH 188. Humanity moves slowly, but without cessation, onward, that is, toward a greater and ever greater clear- ness of the consciousness of the truth concerning the meaning and significance of its life, and toward the estab- lishment of life in conformity with this clearer conscious- ness. And thus men's comprehension of life and men's life itself constantly change. Men who are more sensi- tive for truth understand life in conformity with that higher light that has appeared in them, and arrange their life in conformity with this light ; men who are less sen- sitive stick to the former comprehension of life and the former structure of hfe, and try to defend it; 189. Thus there are always in the world, by the side of men who point out the advanced and last expression of the truth and try to live in accordance with this expression of truth, other men who defend the older, obsolete, and now useless comprehension of it and the former orders of life. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 409 XXXV. IN WHAT WAY THE DECEPTIONS OF FAITH ARE COMMITTED 190. Truth does not need any external confirmation and is freely accepted by all those to whom it is com- municated, but deception demands special methods, by means of which it may be communicated to men and adopted by them; and so to practise the deception of faith, one and the same methods are employed among all nations by those who practise them. 191. There are five such methods: (1) the misinterpre- tation of the truth, (2) the belief in the miraculous, (3) the establishment of a mediation between man and God, (4) the affecting of man's external sensations, and (5) the impression of a false faith upon children. 192. The essence of the first method of the deception of faith consists not only in recognizing in words the cor- rectness of the truth as revealed to men by the last preachers, but also in recognizing the preacher himself as a holy, supernatural person and in deifying him, by ascribing to him the performance of various miracles, and in concealing the essence itself of the revealed truth in such a way that it may not only not violate the former comprehension of life and the order of life as established according to it, but may also, on the contrary, confirm it. Such a misinterpretation of truth and deification of the preachers has taken place with all nations, at every appearance of a new rehgious teaching. Thus was the teaching of Moses and of the Jewish prophets misinter- preted. And it was for this very misinterpretation that Christ rebuked the Pharisees, telling them that they were sitting in the seat of Moses and themselves did not enter the kingdom of God and did not let others in. Similarly were the teachings of Buddha, Lao-tse, and Zarathustra misinterpreted. A similar misinterpretation was intro- duced into the Christian teaching in the first period of 410 THE CHEISTIAN TEACHING its acceptation by Constantine, when the pagan temples and divinities were changed into Christian ones and there arose Mohammedanism, as a protest against the apparent Christian polytheism. To a similar misinterpretation has Mohammedanism also been subjected. 193. The second method of the deception of faith con- sists in impressing people with the idea that, in the cognition of the truth, to follow our God-given reason is a sin of pride; that there exists another, more reliable instrument of cognition, the revelation of the truth, which is communicated by God to men with certain signs and miracles, that is, supernatural events which confirm the correctness of the transmission. Men are impressed with the idea that it is necessary to believe, not in reason, but in miracles, that is, in what is contrary to reason. 194. The third method of the deception of faith con- sists in assuring men that they cannot have that imme- diate relation with God wliich is felt by every man, and which was especially elucidated by Christ when He recognized man as the son of God, and that for man's communion with God there is needed a mediator or mediators. As such mediators they proclaim prophets, saints, the church, the Scriptures, hermits, dervishes, lamas, Buddhas, anchorites, every clergy. However different all these mediators may be, the essence of the mediation is this, that between man and God no direct connection is admitted, but it is, on the contrary, assumed that the truth is not directly accessible to man, and can be received only through faith in the mediators between him and God. 195. The fourth method of the deception of faith consists in this, that under the pretext of accomplishing certain works persumably demanded by God, — prayers, sacraments, sacrifices, — they collect a large number of men and, subjecting them to various stupefying influences, impress lies upon them, pretending that they are the THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 411 trutlL Men are impressed by the beauty and grandeur of the temples, the magnificence of the adornments, by the utensils, the garments, the brilliancy of the illumina- tion, the sounds of singing, the organs, the incense, the exclamations, the performances, and whde men are under tliis spell, the deception, given out as the truth, is forced upon their souls. 196. The fifth method is the most cruel, since it con- sists in telling to a child, when he asks his elders who lived before him and had a chance to find out the wisdom of the men who had lived before, as to what this world and its life is and what the relations between the two are, not what these elders think and know, but what the men who lived thousands of years before knew and what none of his elders now believe in, nor are able to beheve in. Instead of the spiritual food, which is indispensable to him, and for which he asks, the child is given a poison which ruins his spiritual health, and from which he can be cured only by the greatest efforts and sufferings. 197. Awakening to the conscious life with a clear, unpolluted reason, ready to receive and in the depth of his soul, though only dimly, conscious of the truth of life, that is, of his position and his mission in life (the human soul is by its nature a Christian, says Tertulhan, a father of the church), the child asks his older parent what life is, what his relation to the world and his beginning is, — and his father, or teacher, does not tell him that little which he knows unquestionably of the meaning of life, but with assurance tells him what in the depth of his soul he does not regard as true : he tells him, if he is a Jew, that God created the world in six days and revealed all the truth to Moses, writing with his finger on a stone that it is necessary to keep oaths, remember the Sabbath, be circumcized, and so forth ; if he is a Greek- Catholic, a Eoman-Catholic, a Protestant Christian, — that Christ, the second person, created the world and came 412 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING down upon earth, in order to redeem Adam's sin with his blood, and so forth ; if he is a Buddhist, — that Buddha flew to heaven and taught men to destroy hfe in themselves ; if he is a Mohammedan, that Mohammed flew to the seventh heaven and there learned the law according to which the belief in the fivefold prayer and the pilgrimage to Mecca give men paradise in the future life. 198. Knowing that other men impress something else upon their children, parents and teachers communicate each his own special superstition to them, though he knows in the depth of his soul that it is only a super- stition, — he communicates it to innocent, trustful children at an age when the impressions are so strong that they are never again eradicated. XXXVI. THE EVIL DUE TO THE DECEPTION OF FAITH 199. The sins, by causing man at times to commit acts which are contrary to his spiritual nature, contrary to love, retard his birth to the new, true life. 200. The offences lead man into a sinful life, by justi- fying the sins, so that a man does not commit separate sinful acts, but lives an animal Hfe, without seeing the contradiction of this life with the true life. 201. Such a position on the part of a man is possible only with the distortion of truth, which is achieved by the deception of faith. Only a man with his reason distorted by the deception of faith can fail to see the lie of the offences. 202. And so the deception of faith is the foundation of all the sins and calamities of man. 203. The deceptions of faith are that which in the Gospel is called blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, and of which it says that this action cannot be forgiven, that is, that it cannot help but be disastrous in any life. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 413 XXXVII. WHAT MUST A MAN DO, TO LIVE ACCORDING TO cheist's teaching? 204. To live according to Christ's teaching, a man must destroy the obstacles which interfere with the true life, that is, with the manifestation of love. 205. The sins form obstacles to them. But the sins cannot be destroyed, so long as a man does not free him- self from the offences. And only a man who is free from the deceptions of faith can free himself from the offences. 206. And so, in order to live according to Christ's teaching, a man must first of all free himself from the deceptions of faith. 207. Only after a man has freed himself from the deceptions of faith, can he free himself from the lie of the offences ; and only after he has found out the lie of the offences, can he free himself from sins. xxxviii. the liberation from the deceptions of faith 208. To free himself from the deceptions of faith in general, a man must understand and remember that the only instrument of cognition which he possesses is his reason, and that therefore every sermon which asserts something contrary to reason is a deception, an attempt at removing the only instrument of cognition given him by God. 209. To be free from the deceptions of faith, a man must understand and remember that he has no other instrument of cognition than reason, — that, whether he wants it or not, every man believes only in reason, and that therefore the men who say that they do not believe in reason, but in Moses, Buddha, Christ, Moham- med, the church, the Koran, the Bible, are deceiving themselves, because, no matter what they may believe in, 414 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING they do not believe in him who transmitted to them those truths in which they believe, — iu Moses, Buddha, Christ, the Bible, — but in reason, which tells them that they should believe in Moses, in Christ, in the Bible, and must not beheve in Buddha, Mohammed, the Koran, and vice versa. 210. Truth cannot enter man in spite of reason, and so a man who thinks that he cognizes truths through faith, and not through reason, only deceives himself and employs his reason irregularly for what it is not destined for, — for the solution of questions as to who of those who transmit the teachings which are given out as truth is to be believed, and who not. But reason is not destined for the purpose of deciding who is to be beheved, and who not, — that it cannot decide, — but for the purpose of verifying the cor- rectness of what is proposed to it. That it always can do, and for that it is destined. 211. The false interpreters of truth generally say that reason cannot be believed, because the reason of different people affirms different things, and because for this reason it is better for the union of men to believe in a revela- tion which is confirmed by miracles. But such an asser- tion is directly opposed to truth. Eeason never asserts different things; it always and in all men asserts and denies the same. 212. It is only the faiths which assert, — one, that God revealed himself on Sinai, and that He is the God of the Jews ; another, that God is Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva ; a third, that God is the Trinity, — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; a fourth, that God is heaven and earth ; a fifth, that trutli was all revealed by Buddha ; a sixth, that it was all revealed by Mohammed ; — only these faiths divide men, but reason, whether it be the reason of a Jew, a Japanese, a Chinaman, an Arab, an Englishman, a Russian, always and in all men tells one and the same thing. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 415 2 1 3. When people say that reason may deceive, and in confirmation adduce discordant assertions of various men as to there being a God, and how he ought to be served, those who say this make an intentional or an uninten- tional mistake, in that they confuse reason with con- siderations and inventions. Considerations and inventions can actually be and generally are diversified and different, but the decrees of reason are always the same for all men and at all times. Eeflections and inventions as to how the world or sin originated, or what will happen after death, may be infinitely varied, but the decrees of reason as to whether it is true that three gods make one, whether a man died and then rose again, whether a man walked on the water or flew bodily into heaven, whether in swal- lowing bread and wine I am eating a body and blood, — ' the decrees of reason in regard to these questions are always one and the same for all men and in the whole world, and are always indubitable and true. Whether men say that God walked in a pillar of fire, or whether Buddha rose on the sunbeams, or whether Mohammed flew into heaven, or whether Christ walked on the water, and so forth, the reason of all men always and everywhere replies one and the same thing : " It is not true." But to the questions as to whether it is right to treat others as you wish to be treated, whether it is good to love men and forgive them their offences and be merciful, the reason of all men at all times has said : " Yes, it is right, it is good." 214. And so, not to fall into the deceptions of faith, a man must understand and remember that truth is re- vealed to him only in his reason, given him by God for the purpose of learning the will of God, and that the dis- couragement of confidence in reason has for its basis the desire of deceiving, and is the greatest blasphemy. 215. Such is the general means for freeing oneself from the deceptions of faith. But to be free from the deceptions 416 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING of faith, it is necessary to know all the forms of these deceptions and to beware of them, — to counteract them. XXXIX. THE LIBEKATION FROM THE DECEPTION OF FAITH, INSPIRED FROM CHILDHOOD 216. In t)rder that a man may live according to Christ's teaching, he must first of all free himself from the decep- tion of the faith in which he was brought up, — no matter whether this is a deception of the Jewish, Buddhistic, Japanese, Confucian, or Christian faith. 217. But in order to be freed from the deceptions of faith, in which a man is brought up from childhood, he must understand and remember that reason is given to him directly from God, and that God alone can unite all men, while human traditions do not unite, but divide men, and so he must not only not be afraid of doubts and ques- tions, which are evoked by reason in the verification of beliefs impressed upon him from childhood, but, on the contrary, must carefully subject to analysis and com- parison with other beliefs all those behefs which were handed down to him from childhood, accepting as correct only what does not contradict reason, no matter how solemnly circumstanced and anciently transmitted the tradition may be. 218. Having subjected the beliefs impressed upon him from childhood to the tribunal of reason, a man who wishes to free himself from the deceptions of faith, impressed upon him from childhood, must boldly and without finding any excuses reject everything which is contrary to reason and cannot be true. 219. Having freed himself from the deception of faith, impressed upon him from childhood, a man who wants to live according to Christ's teaching must not only by word, example, and reticence keep from aiding in the THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 417 deception of the children, but also with all his means dispel this deception, according to the words of Christ, who pitied the children on account of the deceptions to which they are subjected. XL. THE LIBERATION FROM THE DECEPTION OF FAITH, PRODUCED THROUGH THE APPEAL TO THE EXTERNAL SENSES 220. Having freed himself from the deception of faith, impressed upon him from childhood, a man must beware of the deception produced by the deceivers of all nations by means of the appeal to the external senses. 221. In order not to fall into this deception, a man must understand and remember that truth for its dissem- ination and adoption by men does not need any appli- ances and adornments ; that it is only the lie and the deception that need special conditions for their transmis- sion, in order to be accepted by men, and that therefore all solemn services, processions, adornments, incense, sing- ing, and so forth, not only do not serve as signs of the fact that the truth is being communicated under these conditions, but, on the contrary, serve as a sure sign that where these means are used, it is not the truth, but a lie, that is being communicated. 222. In order not to fall into the deception of the appeal to the external senses, a man must remember the words of Christ, that God is not to be served in some particular place, but in the spirit and in truth, and that he who wants to pray must not go into a temple, but shut himself up in the privacy of his room, knowing that every magnificence in divine service has for its aim decep- tion, which is the more cruel, the more magnificent the service is, and so he must not only refrain from partaking himself in the stupefying divine services, but also wherever possible must disclose their deception. 418 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING XLI. THE LIBEEATION FEOM THE DECEPTION OF MEDIATION 223. Having freed himself also from the second decep- tion of the appeal to the external senses, a man must also beware of the deception of mediation between man and God, which, if he admits it at all, is sure to conceal the truth from him. 224. In order not to fall into this deception, a man must understand and remember that God is only directly revealed to man's heart, and that every mediation, be it one person, a collection of persons, a book, or a tradition, not only conceals God from man, but also commits the greatest evil which can befall a man, namely, causes him to regard as God what is not God. 225. The moment a man admits the faith in any medi- ation, he deprives himself of the one possibility of the cer- tainty of knowledge and opens up the possibility of the reception of any he instead of the truth. 226. Only thanks to the mediation of men could there be practised, and are there practised, those deceptions in consequence of which sensible and good men pray to God, Christ, the Virgin, Buddha, Mohammed, the saints, the relics, the images. 227. In order not to fall into this deception, a man must understand and remember that truth was revealed to him first of all and more correctly, not in a book, not in tradition, not in any assembly of men, but in his own heart and in reason, even as Moses said, when he informed the people that the law of God was not to be sought be- yond the sea, nor in heaven, but in their hearts, and as Christ said to the Jews : " You do not know the truth, because you believe in the traditions of men, and not in Him whom He sent." But what God has sent into us is reason, — the one infallible instrument of cognition, which is given us. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 419 228. Not to fall into the deception of mediation, a man must understand and remember that truth can never be revealed altogether, and that it is gradually revealed to men, and only to those who seek it, and not to those who, believ- ing in what the infallible mediators communicate to them, think that they possess it, and so, to keep from subjecting himself to the danger of falling into the most terrible errors, a man must not acknowledge any one as an in- fallible teacher, but must seek the truth anywhere, in all the human traditions, verifying them with his reason. XLII. THE LIBERATION FROM THE BELIEF IN MIRACLES 229. But even having freed himself from the decep- tion impressed upon him from childhood, and not sur- rendering himself to the deception of impressing the lie by means of solemnity, and not recognizing any mediation between himself and God, a man will still not be free from the deception of faith and will be unable to know Christ's teaching, if he shall not free himself of the belief in the supernatural, the miraculous. 230. They say that miracles, that is, the supernatural, take place for the purpose of uniting men, whereas there is nothing which so disunites men as miracles, because each faith asserts its own miracles and rejects those of all the others. Nor can it be otherwise : miracles, that is, the supernatural, are infinitely varied ; only the natural is always and everywhere the same. 231. And so, to be free from the deceptions of belief in the miraculous, a man must recognize as true only what is natural, that is, in accord with his reason, and must recog- nize as a lie everything which is unnatural, that is, which contradicts reason, knowing that everything which gives itself out as such is human deception, such as are the deceptions of all modern miracles, cures, resurrections. 420 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING miracle-working images, relics, transubstantiation of bread and wine, and so forth, as also of the miracles which are mentioned in the Bible, in the gospels, in Buddhist, Mohammedan, Taoist, and other books. XLIII. LIBERATION FROM THE DECEPTIONS OF THE FAITH IN FALSE INTERPRETATIONS 232. Having freed himself from the deception of medi- ation, a man must free himself from the deception of the false interpretation of truth. 233. No matter in what faith a man may have been educated, whether in the Mohammedan, Christian, Bud- dhistic, Jewish, or Confucian, he will in every doctrine of faith find an assertion of indubitable truth, which is rec- ognized by his reason, and side by side with it assertions . contrary to reason, which are given out as equally deserv- ing faith. 234. In order to free himself from this deception of faith, a man must not be discouraged because the truths which are recognized by his reason and those which are not recognized by it are given out as equally deserving faith on account of their common origin, and as though inseparably connected, but must understand and remem- ber that every revelation of the truth to men (that is, every comprehension of the truth by one of the advanced men) has always so startled people that it has been clothed in a supernatural form, that to every manifesta- tion of truth there have inevitably been added supersti- tious, and that, therefore, for the knowledge of truth it is not necessary to accept everything, but that, on the con- trary, we are obhged in what is transmitted to us to separate the lie and the invention from the truth and reality. 235. Having separated the truth from the supersti- tions which are admixed, let each man understand and THE CHRISTIAN TEACniNG 421 remember that the superstitions which are admixed with truth not only are not as sacred as truth itself, as is preached by the men who find their advantage in these superstitions, but, on the contrary, form a most perni- cious and harmful phenomenon, which conceals the truth, and for the destruction of which a man must employ all his forces. PART THE FIFTH LIBERATION FROM THE OFFENCES XLIV. HOW CAN WE AVOID THE OFFENCES ? 236. Having freed himself from the deceptions of faith, a man would be capable of receiving Christ's teach- ing, if there were no offences. But even when he is free from the deceptions of faith and understands the meaning of Christ's teaching, a man always finds himself in danger of falling into the offences. 237. The essence of all the offences consists in this, that a man who has wakened to consciousness, feehng the doubling and suffering from a crime committed, wants to destroy the doubling and the suffering arising from it, not through a struggle with sin, but through its justification. 238. But the justification of a sin can be nothing but a lie. 239. And so, in order not to fall into an offence, a man must first of all not be afraid to recognize the truth, knowing that such an acknowledgment cannot remove him from the good, whereas the opposite, the lie, is the chief source of sin and of a departure from the good. 240. Thus, in order to avoid the offences, a man must, above all else, not lie, and, above all, not lie to himself, and not so much take care lest he lie to others, as lest he lie to himself, concealing from himself the aims of his acts. 241. Not to fall into the offences and the habit of sin- 423 424 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING ning and destroying, which result from these offences, a man must not be afraid to repent of his sins, knowing that repentance is the only means for the liberation from sins and the resulting calamities. 242. Such is the one common means for keeping from falling into the offences in general. To be able to avoid every offence in particular, it is necessary to understand clearly in what their lie and their harm consist. XLV. THE LIE OF THE OFFENCE OF PREPAKATION (THE PERSONAL OFFENCE) 243. The first and most common offence which takes possession of a man is the personal offence, the offence of the preparation for life, instead of life itself. If a man does not invent this justification of his sins, he always finds this justification to have been invented by men who lived before him. 244. " Now I can for a time depart from what is proper and what my spiritual nature demands of me, because I am not ready," a man says to himself. " As soon as I am prepared, there will come a time when I shall begin to live entirely in conformity with my conscience." 245. The lie of this offence consists in this, that a man departs from the life in the present, from the one actual life, and transfers it into the future, whereas the future does not belong to man. 246. The lie of this offence has this feature, that, if a man foresees the morrow, he must also be able to foresee the day after to-morrow, and what comes later, and later. And if he foresees all this, he also foresees his inevitable death. If he foresees his inevitable death, he cannot pre- pare himself for the future in this finite life, because death destroys the meaning of all that for which a man prepares himself in this life. Having given full sway to his reason, a man cannot help but see that the life of his THE CtlRISTlAN TEACHING 425 separate existence has no meaning, and so it is impossible to prepare anything for this existence. 247. On the other hand, the lie of this offence may be seen in this, that a man cannot prepare himself for a future manifestation of love and service of God : a man is not an instrument wliich another employs. It is pos- sible to grind an axe and not get any time to cut with it, and for another man to make use of it ; but no one can use a man, except he himself, because he himself is an instrument which is always at work and which perfects itself at' work. 248. The harm of this offence is this, that a man who has fallen into it not only fails to live the true Mfe, but even does not live a temporal life in the present, and transfers his life into the future, which never comes. Thinking of perfecting himself for the future, a man omits the one, ever present perfection in love, which can be only in the present. 249. Not to faU into this offence, a man must under- stand and remember that there is no time for preparation ; that he must live in the best manner possible this very moment, just such as he is ; that the perfection which he needs is no other than the perfection in love, and this perfection is accomphshed only in the present. 250. And so he must without delay live each minute with all his strength in the present, for God, that is, for all those who make demands on his life, knowing that he may any moment be deprived of the possibility of this ministration, and that he came into the world for pre- cisely this hourly ministration. XLVI. THE LIE AND THE HARM OF THE OFFENCE OF AFFAIRS 251. Every man who busies himself with some affair is involuntarily carried away by it, and it appears to him 426 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING that for the sake of his business he is unable to do what his conscience, that is, God, demands of him. 252. The he of this offence consists in this, that every human affair may prove useless, be interrupted, and re- main unfinished ; but God's business as accomplished by man, the fulfilment of God's will, can never be useless and cannot be interrupted by anything. 253. The harm of this offence consists in this, that, by admitting that a certain business — be it the harrowing in of sown seeds or the emancipation of a whole people from slavery — is more important than God's business, which to human judgment is frequently the most insig- nificant, that is, more important than immediate aid and ministration to one's neighbour, there will always be found some matters which must be looked after before comply- ing with the demand of God's business, and a man will always free himself from serving God, that is, from doing the works of life, by substituting the ministration to what is dead for the ministration to the living. 254. The harm consists in this, that, by admitting this offence, men will always put off serving God until they are free from all worldly affairs. But men are never free from worldly affairs. Not to fall into this offence, a man must understand and remember that no human affair, which has an end, can be tlie aim of his true, infinite life, and that such an aim can only be the participation in God's infinite affairs, which consists in the gi-eatest possi- ble manifestation of love. 255. And so, in order not to fall into this offence, a man must never attend to such affairs of his as impairs God's affairs, that is, the love of men ; he must be at all times prepared to throw up any business, as soon as the execution of God's work calls him, — to be like a labourer who is working for his master and can attend to his own affairs only when his master's work does not demand his strength and his attention. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 427 XLVII. THE LIE AND THE HARM OF THE OFFENCE OF FAMILY 256. This offence more than any other justifies men's sins. If a man is free from the offence of preparation for life, of the offence of affairs, hardly a man, especially a woman, is free from the offence of family, 257. This offence consists in this, that men, in the name of their exclusive love for the members of their families, consider themselves free from their obligations toward other men, and calmly commit the sins of greed, of struggle, of idleness, of lust, without considering them to be sins. 258. The lie of this offence consists in this, that the animal feeling which incites a man to continue the race and which is legitimate only in that measure in which it does not impair the love of men, is taken to be a virtue which justifies sin. 259. The harm of this offence consists in this, that it, more than any other offence, intensifies the sin of property, embitters the struggle between men, by raising the animal feeling of love for one's family to a desert and virtue, and leads people away from the possibihty of knowing the true meaning of life. 260. Not to fall into this offence, a man must not only refrain from educating in himself love for the members of his family, from considering this love a virtue, and aban- doning himself to it, but, on the contrary, knowing the offence, he must always be on guard against it, in order that he may not sacrifice the love of God for the love of family. 261. One may without reserve love one's enemies, unat- tractive people, strangers, and fully abandon oneself to this love ; but it is not right to love thus one's family, because such a love leads to blindness and to the justi- fication of sins. 428 THIi CHRISTIAN TEACHING 262. Not to fall into this offence, a man must under- stand and remember that love is only then true love, giving life and the good, when it does not seek, does not wait, does not hope for rewards, just like any manifesta- tion of life which expects no reward for existing; but that love for the members of one's family is an animal feeling which is good only so long as it remains within the limits of instinct and a man does not sacrifice his spiritual demands for it. 263. And so, not to fall into this offence, a man must try and do the same for any stranger that he wishes to do for his family, and for the members of his family he must do nothing which he is not prepared and able to do for any stranger. XLVIII. THE LIE AND THE HAEM OF THE OFFENCE OF ASSOCIATION 264. It seems to people that if they, segregating them- selves from other men, and uniting among themselves under exclusive conditions, observe these conditions, they are doing such a good deed that they are freed from the common demands of their conscience. 265. The lie of this offence consists in this, that, by entering into associations with a small number of men, the people segregate themselves from the natural associa- tion with all men and so impair the most important natural obligations in the name of the artificial ones. 266. The harm of this offence consists in this, that men who have placed themselves under conditions of association, being guided in life, not by common laws of reason, but by their exclusive rules, more and more depart from the rational principles of life, which are common to all men, become more intolerant and more cruel to all those who do not belong to their association, and thus deprive themselves and others of the true good. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 429 267. Not to fall into this offence a man must under- stand and remember that the rules of association as established by men may be infinitely varied, infinitely changeable, and contrary to one another ; that every rule which is artificially established by men must not bind him, if it can be contrary to the law of love ; that every exclusive combination with men limits the circle of com- munion, and thus deprives him of the chief condition of his good, — the possibility of a communion of love with all the men of the world. 268. And so we must not only refrain from joining such societies, associations, compacts, but, on the contrary, must avoid everything which with the others may exclude all the rest of men. XLIX, THE LIE AND THE HARM OF THE OFFENCE OF STATE 269. This most cruel offence is conveyed to men just like a false faith, — by means of two methods of decep- tion, of impressing the lie upon children and of appealing to men's senses by external pomp. Nearly all men who live in states find themselves, as soon as they awaken to consciousness, entangled in the offences of state, and live in the conviction that their nation, their country, their fatherland, is the best, the chosen nation, country, father- land, for the good and the well-being of which people must bhudly obey the existing government, and by the command of this government torture, wound, and kill their neighbours. 270. The lie of this offence consists in this, that a man thinks that in the name of the good of his nation he may renounce the demands of his conscience and of his moral freedom. 271. The harm of this offence consists in this, that as soon as a man admits the possibility of understanding 430 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING and knowing in what the good of many men consists, there are no limits to the assumption concerning that good of many men, which may result from any act, and so any act may be justified ; and as soon as he admits that for the good of many in the future one may sacrifice the good and the life of one man, there are no limits to the evil which may be committed in the name of such an assumption. On the basis of the first assumption, which is, that men can know the future good of many men, they in former times maintained tortures, inquisitions, slavery, and now maintain courts, prisons, the ownership of land. On the basis of the second assumption Caiaphas in former times had Christ killed, and now millions perish in war and as the result of punishments. 272. Not to fall into this offence, a man must under- stand and remember that, before belonging to any country or nation, he belongs to God, as a member of the univer- sal kingdom, and that he cannot shift his responsibility for his acts on anybody else, and himself is always re- sponsible for them. 273. And so a man must never, under any conditions, prefer the people of his own nation or country to the people of another nation or country ; he must never com- mit any evil to his neighbours in view of any considera- tions about the future good of many; he must never consider himself obliged to obey any one in preference to his conscience. PART THE SIXTH THE STEUGGLE WITH SINS L. THE STRUGGLE WITH SINS 274. But, having freed himself from the deception of faith and having kept away from the offences, a man none the less falls into sins. A man with an awakened con- sciousness knows that the meaning of his life is only in the service of God, and yet he from habit commits sins, which interfere with the manifestation of his love and the attainment of his true good. 275. How is a man to struggle with the habit of sin- ning ? 276. There are two means for the struggle with the habit of sinning : the first is clearly to understand the consequences of the sins, — that the sins do not attain the aim for which they are committed, and do not in- crease, but rather diminish the animal good for the indi- vidual man ; in the second place, to know with what sins one ought to begin to struggle, with what first and with what later. 277. And so it is necessary first of aU clearly to under- stand and remember that a man's position in the world is such that every search by him for the personal good, after the rational consciousness has awakened in him, deprives him of the good itself, and that, on the contrary, he receives his good only when he does not think of his personal good, but gives all his strength to the service of God. 431 432 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 278. In the second place, that for success in his strug- gle with the habits of sinning it is necessary to know to what sin he is first of all to direct his attention ; not to begin the struggle with a sin which has its root in another unconquered sin ; to know the connection and the consecutiveness of the sins. LI. THE CONSECUTIVENESS OF THE STKUGGLE WITH SINS 279. There is a connection and a consecutiveness of the sins, so that one sin brings forth another or interferes with the liberation from it. 280. It is impossible for a man to free himself from any of the sins, if he surrenders himself to the sin of intoxication ; and it is impossible for him to free himself from the sin of struggle, if he surrenders himself to the sin of property ; and he cannot free himself from the sin of property, if he surrenders himself to the sin of idleness, and he cannot free himself from the sin of struggle and of property, if he surrenders himself to the sin of lust. 281. This does not mean that a man need not struggle with every sin at some time, but that, for a successful struggle with sin, it is necessary to know with which to begin, or, rather, with which not to begin, in order that the struggle may be successful. 282. Only from tlie lack of consecutiveness in this struggle with sins results the failure of the struggle, which frequently leads the struggling man to despair. 283. Intoxication, no matter of what kind, is the sin, abandonment to which makes struggle with any other sin impossible ; this intoxication may be from intoxi- cating matters, or from solemnity, or from rapid, inten- sified motions ; the intoxicated person will not struggle with idleness, nor with lust, nor with fornication, nor with the love of power. And so, in order to struggle with the THIi CniilSTIAN TEACHING 433 other sltis, a mau must first of all free himself from the sin of iutoxication. 284. The uext sin from which a man must free him- self in order that he may be able to struggle with lust, pt-ofit, love of power, fornication, is the sin of idleness. The freer a man is from the sin of idleness, the easier can he abstain from the sin of lust, profit, fornication, aud love of power : a working person is in no need of the complication of means for the gratification of his needs, is in no need of property, is less subject to the temp- tations of fornication and has no catise and no time for struggle. 285. The next sin is the sin of lust. The more a man is abstinent in food, attire, and dwelling, the easier it is for him to free himself from the sin of profit, love of power, foruication : a man who is satisfied with httle needs no property, abstinence helps in the struggle with fornication, and, as he does not need much, he has no causes for struggling. 286. The next sin after this is the sin of profit. The freer a man will be from this sin, the easier it will be for him to abstain from the sin of fornication and the sin of struggling. Notliing encourages the sin of fornication so much as a superabundance of property, and nothing pro- vokes so much struggle among men. 287. The next sin to it and the last sin is the sin of struggling, or of the love of power, which is included in all the other sins and is called forth by all the other sins, and the greatest liberation from which is possible only with the liberation from all the preceding sins. LII. HOW TO STRUGGLE WITH THE SINS 288. It is possible to struggle with the sins in general only by knowing the Consecutiveness of the sins, so that Otie can first begin the struggle with those, without the 434 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING liberation from which it is impossible to struggle with the rest. 289. But even in the struggle with each separate sin one ought to begin with those manifestations of the sins, the abstinence from which is in the power of a man, of which he has not yet made a habit. 290. Such sins in all the varieties of sins, — in intoxi- cation, idleness, lust, profit, power, and fornication, — are the personal sins, those which a man commits for the first time, v/hen he has not yet formed any habit of them. And so it is from these that a man must free himself first of all. 291. Only after having freed himself from these sins, that is, after having stopped inventing new means for the increase of his personal good, must a man begin the struggle with the habits, the tradition, estabhshed -among the sins. 292. And only after having vanquished these sins can a man begin the struggle with the inborn sins. LIII. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE SIN OF INTOXICATION 293. Man's destination consists in the manifestation and increase of love. This increase takes place only in consequence of man's recognition of his true divine ego. The more a man becomes conscious of his true ego, the greater is his good. And so everything which counteracts this consciousness (and each excitation does counteract it), the intensified false consciousness of the individual life and the weakened consciousness of the true ego (as is the case in every intoxication), impedes man's true good. 294. But not only does every intoxication impede the true good of the man who has awakened to consciousness : it also deceives a man, and not only fails to increase the man's own individual good, which he seeks, when he THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 435 abandons himself to some stimulus, but always deprives liim also of that animal good which he had. 295. A man who is still in the stage of the animal life, or a babe with uuawakened consciousness, in abandoning himself to some stimulus, to smoking, drinking, solemnity, dance, receives a full gratification from the stimulus pro- duced and is in no need of a repetition of this stimulus. But a man with an awakened consciousness notices that every stimulus drowns in him the activity of his reason and destroys the morbidity of the contradiction between the demand of his animal and that of his spiritual nature, and so demands a repetition and intensification of the intoxication, and keeps demanding it more and more, until the awakened reason will be completely drowned in him, which can be done only by completely or at least partially destroying the bodily Hfe. Thus a rational hfe, having begun to abandon himself to this sin, not only does not receive the expected good, but also falls into the most varied and most cruel of calamities. 296. A man who is free from intoxication makes use for his worldly life of all those forces of the mind which are given to him, and can rationally choose the best for the good of his animal existence ; but a man who aban- dons himself to intoxication deprives himself even of those mental forces which are characteristic of the animal for the avoidance of harm and the attainment of pleasure. 297. Such are the consequences of the sin of intoxica- tion for the sinner ; but for those who surround him they are particularly harmful, in the first place, because an enormous waste of forces is necessary for the production of the act of intoxication, so that the major part of hu- manity's labour is wasted on the production of intoxicat- ing substances and the preparation and building up of intoxicating solemn acts, processions, ministrations, monu- ments, temples, and all kinds of celebrations ; in the second place, because smoking, wine, intensified motions, 436 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING arid especially solemnities, cause unthiuking people, while they are under the influence of these actions, to commit the most insipid, coarse, pernicious, and cruel acts. It is this that a man must always have in view when he sur- renders himself to the temptation of some intoxication. 298. No man, so long as he lives in the body, is able to destroy in himself completely the ability to receive a temporary stimulus of intoxication from the consumption of food or drink, or froui external conditions, or from in- tensified motions, and an intensification of his aninial consciousness in consequence of it and a weakening of the consciousness of his spiritual ego. But although a man is not ^.ble completely to destroy in himself this inclination toward being stimulated, he is capable of reducing it to the smallest degree. And in this consists the struggle with the sin of intoxication, which is immi- nent to every man. 299. To free himself from the sin of intoxication, a man must understand and remember that a certain degree of stimulation at certain times and under certain condi- tions is proper to man, as an animal, but that, with the awakened consciousness in him, he must not only avoid seeking these stimuli, but must also get out of their way aud seek a quieter state, in which the activity of his mind may be manifested in its full force, that activity which, when followed up, makes it possible for him to q,ttain the greatest good, both his own and that of men and beings that are coni^ected with him. 300. In order to attain this state, a man must begip by not increasing for himself that sin of intoxication to which he has become accustomed and which is the hab;t of his life. If certain habits of intoxication, which re^ peat themselves at certaip times and are considered nec- essary by those who surround him, have entered into the routine of his life, let him continue these habits, but Jet^ him not introduce pew opes, imitating others or inventing THE CllKISTlAN TEACHING 437 them himself : if he is accustomed to smoke cigarettes, let him not train himself to smoke cigars or opium ; if he is used to beer or wine, let him not train himself to some- thing more intoxicating ; if he is accustomed to obeisances at prayers, at home or in church, or to jumping and leap- ing at services, let him not learn new observances ; if he is accustomed to celebrate certain holidays, let him not celebrate new ones. Let him not increase those means for stimulation to which he is accustomed, and he will do very much for the liberation of himself and of others from the sin of intoxication. If people would not intro- duce new methods of sinning, sin would be destroyed, because sin begins when there is not yet^ny habit formed of it, and it is possible to vanquish it, and there have always been and always will be men who liberate them- selves from sin. 301. If a man has firmly recognized the madness of the sin of intoxication, and has firmly resolved not to in- crease those habits of intoxication which have become customary to him, let him stop smoking and drinking, if he already has these habits ; let him stop taking part in solemnities and celebrations, in which he used to take part before ; let him stop making stimulating motions, if he was in the habit of making them. 302. But if a man has freed himself from those artifi- cial habits of intoxication in which he is living already, let him free himself from those conditions of excitation which are produced in him by certain food, drink, mo- tions, and surroundings, to which every man is sub- ject. 303. Although a man, so long as he is in the body, will never fully be freed from excitation and intoxica- tion, produced by food, drink, motions, surroundings, — the degree of these conditions may be diminished to a minimum. The more a man who has awakened to con- sciousness will free himself from the condition of intoxi- 438 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING cation, the clearer will his mind be, the easier will it be for him to struggle with all the other sins, the more true good will he receive, the more will there be added to him of worldly good, and the more will he contribute to the good of other men. LIV. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE SIN OF IDLENESS 304. A man with an awakened consciousness is not a self-existing, self-satisfied being that can have its own independent good, but a messenger of God, to whom the good is possible only in the measure in which he does God's will. And so it is as irrational for a man to serve his own separate personality as it is irrational for a labourer to serve his instrument of labour, take care of his spade or scythe, and not waste it on his predetermined work ; as it says in the Gospel, he who keeps his carnal life, loses the true Hfe ; and only by losing the car- nal life is it possible to receive the true life. 305. To make other persons work for the gratification of one's needs is as irrational as it would be for a labourer to destroy or spoil his companion's instruments of labour, in order to save or improve the instrument with which he, wasting it, must produce the work for which he and his companions are delegated. 306. But besides that true good, of which a man deprives himself when he frees himself from labour and imposes it upon others, such a man at the same time deprives himself also of that worldly animal good which is set aside for man with his natural bodily labour demanded of him for the gratification of his needs. 307. A man will receive the greatest good of his sepa- rate being from the exercise of his forces and from rest, when he shall live instinctively like an animal, labouring and resting precisely as much as his animal life demands. But the moment a man artificially transfers his labours THE CURISTIAN TEACHING 439 to others, arranging an artificial rest for himself, he will not derive any enjoyment from his rest. 308. A working man derives true enjoyment from rest ; but an idle man, in place of the rest which he is trying to arrange for himself, experiences constant unrest, and, besides, by means of this artificial idleness destroys the very source of enjoyment, — his health, — so that by weak- ening his body, he deprives himself of the possibility of work, and so also of the consequences of work, of true rest, and begets in himself grave diseases. 309. Such are the consequences of idleness for the sinner ; for those about him the consequences of this sin are pernicious, in the first place, because, as a Chinese proverb runs, if there is one idle man there is also one who is starving ; in the second place, because unthinking men, who do not know that dissatisfaction which is expe- rienced by idle men, try to imitate them, and instead of good sensations experience bad sentiments toward this dissatisfaction. 310. To free himself from the sin of idleness, a man must clearly understand and remember that every libera- tion of himself from the work which he has been perform- ing does not increase, but diminishes the good of his separate personahty and produces an unnecessary evil to other men. 311. It is impossible in the separate animal existence of man to diminish the striving after rest and the dislike of work (according to the Bible idleness was bliss and work a punishment), but the diminution of this sin and its reduction to the lowest degree is that toward which a man must strive in order to free himself from this sin. 312. To free himself from the habit of sinning, a man must begin by not freeing himself from any work that he may have been doing before ; if he brushed his own clothes and washed his linen, he must not cause another to do that ; if he got along without the productions of 440 THE ClIRISTIAX TEACHING other people's labour, he should not buy tliem ; if he used to walk, he should not mount a horse ; if he carried his own satchel, he should not give it to a porter, and so forth. All this seems so insignificant, but if men would do so they would be freeing themselves from a great num- ber of their sins and the sufferings arising therefrom. 313. Only when a man is already able to abstain from freeing himself from the labour which he used to perform before, and from transferring it to others, can he success- fully begin his struggle with the inherited sin of idleness. If he is a peasant, let him not make his weak wife do what he has the leisure to do himself, nor hire a labourer whom he used to hire before, nor purchase an article of the production of labour which he used to buy formerly, but without which others are getting along ; if he is rich, let him send away his valet and put away his own things, and stop buying, as formerly, expensive garments, if he is used to doing so. 314. But if a man has been able to vanquish that idle- ness to which he has been accustomed from childhood, and has descended to that level of work on which the men who surround him live, he is able successfully to begin the struggle with the inborn sin of idleness, that is, to labour for the good of other men and when others rest themselves. 315. The fact that human life has become so compli- cated in consequence of the division of labour that a man is unable himself to satisfy his own needs and those of his family, and that it is impossible in our world to get along without using the labours of others, cannot keep a man from striving after a state in which he would give to people more than he receives from them. 316. To be convinced of this, a man must in the first place do for himself and his family what he can find the time to do, and, in the second, in his serving other men must not choose such matters as please him, and for which THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 441 there are many volunteers, as is the case with all niatteis of the government of men, of their instruction, of their amusement, but such as are pressingly indispensable, which are not attractive, and wliich all men reject, as is the case with coarse and dirty work. LV. THE STRUGGLE W'lTH THE SIN OF LUST 317. It is man's destination to serve God by the in- crease of love in himself. The fewer the needs are which a man may have, the easier will it be for him to serve God and men, and so the greater will the true good be which he will receive through the increase of love in himself. 318. But besides that good of the true life, of which the more a man receives the freer he will be from the sin of lust, a man's position in the world is such that if he abandons himself to his needs only to the extent to which they demand their gratification, and does not direct his inind Upon the increase of enjoyment from their gratifica- tion, this gratification gives him the greatest accessible good in this respect. With every increase of his needs, no matter whether they are gratified or not, the good of the worldly life is inevitably diminished. 319. The greatest good from the gratification of his needs of eating, drinking, sleeping, raiment, and house, a man receives only when he gratifies them like an animal, instinctively and not in order to receive enjoy- ment, but in order to destroy incipient suffering ; the greatest enjoyment from food a man will receive, not when he has refined food, but when he is hungry ; and from raiment, not when it is beautiful, but when he is frozen ; and from the house, not when it is luxurious, but when he takes refuge in it from ill weather. 320. A man who enjoys a rich dinner, garments, a house, without any necessity, derives less pleasure than 442 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING a man who uses the poorest kind of food, raiment, and house after he has been starving, freezing, and feehng wet, so that the compHcation of the means for gratifying the needs and their abundance do not increase the good of the personal Hfe, but diminish it. 321. A superabundance in the gratification of the needs deprives a man of the very source of enjoyment in con- nection with the gratification of needs ; it destroys the health of the organism, — no food affords pleasure to the sick, weakened stomach, and no garment and no houses warm the aneemic bodies. 322. Such are the consequences of the sin of lust for the sinner ; but for the men who surround him its conse- quences are these, that, in the first place, needy persons are deprived of those objects which are used by those who live in luxury ; in the second place, all those mean- spirited men who see the abundance of him who lives in luxury, but do not see his sufferings, are tempted by his condition and are drawn into the same sin, and, instead of the natural, universal, joyous fraternal feelings, experi- ence painful envy and ill-will toward those who live in luxury. This a man must know in order to be able successfully to struggle with the sin of lust. 323. It is impossible in the separate being of a man to destroy the striving after the increase of enjoyment from the gratification of needs, so long as a man lives in the body, but he may reduce this striving in himself to a minimum, and in this does the struggle with this sin consist. 324. For the greatest liberation of oneself from this sin of lust, a man must first of all understand clearly and remember that every complication of the gratification of one's needs does not increase, but diminishes his good, and produces unnecessary evil in other men. 325. To free himself from the habit of sinning, a man must begin by not increasing his needs, by not changing THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 443 what he is used to, by not accepting or inventing some- thing new ; he must not begin to drink tea, if he lived and was well without it ; he must not build a new castle, if he lived in an old one. It seems such a little thing not to do this, but if men did not do this, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of human sins and sufferings would be destroyed. 326. Only by abstaining firmly from introducing new luxury into his life can a man begin the struggle with the sins of heredity, can a man, who is accustomed to drink- ing tea and eating meat, or who is used to champagne and trotters, give up the habit of what is superfluous, and pass from more luxurious habits to such as are more modest. 327. Only by giving up the habits of luxurious people and descending to the level of the poorest can a man begin to struggle with the natural sins of lust, that is, diminish his needs in comparison with the poorest and most absti- nent of men. LVI. THE STKUGGLE WITH THE SIN OF PEOFIT 328. Man's true good consists in the manifestation of love, and with this a man is placed in such a situation that he never knows when he is going to die, and every hour of his life may be the last, so that a rational man can by no means violate the love in the present for the sake of his care to secure the one in the future. But it is this that a man does when he tries to acquire property and to hold it against other people for the safeguarding of his own future and that of his family. 329. Not only do men, by acting thus, deprive them- selves of the true good ; they do not even attain that good of the separate personality which is always safeguarded for each man. 330. It is proper for man to gratify his needs by means of his labour, and even to prepare the objects of his needs, 444 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING as some animals do, and, acting in this manner, a man attains the highest accessible good of his separate exist- ence. 331. But the moment a man begins to claim exclusive rights to these prepared and otherwise acquired objects, the good of his separate existence is not only diminished, but even changes to suffering for this existence. 332. A man who, in the safeguarding of his future, relies upon his work, upon men's mutual aid, and, above all, upon such an order of the world in which men are as well provided for in life as the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, can calmly surrender himself to all the joys of hfe ; but a man who has himself begun to make his future possessions secure cannot have a minute's rest. 333. In the first place, he never knows to what extent he must make himself secure, whether for a month, a year, ten years, or the next generation. In the second place, property cares draw a man more and more away from the simple joys of life ; in the third place, he is always afraid of seizures by other people, always struggles for the preservation and increase of what he has acquired, and, giving up his life to the care of the future, he noW loses the present life. 334. Such are the consequences of the sin of property for the sinner ; but for those who surround him the conse- quences are privations as the result of the seizures. 335. It is almost impossible to destroy in oneself the striving after keeping exclusively for oneself raiment, instruments, a piece of bread for the morrow, but it is possible to reduce this striving to a minimum, and in this reduction of the sin of property to a mininmm does the struggle with this sin consist. 336. And so, to free himself from the sin of property, a man must clearly understand and remember that every provision for the filture by means of acquiring and retain- THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 445 ing property will not increase the good of the separate existeuce, but will diminish it and will produce a large and unnecessary evil for those men among whom property is acquired and retained. 337. To struggle with the habit of the sin, it is neces- sary to begin by not increasing that property which one has and which provides for the future, — whether that be millions or dozens of sacks of rye for food for the whole year. If men only understood that their good and their life, even their animal life, are not made secure by prop- erty, and if only they did not increase at the expense of another what each considers to be his own, there would disappear the greatest part of the calamities from which people suffer. 338. Only when a man can refrain from increasing his property, can he successfully begin the liberation of him- self from what he has, and only by having freed himself from everything hereditary, can he begin to struggle with the inborn sins, that is, to give to others what is consid- ered necessary for the support of life itself. LVII. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE SIN OF LOVE OF POWER 339. "Kings rule over the nations and are honoured, but let it not be thus among you, — he who wants to be first, let him be a servant to all," says the Christian teach- ing. According to the Christian teaching a man is sent into the world in order to serve God ; now the service of God is achieved through the manifestation of love. Love can be manifested only through serving men, and so every struggle of a man who has awakened to rational con- sciousness with other beings, that is, violence and the desire to cause another man to commit an act which is contrary to his will, is contrary to man's destination and interferes with his true good. 340. But a man who has awakened to the rational 446 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING consciousness and who enters into a struggle with other beings in this way not only deprives himself of the good of the true life, but even does not attain that good of the separate being, after which he is striving. 341. A man who is still living the animal life alone, like a child or an animal, struggles with other beings only so long as his animal instincts demand this struggle : he takes a piece away from another, so long as he is hun- gry, and drives another man away from his place, only so long as he himself has no place ; he employs nothing but physical force for this struggle, and, having conquered or being vanquished in the struggle, he makes an end of it. And, in acting thus, he receives the greatest good which is accessible to him as a separate being. 342. But not the same happens with a man with an awakened reason, who enters into the struggle : a man with an awakened reason, on entering into the struggle, uses for this his whole reason and sets his aim in the struggle, and so never knows when to stop it ; and, having conquered, he is carried away by the desire for further victories, evoking in the conquered hatred, which poisons his life, if he is a victor, — and if he is worsted, he suffers himself from humiliation and hatred. Thus a rational man who enters into a struggle with beings not only does not increase the good of his separate being, but even diminishes it and puts in its place sufferings which he himself has produced. 343. A man who avoids struggling, who is meek, is, in the first place, free and can give his forces to what attracts him ; in the second place, as he loves others and humbles himself before them, he evokes love in them, and so can make use of those goods of the worldly life which fall to his share, while a rational man who enters into the struggle inevitably gives up all his life to the efforts of the struggle and, in the second place, by provoking re- sistance and hatred in otlier people through the struggle, THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 447 cannot calmly make use of those goods which he has obtained through the struggle, because he must without cessation defend them. 344. Such are the consequences of the sin of the struggle for the sinner; but for those around him the consequences of the sin are in all kinds of suffering and privations, which the conquered suffer, but chiefly in those sentiments of hatred which they provoke in people in place of the natural or amicable brotherly feeling. 345. Although a man, so long as he is in this life, will never free himself from the conditions of the struggle, yet, the more he will free himself from them in accord- ance with his strength, the more will he attain the true good, the more of the worldly good will be added to him, and the more will he contribute to the good of the world. 346. And so, to free himself from the sin of the struggle, a man must clearly understand and remember that both his true spiritual and his temporal animal good will be greater the smaller his struggle will be with men and all other beings, and the greater his humility and meekness will be, and the more he will learn to submit his other cheek to him who will strike him, and to give his cloak to him who takes away his coat. 347. In order not to fall into the habit of the sin, a man must begin by not increasing in himself that sin of the struggle in which he is : if a man is already in the struggle with animals or men, so that his whole carnal life is sustained by this struggle, let him continue this struggle, without intensifying it, and let him not enter into a struggle with other beings, — and he will do much for his liberation from the sin of the struggle. If only men did not increase the struggle, the struggle would be abolished more and more, since there are always men who more and more renounce the struggle. 348. But if a man has reached the point where he lives without increasing the struggle with the surrounding be- 448 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING ings, let him labour to diminish and weaken that state of the hereditary struggle in which every man is, when he enters into life. 349. But if a man succeeds in freeing himself from this struggle in which he is brought up, let him try to free himself from those natural conditions of the struggle in which every man finds himself. LVIIl. THE STKUGGLE WITH THE SIN OF FORNICATION 350. Man's destiny is to serve God, which consists in the manifestation of love toward all beings and men ; but the man who abandons himself to the lust of love weakens his forces and takes them away from the service of God^ and so, by abandoning himself to sexual lust, deprives himself of the good of the true life. 351. But a man who abandons himself to sexual lust, in whatever form it be, not only deprives himself of the true good, but also does not attain the good which he is seeking. 352. If a man lives in regular wedlock, entering into sexual intercourse only when there can be children, and educates his children, there inevitably follow sufferings and cares for the mother, for the father cares about the mother and the child, mutual alienations and frequent quarrels between the married pair and between the par- ents and the children. 353. But if a man enters into sexual intercourse with- out the purpose of begetting and bringing up children, tries not to have them, and, ha\dng them, pays no attention to them, and changes the objects of his love, the good of the separate being becomes even less possible, and he in- variably subjects himself to sufferings, which are the more violent the more he abandons himself to the sexual passion : there appear a weakening of the physical and spiritual forces, quarrels, diseases, and there is not that consolation THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 449 which those who live in regular wedlock have, — the family and all its assistance and joys. 354. Such are the consequences of the sin of fornica- tion for the sinner ; but for other people they consist in this, that, in the first place, the person with whom the sin is committed bears all the consequences of the sin : the privation of the true and the temporal good, and the same sufferings and diseases ; and for those who surround him ; the destruction of the children in the fcetus, infan- ticide, the abandoning of children without proper care and without any education, and the horrible evil, which ruins the human souls, prostitution. 355. Not one living being is able to destroy this tendency in its own body, nor can man, if we do not consider the exceptions. Nor can it be otherwise, since this lust secures the existence of the human race, and so, as long as the higher will needs the existence of the human race, there will be fornication in it. 356. But this fornication may be reduced to a mini- mum, and by some people may be carried to complete chastity. And in this diminution and reduction of the sin to a minimum and even to chastity in the case of some, as it says in the Gospel, does the struggle with the sin of fornication consist. 357. And so, to free himself from the sin of fornication, a man must understand and remember that fornication is a necessary condition of every animal and every man, as an animal, but that the awakened rational consciousness in man demands of him the opposite, that is, complete chastity, and that the more he will surrender himself to fornica- tion, the less will he receive, not only of the true good, but even of the temporal animal good, and the more suffering will he cause to himself and to other men. 358. To counteract the habit of this sin, a man must begin by not increasing in himself that sin of fornication, in which he finds himself. If a man is chaste, let him 450 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING not impair his chastity ; if he is married, let him remain true to his mate ; if he has intercourse with many, let him continue to hve so, without inventing unnatural methods of debauchery. Let him not change his position and increase his sin of fornication. If men only did so, all their great sufferings would be destroyed. 359. And if a man has come to a point where he does not commit any new sin, let him labour on diminishing that sin of fornication in which he is : let the one who is chaste in fact struggle with the mental sin of fornication ; let the married man try to diminish and regulate his sexual intercourse. Let him who knows many women, and her who knows many men, become true to the chosen mate. 360. And if a man shall be able to free himself from those habits of fornication, in which he happens to be, let him strive to free himself from those inborn conditions of fornication, in which every man is born. 361. Although but few men can be completely chaste, let every man understand and remember that he can always be chaster than he was before, and can return to the violated chastity, and that the more a man, in accord- ance with his strength, approaches complete chastity, the more he attains the true good, the more of the worldly good will be added to him, and the more will he oontrib- ute to the good of men. PART THE SEVENTH OF PRAYEK LIX. SPECIAL MEANS FOE THE STEUGGLE WITH THE SINS 362. Not to fall into deception, it is necessary not to trust any one or anything but one's own reason ; not to fall into an offence, it is necessary not to justify acts which are contrary to the truth, to life ; not to fall into sin, one must clearly understand that sin is evil and de- prives one not only of the true good, but also of the per- sonal good, and produces evil in men, and, besides, one must know that sequence of the sins in which it is neces- sary to struggle with them, 363. But men know this and none the less fall into sin. This is due to the fact that men either do not know quite clearly who they are, what their ego is, or forget this. 364. In order more and more fully and more and more clearly to know oneself and to remember what man is, there is one powerful means. This means is prayer. LX. OF PEAYEE 365. It has been recognized since antiquity that man has need of prayer. 366. For the men of antiquity prayer was, and it even now remains for the majority of men, an address under 451 452 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING certain conditions, in certain places, under certain acts and words, to God, or to the gods, for the purpose of propitiating them. 367. The Christian teaching does not know such prayers, but teaches that prayer is indispensable, not as a means for a hberation from worldly calamities and for the acquisition of worldly goods, but as a means for strengthening man in the struggle with the sins. 368. For the struggle with the sins a man must under- stand and remember his position in the world, and in the performance of every act he must estimate the value of it, in order that he may not fall into sin. For either, prayer is necessary. 369. And so Christian prayer is of two kinds : one, which elucidates to man his position in the world, — tem- porary prayer, and the other, which accompanies every act of his, presenting it to God's judgment and verifying it, — ■■ hourly prayer. LXI. TEMPORARY PRAYER 370. Temporary prayer is a prayer by means of which a man in the best moments of his hfe, abstracting him- self from everything worldly, evokes in himself the clear- est possible consciousness of God and his relation to him. 371. It is that prayer of which Christ speaks in the sixth chapter of Matthew, when he opposes it to the wordy and public prayers of the Pharisees, and for which he makes solitude a necessary condition. These words show men how they should pray. 372. And the Lord's prayer, as well as the prayer uttered by Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, shows us how to pray and in what the true temporary prayer should consist, which, elucidating man's consciousness about the truth of his life, about his relation to God, and THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 453 about his destinatiou in the world, strengthens his spiritual powers. 373. As such a prayer may serve a man's expression in his own words of his relation to God ; but such a prayer has always consisted for all men in the repetition of the expressions and ideas of men who lived before us and who expressed their relation to God, and a union of souls with these men and with God. Thus Christ prayed, repeating the words of a psalm, and we pray truly, when we repeat Christ's words, and not only Christ's, but also those of Socrates, Buddha, Lao-tse, Pascal, and others, if we live over that spiritual condition which these men passed through and expressed in those expressions which have come down to us. 374. And so the true temporary prayer will not be the one which will be performed at definite hours and days, but only the one which is performed in moments of the highest spiritual moods, moments which come over every man, which often are evoked by sufferings or by the prox- imity of death, and at times come without any external cause, and which a man should value, as his highest treasure and use for the greater and ever greater elucidation of his consciousness, because only at these moments does our forward motion and approximation to God take place. 375. Such a prayer cannot be performed in assemblies, nor with external actions, but by all means in complete solitude and in freedom from every external, distracting influence. 376. This prayer is the one which moves a man from the lower stage of life to the higher, from the animal to man, and from man to God. 377. Only thanks to this prayer does a man recognize himself, his divine nature, and feel those barriers which confine his divine nature, and, feeling them, try to break them, and in this tendency widen them. 378. It is that prayer which, elucidating consciousness. 454 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING makes impossible for man the sins into which he fell before and presents to him as sin what before had not appeared as sinful to him. LXII. HOURLY PRAYER 379. In his motion from the animal to the true and spiritual life, in his birth to a new life, in his struggle with sin, every man always finds himself in three differ- ent relations to sin : one set of sins is vanquished by man, — they sit like captured animals, bound to then- chain, and only now and then by their bellowing remind him that they are ahve. These sins are behind. Other sins are such as a man has just come to see, acts which he has committed all his life, without considering them sins, and the sinfulness of which he has just come to see in consequence of the clearing up of his consciousness in temporary prayer. A man sees the sinfulness of his acts, but he is so accustomed to committing them, that he has but lately and indistinctly recognized the sinfulness of these deeds and has not yet attempted to struggle against them. And there is a third kind of acts, the sinfulness of which a man sees clearly, with which he struggles, and which he at times commits, surrendering himself to sin, and at times does not commit, vanquishing sin. 380. For the struggle with these sins hourly prayer is needed. Hourly prayer consists in this, that it reminds a man at all minutes of his life, during all his acts, of what his life and good consist in, and so cooperates with him in those acts of life in which he is still able to vanquish the animal nature by means of his spiritual consciousness. 381. Hourly prayer is a constant recognition of the presence of God, a constant recognition by the ambassador during the time of his embassy of the presence of him who sent him. THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 455 382. The birth to new life, the liberation of self from the shackles of the animal nature, the liberation of self from sin, takes place only by slow efibrts. Temporary prayer, in enlightening man's consciousness, reveals to him his sin. The sin at first appears to him unimportant, bearable, but the longer a man hves, the more pressing does the necessity become of freeing himself from sin. And if a man does not fall into an offence which conceals his sin, he inevitably enters into a struggle with sin. 383. But with his first attempts to overcome sin, a man feels his impotence : the sin attracts him by the sweetness of the habit of the sin ; and a man is unable to oppose anything to the sin but the consciousness of the fact that the sin is not good, and, knowing that what he is doing is bad, he continues to do what is bad. 384. There is but one way out of this situation. Some religious teachers see it in this, that there exists a sepa- rate force, called grace, which supports man in his struggle with sin, which is obtained through certain actions called sacraments. Other teachers see a way out of this situa- tion in the redemption, which was accomplished by Christ the God in his death for men. Others again see this way out in prayer addressed to God about strengthen- ing man's power in his struggle with sin. 385. But none of these means makes it easier for a man to struggle with sin ; in spite of the grace of the sacrament, of the faith in the redemption, of suppliant prayer, every man who has sincerely begun to struggle with sin cannot help but feel his whole weakness before the mightiness of sin and the hopelessness of the struggle with it. 386. The hopelessness of the struggle presents itself very forcibly, because, having come to understand the lie of the sin, a man wants to free himself from it at once, in which he is supported by all kinds of false teachings concerning redemption, the sacraments, and so forth, and. 456 THE CHRTRTIAK TEACHING feeling the impotence of the liberation, he at once neglects those insignificant efforts which he can make for freeing himself from sin. 387. However, as all the great transformations in the material world do not take place at once, but by slow and gradual falling off and accretion, so also in the spiritual world the Hberation from &m and the approach to per- fection take place only through the counteraction to sin, — through the successive destruction of its minutest particles. 388. It is not in man's power to free himself from a sin which has become a habit in the course of many years ; but it is entirely within his power not to commit acts which draw into sin, to diminish the attractiveness of sin, to put himself where it is impossible to commit a sin, to cut off his hand and put out his eye which offend him. And this he should do every day and every minute, and in order to be able to do this, he needs hourly prayer. PART THE EIGHTH CONCLUSION LXIII. WHAT MAY A MAN EXPECT WHO LIVES A CHRISTIAN LIFE IN THE PRESENT? 389. There are religious teachiugs which promise men who follow them a full and complete good in life, not only in the one to come, but also in this. There is even such a comprehension of the Christian teaching. The men who understand the Christian teacliing in this manner say that a man needs but follow Christ's teaching, to renounce himself, to love men, and his life will be one continuous joy. There are other religious teachings which see in human hfe nothing but unending, necessary suffering, which a man must bear, expecting rewards in the future life. There exists such a comprehension also of the Christian teaching : some see in life constant joy, others — constant suffering. 390. Neither comprehension is correct. Life is not joy, nor suffering. It may present itself as joy or as suffering only to that man who considers his separate existence to be his ego ; only for this ego can there be joy or suffering. Life according to the Christian teaching, in its true sense, is neither joy, nor suffering, but the birth and growth of man's true s})iritual ego, with which there can be no joy and no suffering. 391. According to the Christian teaching, man's life is a constant growth of his consciousness of love. And since 457 458 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING the growth of the human soul, the increase of love, is taking place without cessation, and there is also taking place in the world without cessation that work of God which is accomplished by this growth, a man who under- stands his life as the Christian teaching teaches him to understand it, namely, as an increase of love for the estab- lishment of the kingdom of God, can never be unhappy or dissatisfied. 392. On the path of his life there may occur joys and sufferings for his animal personality, which he cannot help but feel, which he cannot help but enjoy or bear, but he can never experience complete happiness (and so he can- not wish for it) aud can never be unhappy (and so cannot fear sufferings and wish to avoid them, if they are in his way). 393. A man who lives a Christian life does not ascribe any great meaning to his joys, does not look upon them as the realization of his wishes, but looks upon them only as accidental phenomena which one meets on the path of life, as something which is naturally added to him who seeks the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and he does not look upon his sufferings as something that ought not to be, but looks upon them as an indispensable phe- nomenon of life like friction in work, knowing likewise, that as friction is a sign of work performed, so sufferings are a sign of the performance of the work of God. 394. A man who lives a Christian life is always free, because the same that forms the meaning of his life, — the removal of obstacles which impede love and, in consequence of this removal, the increase of love and the establish- ment of the kingdom of God, is precisely what he always wants and what is irresistibly accomplished in his life ; he is always calm, because nothing can happen to him which he does not wish. 395. We must not think that a man who lives a Christian life always experiences this freedom and peace, THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 459 always receives joys, without being carried away by them, as something accidental, without wishing to re- tain them, and sufferings as an indispensable condition of the motion of life. A Christian may temporarily be carried away by joys, trying to produce and retain them, and temporarily be tormented by sufferings, taking them as something unnecessary, which might even not have been ; but at the loss of joys, at the fear and pain of sufferings, a Christian immediately recalls his Christian dignity, his embassy, and his joys and sufferings take up their appropriate place, and he again becomes free and calm. 396. Thus even in a worldly relation the position of a Christian is not w^orse, but better than the position of a non-Christian. " Seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and the rest shall be added unto you," means that all the worldly joys of life are not kept away from a Christian, but are fully accessible to him, with this one difference, that while the joys of a non-Christian may be artificial and may pass over into satiety, into sufferings, and so appear to him as unnecessary and hopeless, — for a Christian the joys are more simple and more natural, and so more powerful, never producing satiety or suffering : they can never cause so much pain and seem so senseless as they do to a non-Christian. Such is the position of a Christian in the life of the present ; but what can a Christian expect in the future ? LXIV. WHAT MAY A MAN EXPECT IN THE FUTURE ? 397. Living in this world in his bodily integument, a man cannot represent life to himself otherwise than in space and time, and so he naturally asks himself, where he will he after death. 398. But this question is faulty : The divine essence of our soul is spiritual, extratemporal and extraspatial ; be- 460 THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING ing in this life enclosed in the body, the soul, on leaving it, ceases to be in conditions of space and time, and so we cannot say of this essence that it will he. It is. Even so Christ said, " Before Abraham was, I am." Thus we all are. If we are, we have always been and shall always be. We are. 399. Even so it is with the question where we shall be. When we speak of where, we speak of the place in which we shall be. But the idea of place resulted only from that division from everything else, in which we are placed. At death this division is destroyed, and so we shall be everywhere and nowhere, for the people who live iu this world. We shall be such that place will not exist for us. 400. There exist many different guesses as to where we shall be after death ; but all these guesses, from the grossest to the most delicate, cannot satisfy a rational man. Bhss, Mohammed's voluptuousness, is too gross and palpably incompatible with the true concept of man and God. Even so the church representation of paradise and hell is not compatible with the concept of a God of love. The transmigration of the souls is less gross, but it similarly preserves the concept of the individuality of the being : the concept of the Nirvana destroys the whole coarseness of the idea, but violates the demands of reason, — the rationality of existence. 401. Thus no representation of what will be after death gives any answer which could satisfy a rational man. 402. Nor can it be otherwise. The question is falsely put. The human mind, which can reason only in condi- tions of time and space, wants to give an answer to what will be outside these conditions.- Reason knows but this much, that there is a divine essence, that it grew in this world, and that having reached a certain degree of its growth, it left these conditions. 403. Will this essence continue to act in severalty ? Will this increase of love be the cause of another new THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING 461 division ? All these are guesses, and there may be very many such guesses, but not one of them can give any ascertainable truth. 404. One thing is certain and indubitable, and that is, that Christ has said, " Into thy hands I commend my spirit," that is, dying I return whence I came. And if I believe in this, that that from which I have come is rational love (I know these two properties), I joyfully re- turn to him, knowing that I shall fare well. I not only do not grieve, but even rejoice at the transition which awaits me. HELP! Postscript to an Appeal to Help the Dukhobors Persecuted in the Caucasus 1896 HELP! POSTSCKIPT TO AN APPEAL TO HELP THE DUKHOBOES PEPtSECUTED IN THE CAU- CASUS The facts related in this appeal, composed by three of my friends, have been many times verified, looked over, and sifted ; this appeal has several times been changed and corrected ; everything which might appear as an exacTCTeration, though it is true, has been rejected ; thus everything which is now told in this appeal is the real, indubitable truth, to the extent to which the truth is accessible to men who are guided by the one religious sentiment of a desire by the publication of this truth to serve God and one's neighbours, both the persecuted and the persecutors. But no matter how startling the facts here related may be, their significance is determined not by the facts them- selves, but by how those who will learn of it will look upon them. "But they are a kind of mutineers, coarse, illiterate peasants, fanatics, who have come under some evil influ- ence. They are a dangerous, anti-governmental sect, which the government cannot tolerate and must obviously sup- press, like any other doctrine which may be harmful to the common good. If children, women, and innocent people shall suffer from this, what is to be done ? " people 465 466 HELP ! will say, shrugging their shoulders, without understan^ng the significance of this event. In general, to the majority of men this phenomenon will appear interesting, like any phenomenon whose place is firmly and clearly defined : smugglers make their ap- pearance, — they have to be caught ; anarchists, terrorists make their appearance, — society has to be made secure against them ; fanatics, the Eunuchs make their appearance, — they have to be locked up and sent into exile ; viola- tors of the order of state make their appearance, — they have to be crushed. All that seemed indubitable, simple, decided upon, and, so, uninteresting. At the same time such a relation to what is told in this appeal is a great error. As in the life of each individual person, — I know this in my own life, and anybody will find such cases in his own, — so also in the life of the nations and of humanity there appear events which form the turning-point of a whole existence ; and these events — like that faint morning breeze, and not storm, in which Elijah saw God — are never loud, nor startling, nor noticeable, and in your personal life you later on are sorry tliat you did not at that time know or guess the importance of what was taking place. " If I had known that this was such an important moment in my hfe," you think later, " I should have acted differently." The same is true of the hfe of humanity. A triumpher, some Eoman imperator enters Eome with a rattling and a noise, — how important this seems ! And how insignificant it then seemed when a Galilean preached some new kind of a teaching and was executed for it, together with hundreds of others executed for what seemed to be similar crimes ! Even so now, how important it seems to the refined members of the English, French, and Italian parliaments and the Austrian and German diets, with their aggressive parties, and to all the promoters of the City, and to the bankers of the HELP ! 4G7 whole world, and to their organs of the press, to solve the questions as to who will occupy the Bosphorus, who will seize a piece of laud in Africa or in Asia, who will come out victorious in the question of bimetallism, and so forth ! And not only how important, but also to what a degree insignificant, so as not to be worth while speak- ing about, seem the stories of how the Eussian govern- ment has taken measures somewhere in the Caucasus to suppress some half-savage fanatics, who deny the obli- gation of submitting to the authorities ! And yet, how insignificant and even comical in reality — by the side of the enormously important phenomenon which is now taking place in the Caucasus — are those strange cares of the cultured adults who are enlightened by Christ's teaching (at least they know this teaching and might be enlightened by it), as to what country will own this or that particle of the earth, and what words will be pro- nounced by this or that erring, blundering man, who represents only the product of surrounding condi- tions. There was some reason why Pilate and Herod should not have understood the significance of that for which the Galilean, who was disturbing the peace of their district, was brought before them for trial ; they did not even deem it necessary to find out in what his teaching consisted ; if they had found it out it would have been excusable for them to think that it would disappear (as Gamaliel said) ; but we cannot help knowing the teaching itself, and that it has not disappeared for the period of eighteen hundred years, and that it will not disappear until it is realized. And if we know this, we cannot, in spite of the unimportance, the illiteracy, the inglorious- ness of the Dukhobors, help seeing the importance of what is taking place among them. Christ's disciples were just such unimportant, unrefined, unknown people. Christ's disciples could not be anything else. Amidst the Dukho- 468 HELP ! bors, or rather, the Christian Universal Brotherhood, as they now call themselves, there is not taking place any- thing new, but only the germination of the seed which Christ sowed eighteen hundred years ago, — the resurrec- tion of Christ Himself. This resurrection will certainly take place ; it cannot help but take place, and we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that it is taking place, simply because it is being accomplished without the firing of cannon, without military parades, without fluttering flags, fontaines lumineuses, music, electric light, ringing of bells, solemn addresses, and shouts of people adorned with gold lace and ribbons. It is only savages who judge of the importance of a phenomenon by the external splendour by which it is accompanied. Whether we wish to see it or not, — now, in the Cau- casus, in the life of the Christians of the Universal Brotherhood, especially since the time of their persecu- tion, there has appeared that realization of the Christian life, for which everything good and rational done in the world is taking place. All our structures of state, our parliaments, societies, sciences, arts, — all this exists and lives for the purpose of realizing the life which we all, thinking people, see before us, as the highest ideal of perfection. And there are people who have realized this ideal, in all likelihood in part only, and not in full, but who have realized it in such a way as we did not even dream to materialize with our complicated governmental institutions. How can we help acknowledging the sig- nificance of this phenomenon ? What is being realized is what we are all striving after, and what all our complicated activity leads us to. People generally say : such attempts at realizing the Christian life have existed before : there were the Quakers, the Mennonites, and all of them weakened and degen- erated into common people, living the common civil life. HELP ! 469 consequently the attempts at realizing the Christian life are not important. But to say this is the same as saying that the labours which have not yet ended in childbirth, and warm rains and sunbeams that have not immediately brought spring, are of no importance. What is important for the realization of the Christian life ? Certainly not by diplomatic exchanges in regard to Abyssinia and Constantinople, nor by papal encyclicals, nor by sociahstic congresses, nor by similar things will men approach that which the world lives for. If there is to be a reahzation of the kingdom of God, that is, the kingdom of truth and goodness upon earth, it will be only through such endeavours as those which were made by the first disciples of Christ, then by the Paulicians, the Albigenses, Quakers, Moravian brothers, Mennonites, by all the true Christians of the world, and now by the Christians of the Universal Brotherhood. The fact that these labours are lasting long and becoming stronger does not prove that there will be no birth, but, on the contrary, that it is at hand. They say that this will happen, only not in this way, but in some other way, — through books, newspapers, universities, theatres, speeches, assemblies, congresses. Even if we admit that all these newspapers, and books, and assemblies, and universities are contributing to the realization of the Christian life, the realization will none the less have to be achieved by men, good. Christian men who are prepared for a good, common life; and so the chief condition for the realization is the existence and assembly of such men as are already realizing what we are striving after. May be, though I doubt it, even now they will crush the movement of the Christian Universal Brotherhood, especially if society itself fails to comprehend the whole meaning of what is taking place and will not help them 470 HELP ! with brotherly cooperation ; but what this movement represents, what is expressed in it, will not die, cannot die, and sooner or later will burst into light, will destroy what crushes it, and will take possession of the world. It is only a question of time. It is true, there are people, and unfortunately there are many of them, who think and say, " So long as it does not happen in our day," and so try to arrest the move- ment. But their efforts are useless, aud they do not retard the movement, but with their efforts only ruin their own life which is given them. Life is hfe only when it is a ministration to God's work. In counteract- ing it men deprive themselves of life, and yet neither for a year, nor for an hour, are able to arrest the accomplish- ment of God's work. We cannot help seeing that with that external union which has now established itself between all the inhabi- tants of the earth, with that awakening of the Christian spirit, which is now manifesting itself on all the sides of the earth, the accomplishment is near. And that malice and blindness of the Eussian government, which directs against the Christians of the Universal Brotherhood per- secutions that resemble those of pagan times, and that remarkable meekness and firmness, with which the new Christian martyrs are bearing these persecutions, — all that is a certain sign of the nearness of this accomplish- ment. And so, having come to understand the whole impor- tance of the event which is taking place, both in the life of the whole humanity, as also in that of each one of us, and remembering that the occasion for action, which is presenting itself to us now, will never return to us, let us do what the merchant of the gospel parable did when he sold everything in order to acquire a priceless gem : let us discard all petty, greedy considerations, and let each one of us, no matter in what position we may be, do HELP ! 471 everything in our power, in order, if not to help those through whom God's work is being done, if not to take part in this matter, at least not to be opponents of God's work, which is being accomplished for our good. Moscow, December I4, 1896. LETTER TO THE CHIEF OF THE IRKUTSK DISCIPLIN- ARY BATTALION 1896 LETTER TO THE CHIEF OF THE IRKUTSK DISCIPLIN- ARY BATTALION October 22, 1896. Dear Sir : — As I do not know your Christian name and patronymic, nor even your family name, I am unable to address you otherwise than in this cold and somewhat unpleasant formula, " Dear Sir," which distances people from one another ; and yet I am addressing you on a very intimate matter, and I should hke to avoid all those external forms which separate men, and wish, on the contrary, if not to evoke in you toward me a fraternal relation, which it is proper for men to have toward one another, at least to destroy every preconception which may be evoked in you by my letter and name. I wish you would act toward me and toward my request as toward a man of whom you know nothing, neither good nor bad, and whose address to you you are ready to hear with benevolent attention. The matter in which I wish to ask you for something is this : Into your disciplinary battalion there have entered, or shortly will enter, two men, who by the Brigade Court of Vladivostok were condemned to three years' imprison- ment. One of them is Peasant Peter Olkhovik, who refused to do military service, because he considers it 475 476 LETTER TO CHIEF OF BATTALION contrary to God's law ; the other is Kirill Sereda, a com- mon soldier, who made Olkhovik's acquaintance on a boat and, learning from him the cause of his deportation, came to the same conclusions as Olkhdvik, and refused to continue in the service. I understand very well that the government, not hav- ing as yet worked out any law to cover the peculiarities of such cases, cannot act otherwise than it has acted, although I know that of late the highest authorities, whose attention has been directed to the cruelty aad in- justice of punishing such men on the par with vicious soldiers, is anxious to discover juster and easier means for the counteraction to such refusals. I also know full well that you, occupying your position and not sharing Olkho- • vik's and Sereda's convictions, cannot act otherwise than to execute strictly what the law prescribes to you ; none the less I beg you, as a Christian and a goodman , to pity these men who are guilty of notliing but doing what they consider to be God's law, giving it preference to human laws. I will not conceal from you that personally I not only believe that these men are doing what is right, but also, that very soon all men will comprehend that these men are doing a great and holy work. But it is very likely that such an opinion will appear to you as madness, and that you are convinced of the contrary. I will not permit myself to convince you, knowing that serious people of your age do not arrive at certain convictions through other people's words, but through the inner work of their own thought. There is one thing I implore you to do, as a Christian, a good man, and a brother, — my brother, Olkhovik's, and Sereda's, — as a man walking with us under the protection of the same God and sure to go after death whither we all go, — I implore you not to conceal from yourself the fact that these men (Olkhdvik and Sereda) differ from other crimi- LETTER TO CHIEF OF BATTALION 477 nals ; not to demand of them the execution of what they have once for all refused to do ; not to tempt them, thus leading them into new and ever new crimes and imposing upon them all the time new punishments, as they did with poor Drozhzhiu, who was tortured to death in the Voronezh disciplinary battalion, and who evoked universal sympathy even in the highest spheres. Without depart- ing from the law and from a conscientious execution of your duties, you can make the confinement of these men a hell, and ruin them, or considerably lighten their suffer- ings. It is this I implore you to do, hoping that you will find this request superfluous, and that your inner feeling will even before this have inclined you to do the same. Judging from the post which you occupy, I assume that your views of life and of man's duties are the very opposite of mine. I cannot conceal from you the fact that I consider your duty incompatible with Christianity, and I wish you, as I wish any man, a liberation from the participation in such matters. But, knowing all my sins, both in the past and in the present, and all my weak- nesses, and the deeds done by me, I not only do not per- mit myself to condemn you for your duty, but also have nothing but respect and love for you, as for any brother in Christ. I shall be thankful to you, if you answer me. HOW TO READ THE GOSPEL AND WHAT IS ITS ESSENCE? 1896 HOW TO READ THE GOSPEL AND WHAT IS ITS ESSENCE? In what is taught as Christ's teaching there are so many strange, improbable, incomprehensible, and even contradictory things, that one does not know how to com- prehend it. Besides, this teaching is not understood alike: some say that the whole matter is in the redemption ; others, that the whole matter is in grace which is received through the sacraments ; others again, that the whole matter is in the obedience to the church. But the differ- ent churches understand the teaching differently : the Catholic Church recognizes the origin of the Holy Ghost from the Son and the Father and the infallibility of the Pope, and regards salvation as possible, especially through works ; the Lutheran does not recognize this, and regards salvation as possible, especially through faith ; the Greek Orthodox recognizes the origin of the Holy Ghost from the Father, and for salvation considers both works and faith to be necessary. The Anglican, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches, to say nothing of a hundred other churches, all understand the Christian teaching, each in its own way. I am frequently approached by young men and by 481 482 HOW TO READ THE GOSPEL people from the masses, who have lost their faith in the truth of the church teaching, in which they were edu- cated, asking me what my teaching consists in, how / understand the Christian teaching. Such questions always pain and even offend me. Christ — God, according to the teaching of the church — came down upon earth, in order to reveal divine truth to men for their guidance in life. A man, — a simple, fool- ish man, — who wants to convey to people an injunction which is of importance to them, always knows how to convey it in such a way that the people can understand it. Suddenly God came down upon earth only in order to save men, and this God did not know how to say what he had to say, so as to keep people from interpreting it in such a way as to diverge in the comprehension of it. This is impossible, if Christ was God. This cannot be, even if Christ was not God, but only a great teacher. A great teacher is great for the very reason that he knows how to tell a truth, that is as clear as dayhght, so that it is impossible to conceal or shroud it. And so, in either case, there must be the truth in the gospels which give us Christ's teaching. Indeed, the truth is in the gospels to be found by all those who will read them with a sincere desire to know the truth and without any preconceived notion and, above all else, without any idea that in them is to be found some special wisdom, which is not accessible to the human mind. I read the gospels in this manner, and found in them an absolutely comprehensible truth, which, as it says in the gospels, can be understood by babes. And so, when I am asked wherein my teaching consists, and how I understand the Christian teaching, I answer, " I have no teaching, and [ understand the Christian teaching as it is expounded in the gospels. If I have written books on the Christian teaching, I did so only to prove the incorrectness of those HOW TO READ THE GOSPEL 483 explanations which are made by the commentators of the gospels. In order to understand the Christian teaching as it is in reality, it is necessary, first of all, not to interpret the gos- pels, but to understand them just as they are written. And so, in reply to the question as to how we are to understand Christ's teaching, I say, " If you wish to under- stand Christ's teaching, read the gospels, — read them after having renounced every preconceived comprehension, with the one desire to understand what is said in the gospels. But for the very reason that the Gospel is a sacred book, it ought to be read with understanding and analysis, and not at haphazard, in succession, ascribing the same mean- ing to every word found in it. To understand any book, it is necessary to set aside everything comprehensible from everything incomprehen- sible and compHcated in it, and from this sifted compre- hensible material to form an idea of the meaning and the spirit of the whole book, and then on the basis of what is fuUy comprehensible to explain the passages that are incomprehensible or complicated. Thus we read every kind of a book. So much the more must we thus read the Gospel, a book which has passed through complicated harmonizations, translations, and transcriptions, composed eighteen centuries ago by uneducated and superstitious people.! Thus, in order to understand the Gospel, it is necessary 1 As is well known to all who study the origin of these books, the Gospel is by no means the infallible expression of divine truth, but tlie product of numerous human hands and minds, full of errors, and so it can in no way be taken as the production of the Holy Ghost, as the churchmen say it is. If this were so, God Himself would have revealed it, just as it says that He revealed the commandments on Mount Sinai or by some miracle transmitted to men a complete book, as the Mormons maintain about their sacred writings. We now know how these books were written down, collected, corrected, translated, and so we not only cannot accept them as an infallible revelation, but are obliged, if we value truth, to correct the errors which we find in them. — Author's Note. 484 HOW TO READ THE GOSPEL first of all to sift in it what is fully comprehensible and simple from what is incomprehensible and complicated, and having done so, to read what is clear and compre- hensible several times in succession, trying to become familiar with the meaning of this simple, clear teaching, and then only, on the basis of the meaning of the whole teaching, to make out the meaning of those passages which seemed complicated and obscure. Thus I did with the reading of the gospels, and the meaning of Christ's teaching was revealed to me with such clearness that no doubt could be left. And so I advise every man who wishes to understand the true meaning of Christ's teaching to do hkewise. Let him who reads the Gospel underline everything which to him appears quite simple, clear, and compre- hensible with a blue pencil, marking, besides, with a red pencil, these passages in Christ's own words as distinct from the words of the evangelists, and let him read these passages, which are underlined red, several times. Only after he understands these passages well, let him again read all the other, incomprehensible, and so previously not underlined passages from Christ's discourses, and let him underhue in red those that have become compre- hensible to him. But the passages which contain such of Christ's words as remain entirely incomprehensible should remain unmarked. The passages which are thus marked in red will give the reader the essence of Christ's teaching, what all men need, and what, therefore, Christ said in such a way that all might understand it. The passages under- lined with blue only will give what the writers of the gos- pels said in their own name and what is comprehensible. It is very likely that in marking what is completely comprehensible, and what not, different people will mark different passages, so that what is comprehensible to one will appear obscure to another; but on the main things all men will be sure to agree, and one and the same thing HOW TO READ THE GOSPEL 485 will appear completely comprehensible to alL It is this which is absolutely comprehensible to all that forms the essence of Christ's teaching. In my Gospel my marks are made in correspondence with my comprehension. Ydsnaya Polydna, July 22, 1896. THE APPROACH OF THE END 1896 THE APPROACH OF THE END -• — This year, 1896, a young man, by the name of Van-der- Veer, was summoned in Holland to enter the national guard. To the summons of the commander, Van-der-Veer re- plied in the following letter: "thou shalt not kill "Me. Herman Snijders, " Commander of the National Guard of the Middelburg Circuit. " Dear Sir : — Last week I received a document in which I was commanded to appear in the magistracy, in order to be enlisted according to the law in the national guard. As you, no doubt, have noticed, I did not appear ; and the present letter has for its purpose to inform you frankly, and without any ambiguities, that I have no intention of appearing before the commission ; I know full well that I subject myself to a heavy responsibility, that you can punish me, and that you will not fail to make use of this your right. But that does not frighten me. The causes which impel me to manifest this passive resistance present to me a sufficiently important counterbalance to this responsibility. " Better than the majority of Christians, do I, who, if 489 490 THE APPROACH OF THE END you so wish, am not a Christian, understand the com- mandment which is standing at the head of this letter, a commandment inherent in human nature and in reason. When I was still a child, I permitted myself to be in- structed in the soldier's trade, — the art of killing ; but now I refuse. More than anything else, do I not wish to kill by command, which appears as murder against my conscience, without any personal impulse or any foundation whatever. Can you name to me anything more degrading for a human being than the commission of similar murders or slaughter ? I cannot kill an animal, nor see it killed, and not to kill animals, I became a vegetarian. In the present case I may be * commanded ' to shoot men who have never done me any harm : soldiers certainly do not study the manual of arms, I suppose, in order to shoot at leaves on the branches of trees. " But you will perhaps tell me that the national guard must also and above everything else cooperate in the main- tenance of internal order. " Mr. Commander, if there really existed any order in our society ; if the social organism were indeed sound ; in other words, if there did not exist such crying misuses in our social relations ; if it were not permitted that one man should starve to death, while another permits him- self all the lusts of luxury, — you would see me in the first ranks of the defenders of this order ; but I uncon- ditionally refuse to cooperate in the maintenance of the present so-called order. What is the use, Mr. Commander, of pulling the wool over each other's eyes ? We both of us know full well what is meant by the maintenance of this order: it is the support of the rich against the poor workers who are beginning to become conscious of their right. Did you not see the part which your national guard played during the last strike in Eotterdam ? With- out any reason this guard was compelled for whole hours to do service for the purpose of protecting the property of THE APPROACH OF THE END 491 the business firms that were threatened. Can you for a moment suppose that I will surrender myself to take part in the defence of men who, according to my sincere con- viction, are supporting the war between capital and labour, — that I will shoot at the working men who are acting entirely within the limits of their rights ? You cannot be so blind as that ! Why complicate matters ? I cannot, indeed, have myself cut out into an obedient national guardsman, such as you wish to have and as you need I " On the basis of all these causes, but especially because I despise murder by command, I refuse to serve in the capacity of a member of the national guard, and ask you to send me neither uniform, nor weapons, since I have the imperturbable intention of not using them. " I greet you, Mr. Commander. " I. K. Van - der - Veer." This letter has, in my opinion, a very great importance. Refusals to do military service in Christian countries began as soon as military service made its appearance in them, or, rather, when the countries whose power is based on violence, accepted Christianity, without renouncing violence. In reality it cannot be otherwise : a Christian, whose teaching prescribes to him meekness, non-resistance to evil, love of all men, even of his neighbour, cannot be martial, that is, cannot belong to a class of men who are destined only to kill their like. And so true Christians have always refused, and even now refuse, to do military service. But there have always been few true Christians ; the vast majority of men in Christian countries have only counted among Christians, those who profess the ecclesi- astic faith, which has nothing but the name in common with true Christianity. The fact that now and then there appeared, to tens of thousands entering military service, 492 THE APPROACH OF THE EKD one who refused it, did not ia the least disturb those hundreds of thousands, those miUions of men who every year entered military service. " It is impossible that the whole vast majority of men who enter military service should be mistaken, and that the truth should be with the exceptions, who frequently are uneducated men, who refuse to do military service, while archbishops and scholars recognize it to be compati- ble with Christianity," said the people of the majority, who, considering themselves Christians, calmly entered into the ranks of murderers. But here there appears a non-Christian, as he announces himself, and he refuses to do military service, not from religious reasons, but from such as are comprehensible and common to all men, no matter of what faith or what nationahty they may be, — whether Catholics, Moham- medans, Buddhists, Confucianists, Spaniards, Arabians, Japanese. Van-der-Veer refused to do military service, not because he follows the commandment, " Thou shalt not kill," but because he considers murder to be contrary to human reason. He writes that he simply hates any murder, and hates it to such an extent that he became a vegetarian, only not to take part in the murder of animals ; above all, he says, he refuses to do military service, because he considers murder by command, that is, the duty of killing those men whom he is ordered to kill (wherein indeed military service consists), to be incompatible with human dignity. To the customary retort that, if he does not serve, and others, following his example, refuse to serve, the existing order will be violated, he answers by saying that he does not even wish to support the existing order, because it is bad, because in it the rich rule over the poor, which ought not to be, so that even if he had any doubts as to whether he ought to serve in the army or not, the mere thought that, serving in the army, he will by means THE APPROACH OF THE END 493 of weapons and the threat of murder support the oppress- ing rich against the oppressed poor, would make him refuse to do military service. If Van-der-Veer had brought forward as the reason of his refusal his belonging to some Christian denomiuation, men who entered military service could say, " I am not a sectarian and do not acknowledge Christianity, and so do not consider it necessary to act likewise." But the causes adduced by Van-der-Veer are so simple, clear, and common to all men that it is impossible not to apply them to one- self. After this to recognize these causes as not binding, a person wiU have to say, " I love murder and am pre- pared to kill, not only enemies, but even my oppressed and unfortunate compatriots, and I do not find anything wrong in promising at the command of the first com- mander I run across to kill all those whom he commands me to kill." The matter is, indeed, very simple. Here is a young man. No matter in what surround- ings, what family, what faith, he may have grown up, he is taught the necessity of being good and that it is bad to kill, not only a man, but even an animal ; he is taught to esteem highly his human dignity, and this dignity consists in acting according to one's conscience. A Chi- nese Confucianist, a Japanese Shintoist or Buddhist, a Turkish Mohammedan are all of them taught the same. Suddenly, after he has been taught all this, he enters mihtary service, where the very opposite of what he has been taught is demanded of him : he is commanded to be ready to wound and kill, not animals, but men ; he is commanded to renounce his human dignity and in mat- ters of murder to obey unknown strangers. What can a man of our time say to such a demand ? Obviously only this : " I do not want to, and I won't." This is precisely what Van-der-Veer did. And it is hard to imagine what we can retort to him and to all 494 THE APPROACH OF THE END men who, being in the same position as he, must act in the same way. It is possible not to see what has not yet attracted attention, and not to understand the meaning of an act so long as it is not explained ; but once it is pointed out and explained, we cannot avoid seeing it, or pretend that we do not see what is quite clear. Even now there may be found a man who has not thought of what he is doing as he enters military service ; there may be found men who wish for war with other nations, or wish to continue oppressing the working men, or even such as love murder for the sake of murder. Such men may become warriors, but even these men can- not now help but know that there are men, — the best men of the whole world, not only among Christians, but also among Mohammedans, Brahmins, Buddhists, Con- fucianists, — who look with loathing and disgust upon war and the military, and the number of these men is growing with every hour. No arguments can veil the simple truth that a man who respects himself cannot go into slavery to a strange master, or even to one he knows, who has mur- derous intentions. In this only does mihtary service with its discipline consist. " But the responsibility to which the person refusing subjects himself ? " I am told in reply to this. " It is all very well for yoii, an old man, who are no longer sub- ject to this temptation and are secure in your position, to preach martyrdom ; but how is it for those to whom you preach and who, believing you, decline to serve and ruin their youthful lives ? " But what am I to do ? I answer those who tell me this. Must I, because I am an old man, refuse to point out the evil which I see clearly and beyond any doubt, simply because I am an old man and have lived through mucli and thought much ? Must not a man who is on the other side of a river and thus inaccessible to a mur- THE APPROACn OF THE END 495 derer, and who sees that this murderer is about to compel one man to kill another, cry out to the man who is to kill not to do so, even if this interference may still more em- bitter the murderer ? Besides, I fail to see why the gov- ernment, which subjects to persecution those who refuse to do mihtary service, will not inflict punishment upon me, since it recognizes me as the instigator of these refusals. I am not so old as not to be subjected to per- secutions and punishments of every kind, and my position does not in the least protect me. In any case, whether they will condemn and persecute me or not, whether they will condemn and persecute those who refuse to do mili- tary service, I shall never stop, so long as I live, saying what I am saying, because I cannot stop acting in accord- ance with my conscience. Christianity, that is, the teaching of truth, is powerful and invincible for the very reason that, in order to act upon people, it canoot be guided by any external con- sideratious. Whether a man be young or old, whether he be subjected to persecutions for it, or not, he, having made the Christian, that is, the true, life-conception his own, cannot depart from the demands of his conscience. In this does the essence and peculiarity of Christianity con- sist, in contradistinction to all the other rehgious teachings, and in this does its invincible might lie. Van-der-Veer says that he is not a Christian, but the motives of his refusal and his act are Christian : he refuses to serve, because he does not wish to kill a brother, he does not obey, because the commands of his conscience are more obligatory to him than the commands of men. It is for this reason that Van-der- Veer's refusal is especially important. This refusal shows that Christianity is not a sect or a faith, which some men may keep, and others may not keep, but that it is nothing but a following in life of that light of the comprehension which shines upon all men. The meaning of Christianity is not in its bay- 496 THE APPROACH OF THE END ing prescribed to men certain acts, but in its having fore- seen and pointed out the path on which all humanity had to walk and actually did walk. Men who now act well and sensibly do not do so be- cause they follow Christ's injunctions, but because what eighteen hundred years ago was expressed as a direction of an activity has now become the consciousness of men. This is why I think that Van-der-Veer's act and letter are of great importance. Just as a fire started in the prairie or the forest does not subside until it has consumed everything dry and dead, which, therefore, is subject to consumption, so also a truth once expressed in words does not cease acting until it has destroyed the whole lie which is subject to annihilation and which surrounds and conceals the truth on all sides. The fire glimmers for a long time, but the moment it bursts into flame, it soon consumes everything which burns. Even so a thought for a long time begs for recognition, without finding any expression ; it need but find a clear expression in speech, and the lie and the evU are soon destroyed. One of the special manifestations of Christianity, — the idea that humanity can live without slavery, — though included in the idea of Christianity, was clearly expressed, so far as I know, not earlier than the end of the eighteenth century. Up to that time not only the ancient pagans, Plato and Aristotle, but even men who were nearer to our time and Christians could not imagine human society without slavery. Thomas Moore could not imagine Utopia even without slavery. Even so the men of the beginning of the present century could not imagine the life of humanity witliout war. Only after the Napoleonic wars was the thought clearly expressed that humanity can live without slavery. One hundred years have passed since the time when the idea was clearly enunciated that humanity can live without slavery, and among Christians there is no longer any slav- THE APPROACH OF THE END 497 ery ; and less than a hundred years will pass from the time that the idea has been clearly enunciated that humanity can live without war, and there will be no war. It is very likely that war will not be fully abolished, even as slavery is not fully abolished. It is very likely that mil- itary violence will remain, just as hired labour remained after the abolition of slavery, but in any case war and the army will be abolished in that coarse form which is con- trary to reason and to the moral sentiment, and in which they now exist. There are very many signs that this time is near. These signs are to be found in the hopeless condition of the governments, which keep increasing their armies, and in the growing burden of taxes, and in the dissatisfaction of the nations, and in the instruments of war, which are carried to the highest degree of destructiveness, and in the activity of the congresses and the peace societies, but chiefly in the refusal of individual persons to do military service. In these refusals does the key lie to the solution of the question. " You say that military service is indispensable, that if it did not exist, we should be overcome by terrible calamities. All this may be possible, but with that con- ception of good and evil which is common to all men of our time and even to you, I cannot kill men by com- mand. Thus if, as you say, military service is very necessary, make it such that it will not be in such contra- diction with my conscience and with yours. So long as you have not arranged it so, but demand of me what is directly opposed to my conscience, I am not at all able to obey." Thus inevitably must answer, and soon will answer, all the honest and sensible men, not only of our Christian world, but also the Mohammedans and the so-called pagans, — the Brahmins, Buddhists, and Confucianists. Maybe war will from inertia last for some time yet, but 498 THE APPROACH OF THE END the question is already solved in the consciousness of men, and with every day, with every hour, a growing number of men are coming to the same conclusion, and it is now quite impossible to arrest this movement. Every recognition of a truth by men, or rather, every liberation from some error, — so it was visibly with slavery, — is always obtained through a struggle between men's clearer consciousness and the inertia of the previous state. At first the inertia is so strong and the consciousness so feeble that tlie first attempt at a liberation from error is only met with surprise. The new truth presents itself as madness. " How can we live without slavery ? Who will work ? How can we live without war ? Everybody will come and will conquer us." But the power of con- sciousness keeps growing, the inertia keeps diminishing, and the surprise gives way to ridicule and contempt. " Holy Writ recognizes masters and slaves. Such a rela- tion has existed since eternity ; and suddenly wiseacres have appeared who want to change the whole world," was what people said of slavery. " All the learned and the sages have recognized the legality and even the sanc- tity of war, and suddenly we are to believe that we must wage no war ! " people say of war. But the consciousness keeps growing and being clarified ; the number of men who recognize the new truth keeps growing larger, and ridicule and contempt give way to cunning and deception. The men who have been supporting the error make it appear that they understand and recognize the incompati- bility and cruelty of the measure which they are defend- ing, but consider its abolition impossible at present, and delay the abolition for an indefinite time. " Who does not know that slavery is bad ; but men are not yet prepared for freedom, and the emancipation will produce terrible calamities," they said of slavery forty years ago. " Who does not know that war is THE APPROACH OF THE END 499 evil ? " But the thought does its work, grows, and burns the lie, and the time arrives when the madness, aimless- ness, harm, and immorality of the delusion are so clear (so it was within our memory, in the sixties, in Eussia and in America) that it is impossible to defend it. So it is now in the case of war. Just as then they no longer tried to justify slavery, but only maintained it, so they do not try now to justify war and tlie army, but only keep silent, making use of the inertia, which stiU holds up war and the army, knowing very well that all this apparently powerful, cruel, and immoral organization of murder may any moment come down with a crash, never to rise again. It is enough for one drop of water to ooze through a dam, or for one brick to fall out of a large building, or for one mesh to come loose in the strongest net, in order that the dam should be broken, the building come to its fall, the net go to pieces. Such a drop, such a brick, such a loosened mesh to me appears to be Van-der-Veer's refusal, which is explained by causes that are common to all humanity. After Van-der- Veer's refusal other refusals must follow ever more fre- quently, and as soon as there shall be many such refusals, the same men who but yesterday said (their name is legion) that it is impossible to live without war, will say that they have for a long time been preaching the madness and immorality of war, will advise you to act like Van-der-Veer, and of war and the army, in the form in which it now exists, there will be left nothing but a recollection. This time is near at hand. Ydsnaya Polydiia, Se_ptember 24, 1896. FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? 1898 FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? This winter I received a letter from Mrs. Sokoldv, de- scribing the want of the peasants in the Government of Voronezh. This letter, with- a note from me/ I turned iTolsi6y's note to the editor of the Eussian Gazette runs as fol- lows : "Dear Sir : — I think tbat the publication of the enclosed private letter from a person who knows the peasantry well, and correctly de- scribes its condition in her own locality, would be useful. The con- dition of the peasants in the locality described forms no exception ; precisely tbe same, as I know full well, is the condition of the peasants in certain localities of Kozl6v, El^ts, Novosilsk, Ch^rnski, Efr6mov, Zemlyanski, Nizhnedyevitsk, and otlier counties of the black earth zone. The person writing the letter did not even think of its being published, and only consented at the request of her friends. " It is true, the condition of the majority of our peasantry is such that it is often very hard to draw a line between what may be called a famine and what a normal condition, and that the aid which is par- ticularly needed in the present year might have been needed, even if not to such a degree, last year or at any other time ; it is true, philan- thropic aid to the population is a very difficvilt matter, because it fre- quently provokes the desire for making use of this aid in those who could get along without this aid ; it is true, what private individuals can do is but a drop in the sea of the peasant distress ; it is also true that aid given in the form of eating-houses, of the lowered price of corn or of its distribution, of the feeding of the cattle, and so forth, is only a palliative and does not remove the fundamental causes of the calamity. All that is true, but it is also true that aid given in time may save the life of an old man, or a child, may change the despair and enmity of a ruined man into faith in the good and in the brother- hood of man. And, what is most important, it is an indubitable truth that every man of our circle, who, instead of thinking of noth- ing but amusements, such as theatres, concerts, subscription dinners, 503 604 FAMINE OR NO FAMINE ? over to the Russian Gazette, and since then several per- sons have begun to send to me contributions for the aid of needy peasants. These small contributions — two hun- dred roubles — I directed to a good acquaintance of mine in Zemlyanski County ; some monthly contributions of Smolensk physicians and other small contributions I sent to Ch^rnski County of the Government of Tula, to my son and my wife, requesting them to distribute the aid in their locality. But in April I received new and quite consider- able contributions : Mrs. M^vius sent four hundred roubles ; three hundred roubles were collected in small sums, and S. T. Morozov sent one thousand roubles, — in all there were about two thousand roubles, and, as I did not think I had the right to refuse to act as a mediator between the contributors and the needy, I decided to go to the spot, in order to distribute the aid in the best manner possible. As in the year 1891, I considered the best form of aid to consist in eating-houses, because only with the estab- hshment of eating-houses is it possible to provide good daily food for old men and women and the children of sick people, which, I assume, is the wish of the contribu- tors. This end is not attained with the distribution of provisions, because every good householder, having re- ceived some flour, will first of all mix it with the prov- ender of the horse with which he has to plough (and in doing so he will act wisely, because he has to plough the soil on which to raise foodstuffs for his family, not only for this year, but also for next), while the feeble members of the family will not get enough to eat during this year, even as before the distribution, so that the aim of the contributors will not be attained. races, exhibitions, and so forth, will think also of that extreme want, as compared with the showy life of the cities, a want in which just now live many, many brothers of ours, will, if he tries, however awk- wardly, to sacrifice even a small portion of his pleasures, unquestion- ably aid himself in the most important matter in the world, — in the rational comprehension of life and iu the fulfilment of his human destiny in it." FAMINE OK NO FAMINE? 505 Besides, only in the form of eating-houses for the feeble members of the family is there any limit at which one can stop. In the personal distribution the aid goes to the household, but, to satisfy the demands of a ruined peasant household, it is absolutely impossible to decide what is urgently needed, and what is not urgently needed : urgently needed are a horse, a cow, the release of the pawned fur coat, the taxes, seeds, a house. Thus, in making personal distributions it becomes necessary to give arbitrarily, at haphazard, or the same amount to all alike, without any distinction. For this reason I determined to distribute the aid in the form of eating-houses, as in the years 1891 and 1892. In determining the most needy families and the number of persons in each, who were to be admitted to the eating- houses, I was guided, as before, by the following considera- tions : (1) the number of cattle, (2) the number of allot- ments, (3) the number of the members of the family earning wages, (4) the number of eaters, and (5) the extraordinary misfortunes that had befallen the family, such as fire, sickness in the family, the death of a horse, and so forth. The first village to which I went was old, familiar Spasskoe, which used to belong to Ivan Sergy^evich Tur- ginev. Upon talking with the elder and some old men concerning the condition of the peasants of this village, I convinced myself that it was far from being as bad as had been the condition of the peasants among whom we had established eatiug-houses in 1891. On every farm there were horses, cows, sheep, and pota- toes, and there were no dilapidated houses ; thus, judging from the condition of the Spasskoe peasants, I thought the rumours about the distress of the present year might be exaggerated. But a visit paid to the next village of Malaya Gubarevka and to other villages, which were pointed out to me as being very poverty-stricken, convinced me that Spasskoe 506 FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? was under exclusively fortunate couditions, through good allotments and through the accidentally good crop of the year before. Thus, in the first village to which I went, in Malaya Gubarevka, there were four cows and two horses to ten farms, two families were out begging alms, and the distress of all the mhabitants was terrible. About the same, though a little better, is the condition of tlie villages of Bolshaya Gubarevka, Matsnevo, Prota- sovo, Chapkino, Kukuevka, Giishchino, Khmyelinki, Shelomovo, Lopashchino, Sidorovo, Mikhaylov Brod, Bobrik, the two Kameukas. In all these villages the people do not get enough bread to eat, but the bread is pure and not mixed, as was the case in the year 1891. Nor are the people, at least the majority of them, without boiled vegetables, — millet, cabbage, potatoes. Their food consists of herb soup, whitened with milk if they have a cow, and not whitened if they have none, and bread alone. In all these villages the majority have sold or pawned every- thing that can be sold or pawned. Thus the dire distress in the surrounding country — in the radius of seven to eight versts — is so great, that, after having established fourteen eating-houses, we have been every day receiving requests for aid from other villages that are in the same plight. What eating-houses are established are doing well — the cost comes to about one rouble fifty kopeks for each man per month, and, apparently, they satisfy the aim we had in view of supporting the life and health of the feeble members of the most needy families. Last night I went to the village of Gushchino, which consists of forty-nine farms, twenty-four of which are without horses. It was supper-time. In the yard, under two penthouses, which had been cleaned up, eighty diners sat about five tables : old men, alternating with old FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? 507 women, sat on benches around large tables, and children sat around small tables, on blocks of wood with l)oards thrown over them. The diners had just finished their first course (potatoes with kvas), and the second course — cab- bage soup — was being brought in. The women with dippers poured the steaming, well-cooked soup into wooden bowls ; the eating-house-keeper, with a round loaf and a knife in his hands, went from table to table and, pressing the loaf against his breast, cut off and handed out shces of fine, fresh, fragrant bread to those who had eaten up theirs.^ The householder's wife and one of those who dine there tend on the adults, and the householder's young daughter tends on the children. The people who were eating their supper were for the most part emaciated, lean, scanty-bearded, gray-haired, and bald-headed old men in threadbare garments, and wizened old women. There was an expression of calm and satisfaction upon all the faces. All these men were apparently in that peaceful and joyous frame of mind, and even in that state of excitement, which is produced by the use of sufficient food after having been deprived of it for a long time. One could hear the sounds of eating, a subdued conversation, and now and then the laughter at the children's tables. There were present two tran- sient mendicants, and the eating-house-keeper excused liimself for having admitted them to supper. Everything proceeded in an orderly and quiet fashion, as though this order had existed for ages. From Giish- chino I went to the village of Gny^vishchevo, from which peasants had come two or three days before to ask for aid. This village, like Gubarevka, consists of ten farms. The 1 We had succeeded in buying on the southeastern road two car- loads of flour at seventy-five kopeks, when it was at ninety kopeks in our place, and the flour turned out to be so unusually good that the women who set the bread cannot say enough in its praise, — it kneads so well, — and the diners say that the bread is just as good as cake. — Author'' s Note. 508 FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? ten farms have together four horses and four cows ; there are hardly any sheep ; the houses are all so old and rick- ety that they barely stand up. All are poor, and all beg to be aided. " If we could only satisfy the children," say the women. "They ask for pap, and there is nothing to give them, and so they fall asleep without eating anything." I know that there is a grain of exaggeration in this, but what a peasant in a caftan torn at the shoulder says is certainly not any exaggeration, but the truth. " If we could just shove off' two or three of them from the bread," says he. " As it is, I have sold my last blouse in the city (the fur coat has been there for a long time), and brought home three puds for eight people, — how long will that last ? And I do not know what to take down next." I asked him to change me three roubles, but not a rouble in money could be found in the whole village. It is evidently necessary to establish an eating-house even here. The same, apparently, has to be done in the two villages from which peasants came with requests. We are, besides, informed that in the southern part of Ch^rnski County, on the border of Efremov County, the distress is very great, and that so far no succour has been offered. It would seem to be obvious that the matter should be continued and expanded, and this is possible, since of late other considerable contributions have been received : five hundred roubles from Princess Kudashev, one thousand roubles from Mrs. Mansurov, two thousand roubles from dramatic people. But it turns out that it is almost impossible, either to expand, or even to continue the matter. It is impossible to continue it for the following reasons: The governor of Or^l does not allow any eating-houses to be opened, — (1) without the consent of the local curatorship, (2) without discussing the question of the opening of each individual eating-house with the County Council chief, fAMINE OR NO FAMINE? 509 and (3) without a previous statement to the governor as to the number of eating-houses that are to be opened in a given locality. So, too, a rural officer has come from the Government of Tula, demanding that no eating-houses be established without the governor's permission. Besides, all the local inhabitants are for- bidden to take part or aid in the establishment of eating- houses without the governor's permission ; but without the participation of such assistants, who are specially occupied with the complex and troublesome business of the eating-liouses, their establishment is impossible. Thus, in spite of the unquestionable distress of the people, in spite of the means furnished by contributors for alle- viating the distress, our cause cannot only not be expanded, but is in danger of being completely interrupted. Consequently the above mentioned sums, received by me of late, amounting to 3,500 roubles, and a few other smaller contributions remain unexpended and will be returned to the contributors, if they do not wish to give them for any other use. Such is my personal affair ; now I shall try to answer the general questions to which my activity has brought me, — questions which, to judge from the papers, have interested society of late. These questions are : Is there a famine this year, or not ? What is to be done that the distress be not repeated and may not demand special measures for its alleviation ? To the first question I will answer as follows : There exist statistical investigations, from which it may be seen that Eussians do not get within thirty per cent, of what a man needs for his normal nutrition ; we have, besides, some information as to this, that the young men of the black earth zone have for the last twenty years less and less satisfied the demands for a good con- stitution for military service ; and the census has shown 6l0 S' AMINE OR NO FAMINE? that the increment of the population, which twenty years ago was the largest in the agricultural zone, has been steadily diminishing, until at the present time it has reached zero in these Governments. But even without studying the statistical data we need only to compare the average shrivelled-up, sallow-faced agricultural peasant of the central zone with the same peasant when he has come to be a janitor, a coachman, — when he gets good food, — and the motions of this janitor or coachman, and the work which he is able to accomplish, with the motions and the work of a peasant who lives at home, to see to what extent the insufficient food weakens the strength of this peasant. When, as formerly used to be done, and even now is being done by unreasoning farmers, cattle are kept for the sake of the manure, being fed in a cold yard on anything there may be, only to be kept from dying, it happens that of all these animals only those which are in full strength' endure the strain without danger to their organism ; but the old, the feeble, and the half-grown animals either die off or, if they remain alive, do so at the expense of tlieir young ones and of their health, while the young animals remain alive at the expense of their growth and their constitution. In precisely this condition are the Eussian peasants of the black earth zone. So that, if by the word " famine " we understand such underfeeding that in consequence of it men are immediately assailed by disease and death, as, to judge from descriptions, was lately the case in India, no such famine existed in the year 1891, or in the present year. But if by famine we mean such underfeeding as does not lead immediately to death, but keeps men alive, though they live badly, dying before their time, becoming maimed, ceasing to multiply, and degenerating, such a famine has existed for twenty years for the majority of FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? 511 the black earth centre, and is particularly severe this present year. Such is my answer to the first question. To the second question, as to what is the cause of it, my answer consists in this, that the cause of it is spiritual and not material. Military people know what is meant by the spirit of the army ; they know that this intangible element is the first condition of success and that in the absence of this element all other elements become inactive. Let the sol- diers be well dressed, fed, armed ; let the position be as strong as possible, — the battle will be lost if that intan- gible element called the spirit of the army be lacking. The same is true of a struggle with Nature. The moment the masses lack the spirit of alacrity, assurance, hope of a greater and ever greater amelioration of their condition, and, on the contrary, are possessed by a consciousness of the vanity of their efforts, by despondency, — the masses will not subdue Nature, but will be subdued by it. Precisely such is in our time the condition of all our peasant class, and especially of those in the agricultural centre. They feel that their condition as agriculturists is bad, almost hopeless, and, having adapted themselves to this hopeless condition, they no longer struggle with it, but live on and do only as much as the instinct of self-preservation demands of them. Besides, the very wretchedness of the condition to which they have arrived intensifies their dejection of spirit. The lower the masses descend in their economic well-being, like a weight on a lever, the more difficult it is for them to rise, and the peasants feel this and, as it were, let everything go to the dogs. " What's the use ? " they say. " We don't mean to fatten, — we just want to live ! " There are very many symptoms of this dejection of spirit. The first and foremost one is the complete indiffer- ence to all spiritual interests. The religious question does not exist at all in the agricultural centre, not at all 512 FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? because the peasant firmly holds to Orthodoxy (on the contrary, all the reports and all the statements of the priests confirm the fact that the people are getting more and more inditierent to the church), but because they have no interest in spiritual questions. The second symptom is their inertia, their unwillingness to change their habits and their condition. During all these years, while in other Governments steel ploughs, steel harrows, grass seeding, the planting of costly plants, cattle-raising, and even mineral fertilizers have come into general use, — in the centre everything has remained as of old, with wooden ploughs, three field divisions, cut up by wolds of the width of a harrow, and all the methods and customs from the days of Rurik. There are even the fewest migrations from the black earth centre. The third symptom is the contempt for agricultural labour, — not indolence, but limp, cheerless, unproductive labour, as an emblem of which may serve a well from which the water is not drawn by a sweep or by a wheel, as used to be done formerly, but simply by means of a rope, with the aid of the hands, and is brought out in a leaky bucket, from which one-third of the water is lost before it reaches the place where needed. Such is almost all the labour of a black earth peasant, who, leaving clods of earth, manages somehow in sixteen hours, with the help of a nag that barely drags along her feet, to plough up a field which, with a good horse, good food, and a good plough, he could do in half a day. With this the desire to forget oneself is natural, and so the use of liquor and tobacco is becoming more and more widespread, and of late mere boys have taken to drinking and smoking. The fourth symptom of the dejection of spirit is the lack of obedience of sons to their parents, of younger brothers to their elder brothers, the neglect to send money earned elsewhere back to the family, and the tendency of the younger generations to free themselves from the hard, FAMINE OR NO FAMINE ? 513 hopeless life in the country and to find something to do in the cities. As a striking symptom of the dejection of spirit, which has come about during the last seven years, has appeared to us the fact that in many villages adult aud apparently well-to-do peasants begged to be admitted to the eating- houses, and attended them, if permitted to do so. That was not the case in 1891. Here, for example, is a case which shows all the degree of poverty and lack of confi- dence in their own powers, at which the peasants have arrived. In the village of Shushmiuo of Ch^rnski County, a landed proprietress has been selHng land to the peasants through the bank. She demands of them ten roubles per desyatina, dividing the sum into two payments of five roubles each, giving them the land all sowed in and two ch^tverts of oats for the summer sowing. And in spite of these strikingly advantageous conditions the peasants hesitate and undertake nothing. Thus the answer to my second question consists in this, that the condition in which the peasants are now is due to their having lost their alacrity, the confidence in their strength, the hope of bettering their condition, — to their having become dejected. And the answer to the third question as to how to succour the peasants in their wretched condition results from this second answer. To aid the peasants, one thing is needed, and that is, to raise their spirit, to remove everything which oppresses them. What oppresses the spirit of the masses is the non- recognition of their human dignity by those who govern them, the assumption that a peasant is not a man, like any one else, but a coarse, irrational being, who must be protected and guided in every matter, and so, under the guise of caring for him, a complete restriction of his freedom and debasement of his personality. 514 FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? Thus, in the most important, the religious relation, every peasant feels himself to be, not a free member of his church, who freely chooses or at least recognizes the faith professed by him, but a slave of this church, who is obliged without murmuring to carry out all the demands made upon him by his religious chiefs, who are sent to him aud put over him independently of his desire or choice. That this is an important cause of the oppressed condition of the masses is confirmed by the fact that at all times and everywhere the spirit of the peasants, when they free themselves from the despotism of the church aud become what is called sectarians, immediately rises, and immediately, without exception, their economic well-being is established. Another pernicious manifestation of this concern for the masses is the exclusive laws for the peasants, which in reality reduce themselves to the absence of all laws and the full arbitrariness of the officials detailed to rule the peasants^ For the peasants there nominally exist certain special laws, in relation to the ownership of land, the allotments, the inheritance, and all their obligations, but in reality there is an incredible hodge-podge of peasant decrees, illustrations, common law, cassation rulings, and so forth, in consequence of which the peasants quite justly feel themselves to be in ab.solute dependence on the arbitrari- ness of their innumerable superiors. Now the peasants recognize as their superiors, not only the hundred-man, the elder, the township chief, and the scribe, but also the rural judge, and the rural officer, and the rural magistrate, and the insurance agent, and the civil engineer, and the mediator in the allotments, and the veterinary surgeon, and his assistant, and the doctor, and the priest, and the judge, and the investigating magis- trate, and every official, and even the landed proprietor, — every gentleman, because he knows from experience that FAMINE OR NO FAMINE ? 515 every such gentleman may do with him what he pleases. But what most dejects the spirits of the masses, though this is not visible, is the disgraceful torture with rods, — disgraceful, of course, not to its victims, hut to its par- ticipants and instigators, — wliich, like the sword of Damocles, hangs over every peasant. Thus, in reply to the three questions put in the begin- ning, as to whether there is any famine or not, what is the cause of the people's distress, and what ought to be done, in order to succour this distress, my answers are as follows : there is no famine, but a chronic underfeeding of the whole population, which has been lasting for twenty years and is getting worse all the time, and which is par- ticularly noticeable this year, in connection with the poor crops of last year, and which will be even worse than that of last year. There is no famine, but a far worse condition. It is as though a physician, upon being asked whether the patient has the typhus, should answer, " No, he has no typhus, — he has rapidly developing consump- tion." My answer to the second question consists in this, that the cause of the wretchedness of the people's condition is not of a material, but of a spiritual nature, that the chief cause is their dejection of spirit, so that, so long as the masses will not be uplifted in spirit, they will not be aided by any external measures, nor by the ministry of agriculture and all its inventions, nor by exhibitions, nor by agricultural schools, nor by the change of the tariff, nor by the abolition of the emancipation ]\ayments (which ought to have been done long ago, since the peasants have long ago paid more than what they have borrowed, if the present rate of percentage be applied), nor by the removal of duties from iron and machinery, nor by the now favour- ite, approved remedy for all diseases, — the parish schools, — they will not be aided by anything, if the condition of their mind remains the same. I do not say that all these 516 FAMINE OK NO FAMINE? measures are not useful; but they become useful only when the spirit of the masses is uphfted and the masses are consciously and freely desirous of using them. My answer to the third question — as to what to do in order that this distress may not be repeated — consists in this, that it is necessary, I do not say to respect, but to stop despising and insulting the masses by treating them as beasts; it is necessary to give them freedom of belief ; it is necessary to submit them to general, and and not especial laws, — not to the arbitrariness of County Council chiefs ; it is necessary to give them freedom of study, freedom of reading, freedom of migration, and, above all, to take off that disgi-aceful brand, which lies upon the past and the present reigns, — the permission to practise that savage torture, the flogging of adults for no other reason than that they belong to the peasant class. If I were told, " You mean the good of the masses, so choose one of these two things, — give all the ruined peo- ple three horses, two cows, three manured desyatiuas, and a stone house for every farm, or only the freedom of religious instruction, and migration, and the abohtion of all the special laws," I should without hesitancy choose the second, liecause I am convinced that, no matter what material benefits are conferred on the peasants, while they are left with the same clergy, the same parish schools, the same Crown saloons, the same army of officials, who pretend to be concerned for their well-being, they will in twenty years again have spent everything and will be left as poor as they were. But if the peasants are freed from all trammels and all humiliations which oppress them, they will in twenty years acquire that wealth which is offered them, and much more than that. The reason I think so is, in the first place, because I have always found more intelligence and actual knowl- edge, such as men need, among the peasants than among the officials, and so I think that the peasants will dis- FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? 517 cover more quickly and in a better way what they need most ; in the second place, because the peasants, whose welfare is the subject of concern, know better what it consists in than the officials, who more than anything else are concerned for the payment of their salaries ; and, in the third place, because the experience of life shows constantly and without fail that the more the peasants are subjected to the influence of officials, as is the case at the centres, the more do they become impoverished, and, on the contrary, the farther the peasants live away from officials, as, for example, in Siberia, in the Governments of Samara, Orenburg, ^ yatka, Vologda, Olonetsk, the greater, without exception, is their welfare. Such are the thoughts and sentiments which my famil- iarity with the distress of the peasants has evoked in me, and I considered it my duty to give expression to them, in order that sincere people, who really want to repay the masses for everything which we have been receiving from them, might not waste their efforts in vain upon an activ- ity of secondary importance, which frequently is false, but might use all their efforts upon that without which no aid can be effective, — upon the abolition of everything which crushes the spirit of the masses and upon the establish- ment of everything which might arouse it. May 26, 1898. Before sending off this article, I decided to go down to Efr^mov County to visit some of the localities, of whose wretchedness I had heard from people who inspired the fullest confidence. On my way down I had to cross the whole length of Chernski County. The crop of rye in the locality in which I lived, that is, in the northern part of Chernski and Mts^nski Counties, has been very poor this year, worse than last, but what I saw on my way to Efr^mov County surpassed all my most sombre expectations. 618 FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? The locality which I traversed, — about thirty-five versts in length, — from Gremyachevo to the borders of Efr^mov and Bogoroditsk Counties, and for about twenty versts in width, as I have been told, a terrible calamity awaits the peasants in this year and in next. The rye on the whole extent of this quadrangle, amounting to about one hundred thousand desyatinas, is completely lost. As I travelled a verst, two, ten, twenty versts, I saw on both sides of the road nothing but orache on the land of the proprietors, and even no orache on the land of the peasants. Thus the condition of the peasants of this locality during next year (and I have been told that the rye was a complete failure in other localities as well) will be incomparably worse than this year. I am speaking only of the condition of the peasants, and not of that of the agriculturists in general, because it is only for the peasants, who live directly on the corn, espe- cially on the rye, of their fields, that the failure of the rye crop has a decisive significance, as a question of life and death. The moment a peasant has an insufficiency of his own corn for the whole house, or for a large part of it, and corn is expensive, as in the present year (at about a rouble), his condition threatens to become desperate, like the condition, let us say, of an official who has lost his place and salary, and who continues to support his family in the city. To exist, an official without a salary must either spend his provisions or sell his chattels, and every day of his life brings him nearer to complete ruin. Even so a peasant, who is obliged to purchase expensive corn above a certain amount that is secured by a definite income, is doomed, but with this diiference, that, while an official, falling lower and lower, is not during his lifetime deprived of the chance of getting another place and improving his condition, a peasant, in losing his horse, his field, his seed. FAMINE OR NO FAMINE? 519 is absolutely deprived of the possibility of bettering his condition. In such a threatening condition are the majority of the peasants of tliis locality ; but next year this condition will not merely be threatening, — for the majority noth- ing but ruin will ensue. And so aid, both from the government and from pri- vate sources, will be indispensable during next year, and yet, just now, the most energetic measures are being taken in the Governments of Or^l and Ryazan, and elsewhere, for counteracting all private endeavour in any form what- soever. It is evident that these measures are meant to be universal and constant. Thus, in Efremov County, whither I went, no outsiders whatsoever are allowed to furnish aid to the needy. A bakery, which had been opened by a person who arrived with contributions from the Free Economic Society, was closed, and the person himself was sent away, as had been other persons who had come there before him. It is assumed that there is no distress in this county and that no aid is needed. Thus, though I could not for personal reasons carry out my desire and visit Efremov County, my travel thither would have been useless and would have produced unnec- essary complications. In Ch^rnski County the following took place during my absence, as my son told me : the police authorities, ar- riving in a village where there were eating-houses, forbade the peasants to go for their dinners and suppers to the eating-houses ; to be sure of the execution of their order, the tables on which people dined were broken up, and the police authorities calmly went away, without giving the hungry people anything in place of the piece of bread which was taken from them, except the command of un- conditional obedience. It is hard to make out what is going on in the heads and hearts of others, of those people who consider it necessary to prescribe such measures and 520 FAMIKE OR NO FAMINE ? to execute them, that is, who verily do not know what they do, — to take the bread of ahiis out of the mouths of the hungry and sick, of old men and children. I know those considerations which are brought forward in defence of these measures : " In the first place, it is necessary to prove that the condition of the population entrusted to our care is not so bad as the people of the opposite party wish to represent ; in the second place, every institution (eating-houses and bakeries are institu- tions) must be subjected to the control of the government, though there was no such control in the years 1891 and 1892; in the third place, the direct and close relations of people who are aidmg the masses may evoke in them undesirable thoughts and sentiments." But all these con- siderations, even if they were true, — they are all false, — are so trifling and insignificant that they can have no meaning in comparison with what is done by the eating- houses and the bakeries that distribute bread to the needy. The whole matter stands like this: there are certain people who — we shall not say, are dying, but are in want ; there are others, who live in abundance, and who from a kind heart give this abundance to others; there are still others who wish to be mediators between the two and who give their labour for this purpose. Can such activities be harmful to any one ? and can it be part of the government's duty to counteract them ? I can understand why the soldier on guard in the Boro- vitski Gate should have kept me from giving anything to a mendicant, and why he paid no attention to my reference to the Gospel, asking me whether I had read the military regulations ; but a governmental institution cannot ignore the Gospel and the demands of the most primitive moral- ity, that is, that men should aid other men. A govern- ment exists for no other reason than that it should remove everything which interferes with such aid. JP AMINE Oil NO FAMINE? 521 Thus the government has no grounds whatsoever for counteracting such an activity. And if the falsely directed organs of the government should demand submission to such a prohibition, it behooves every private individual not to submit to such a demand. When the rural judge, who came to us, told me that it would not be much for me to petition the governor for the permission to establish eating-houses, I answered him that I could not do so, because I did not know such a law as would prohibit the establishment of eating-houses : and if there existed such, I could not submit to it, be- cause, in submitting to such a law, I might to-morrow be put to the necessity of submitting to the prohibition of distributing flour or giving alms without the permission of the government, whereas the right to give alms has been established by the highest authority and could not be put aside by any other authority. It is possible to close the eating-houses and bakeries, and send away from the county those men who came to succour the population, but it is impossible to keep the men who have been sent away from one county from living in another with their friends or in a peasant hut and serving the people by any other means, still continu- ing to give their means and labours in the service of the people. It is impossible to fence off one class of people from another. Every attempt at such a fencing off pro- duces the same consequences which this fencing off in- tends to avoid. It is impossible to break up the intercourse among people : it is only possible to impair the regular current of this intercourse and to give it a harmful direction, where it might have been beneficent. What can succour the people in the present, as in any other human calamity, is only the spiritual elevation of the people (by the people I do not mean the peasants alone, but all the working people and the wealthy classes as well) ; but the elevation 522 FAMINE OR NO FAMINE ? of the people can take place in only one direction, — in a greater and ever greater union of the people, and so, to aid the masses, this union has to he encouraged, and not interfered with. Only in such a greater fraternal union than before will the present and the expected calamity of the next year be overcome, and the well-being of the decaying and ever more decaying peasantry be raised, and the repetition of the distresses of the years 1891 and 1892 and of the present year be averted. June 4, 1898. ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE 1894- 1896 ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE THREE LETTERS LETTER TO EUGEN HEINEICH SCHMITT You write that people absolutely fail to see that the ful- filment of any service to the state is incompatible with Christianity. Even so, people failed for a long time to see that the indulgencies, the Inquisition, slavery, tortures were incom- patible with Christianity ; but the time came when this was evident, as the time will come when it will be plain, at first, that Christianity is incompatible with military service (this is beginning even now), and later, that it is incompatible with any service to the state. As far back as fifty years ago a little-known, but very remarkable American author, Thoreau, not only clearly enunciated this incompatibility in his beautiful article on the duty of a man not to obey the government, but also in practice showed an example of this disobedience. He refused to pay the taxes demanded of him, as he did not wish to be an abettor and accomplice of a state that legal- ized slavery, and was put in prison for it. 52& 526 ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE Thoreau refused to pay the taxes to the state. Naturally a man may on the same ground refuse to serve the state, as you beautifully expressed it in your letter to the minis- ter, when you said that you did not consider it compatible with moral dignity to give your labour to an institution which serves as the representative of legalized murder and rapine. Thoreau, I think, was the first to say so fifty years ago. At that time no one paid any attention to this his refusal and article, — they seemed so strange. The refusal was explained on the ground of eccentricity. Your re- fusal already provokes discussion and, as always at the enunciation of new truths, double amazement, — wonder- ment at hearing a man say such strange things, and, after that, wonderment at this : " Why did not I come to think of what this man speaks, — it is so plain and unquestion- able ? " Truths like these, that a Christian cannot be a military man, that is, a murderer, that he cannot be the servant of an institution which maintains itself by violence and murder, are so unquestionable, simple, and incontestable, that, for people to make them their own, there is no need of reflections, or proof, or eloquence, but only of repetition without cessation, so that the majority of men may hear and understand them. The truths that a Christian cannot be a participant in murder, or serve and receive a salary, which is forcibly collected from the poor by the leaders in murder, are so simple and so incontestable that any one who hears them cannot help but agree with them ; and if, having heard them, he continues to act contrary to these truths, he does so only because he is in the habit of acting contrary to them, because it is hard for him to break himself of the habit, and because the majority acts just like iiim, so that a failure to carry out the truth does not deprive him of the respect of the majority of most respected men, ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE 527 There happens the same as with vegetarianism. " A man can be well and healthy without killing animals for his food ; consequently, if he eats meat, he contributes to the slaughter of animals only for the gratification of his taste. It is immoral to act thus." This is so simple and so incontestable that it is impossible not to agree to it. But because the majority still continue to eat meat, peo- ple, upon hearing that retiectiou, recognize it as just, and innnediately add, smiling : " A piece of good beefsteak is a good thing, all the same, and it will give me pleasure to eat it to-day at dinner." In precisely the same way the officers and officials bear themselves in relation to the proofs as to the incompati- bility of Christianity and humanitarianism with military and civil service. " Of course, that is true," such an official will say, " but it is all the same a pleasure to wear a uniform and epaulets which will give us admission any- where and will gain respect for us, and it is still more agreeable, independently of any chance, with certainty and precision to get your salary on the first of the month. Your reflection is, indeed, correct, but I shall none the less try to get an increase in my salary — and pension." The reflection is admittedly incontestable ; but, in the first place, a man does not himself have to kill an ox, but it is killed already, and a man does not himself have to collect the taxes and kill people, but the taxes are already col- lected and there is an army ; and, in the second place, the majority of men have not yet heard this reflection and do not know that it is not right to act thus. And so it is permissible as yet not to refuse a savoury beefsteak and a uniform, and decorations which afford so many pleas- ant things and, above all, a regular, monthly salary : " As for the rest, we will see." The whole matter rests only on this, that men have not yet heard the discussion which shows them the injustice and criminality of their lives. And so we must keep up 628 ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE the cry, " Carthago delenda est," and Carthage will cer- tainly fall. I do not say that the state and its power will fall, — that will not happen so soon, for there are in the crowd still too many coarse elements that support it, — but what will be destroyed is the Christian support of the state, that is, the violators will cease to maintain their authority by the sacredness of Christianity. The violators will be viola- tors, and nothing else. And when this shall happen, when they shall not be able to cloak themselves with the pre- tence of Christianity, the end of violence will be at hand. Let us try to hasten this end. " Carthago delenda est." The state is violence, Christianity is humility, non-resist- ance, love, and so the state cannot be Christian, and a man who wants to be a Christian cannot serve the state. The state cannot be Christian. A Christian cannot serve the state, and so on. Strange to say, just as you wrote me that letter about the incompatibility of the political activity with Chris- tianity, I wrote a long letter to a lady acquaintance on almost the same theme. I send you this letter.^ If you deem it necessary, print it, Octoler 12, 1896. 1 The uext letter. IL LETTER .TO THE LIBERALS I SHOULD be very glad with you and your companions, — whose activity I know and esteem highly, — to defend the rights of the Committee of Education and to fight against enemies of popular education ; but I see no way of struggling in the field in which you are working. I console myself only with this, that I am assiduously at work fighting the same enemies of education, though in a different field. To judge from the particular question which interests you, I think that in place of the abolished Committee of Education there ought to be established a large number of other educational societies, with the same problems and independently of the government, without asking the gov- ernment for any permission of the censorship, and allow- ing the government, if it sees fit, to persecute these educational societies, punish people for them, deport them, and so forth. By doing so the government will only enhance the significance of good books and hbraries and will strengthen the movement toward education. It seems to me that now it is particularly important to do what is good in a quiet and persistent manner, with- out asking the government, and even consciously evading its participation. The power of the state is based on the ignorance of the people, and the state knows it and so will always fight education. It is time for us to under- stand this. It is extremely dangerous to give the state 629 630 ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE a chance, while disseminating darkness, to pretend that it is interested in the edvication of the masses, as is the case with the so-called educational institutions, which are con- trolled by it, the public schools, gymnasia, universities, academies, all kinds of committees and associations. The good is good and education is education, only when it is all good and all education, and not when it is adapted to the circulars of the ministers. Above all, I am always sorry to see such precious, unselfish, self-sacrificing forces wasted so unproductively. At times it simply am.uses me to see good, clever people waste their strength in fighting the government in the field of those very laws which are arbitrarily written by the government itself. The matter seems to me to be as follows : There are some people, to whom we belong, who know that our government is very bad, and who fight it. Ever since the time of Eadishchev and the Decembrists, two methods of struggling have been in vogue, — one, that of Stenka Eazin, Pugach^v, the Decembrists, the revolution- ists of the sixties, the actors of the first of March, and others : a second, which is preached and applied by you, — the method of the " moderators," which consists in fighting on a legal basis, without violence, by a gradual acquisition of rights. Both methods have assiduously been applied for more than half a century, so far as my memory goes, and the condition is getting worse and worse ; if the condition is getting better, this is not due to this or that activity, but in spite of the harmfulness of these activities (for different reasons, of which I shall speak later), and the force against which the struggle is carried on, is growing more powerful, more potent, and more insolent. The last flashes of self-government, the County Council, the courts, the committees of education, and everything else, are all being abolished. Now, since so much time has passed in the vain em- ployment of these means, we can, it seems, see clearly ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE 531 that neither method is any good, and why not. To me at least, who always . had contempt for our governmeut, but never had recourse to either method to fight it with, the mistakes of the two methods are obvious. The first method is no good, because, even if it should be possible to change the existing order by means of violence, nothing guarantees that the established new order would be permanent, and that the enemies of this new order would not triumph under favourable conditions and with the aid of the same violence, as often happened in France and wherever there were revolutions. And so the new order of things, which is estabhshed through vio- lence, would have to be constantly supported by the same violence, that is, by lawlessness, and, in consequence of it, would inevitably and very quickly be ruined, like the one whose place it took. But in case of failure, as has always happened in Eussia, all the cases of revolutionary violence, from Pugacht^v to the first of March, have only strength- ened the order of things against which they have fought, transferring to the camp of the conservatives and retro- grades the enormous number of indecisive people who stood in the middle and did not belong to either camp. And so I think that, being guided by experience and by reflection, I may say boldly that this method is not only immoral, but also irrational and ineffective. Still less effective and rational, in my opinion, is the second method. It is ineffective and irrational, because having in hand the whole power (the army, the adminis- tration, the church, the schools, the police), and compos- ing those very so-called laws, on the basis of which the liberals want to fight with it, the government knows full well what is dangerous for itself, and will never permit the people who submit to it and who act under its guid- ance to do anything which might subvert its power. Thus, for example, in the present case, the government, which in Eussia (as elsewhere) is based on the ignorance 532 ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE of the people, will never allow the people to get any real education. It gives permission for the establishment of so-called educational institutions, which are controlled by- it, — public schools, gymnasia, universities, academies, all kinds of committees and associations, and censored publi- cations, so long as these institutions and publications serve its purposes, that is, stultify the people, or at least do not interfere with their stultification ; but at every attempt made by these institutions or publications to undermine that on which the power of the government is based, that is, the ignorance of the people, the government, without giving any account to any one for doing so and not other- wise, most quietly pronounces its veto, reorganizes and closes the establishments or institutions, and prohibits the publications. And so, as becomes clear from reflection and from experience, such a supposed gradual conquest of rights is only a self-deception, which is very advan- tageous for the government and so is even encouraged by it. But this activity is not only irrational and ineffective, but also harmful. It is harmful, in the first place, because enlightened, good, honest men, by entering into the ranks of the government, give it a moral authority, which it did not have without them. If the whole government con- sisted of nothing but coarse violators, selfish men, and flatterers, who form its pith, it could not exist. Only the participation of enlightened and honest men in the govern- ment gives it that moral prestige which it has. In this consists one harm of the activity of the liberals, who take part in the government or compromise with it. In the second place, such an activity is harmful, because, for tlie possibility of its manifestation, these same enlightened, honest men, by admitting compromises, slowly get used to the idea that for a good purpose it is permissible a little to depart from truth both in words and acts. It is permissible, for example, without acknowledging the exist- ON TUE KELATION TO THE STATE 533 ing religion, to execute its rites, to take an oath, to deliver false addresses that are contrary to human dignity, if that is necessary for the success of the cause ; it is right to enter military service, to take part in the County Council, which has no rights, to serve as a teacher, as a professor, teaching, not what one thinks necessary, but what is pre- scribed by the government, even by the County Council chief ; it is right to submit to the demands and regula- tions of the government, which are contrary to one's con- science, and publish newspapers and periodicals, passing over in silence what ought to be said, and printing what one is commanded to print. By making these compro- mises, the hmits of which it is impossible to foresee, en- lightened, honourable men, who alone could form a barrier against the government in its encroachment upon men's liberty, by imperceptibly departing more and more from the demands of their conscience, fall into a condition of complete dependence on the government, before they get a chance to look around : they receive their salaries, their rewards from it, and, by continuing to imagine that they are carrying out liberal ideas, become submissive servants and supporters of the very order against which they have been struggling. It is true, there are also very good and sincere men in this camp, who do not succumb to the enticements of the government and remain free from bribery, salary, and position. These men generally get caught in the meshes of the net which the government throws about them, and they struggle in this net, as you now do with your committees, whirling about in one spot ; or they get excited and pass over to the camp of the revolution- ists ; or they commit suicide, or take to drinking, or in despair throw everything up and, what happens most frequently, betake themselves to literature, where they submit to the demands of the censorship and express only what is permitted, and by this very concealment of 5o4 ON THE KELATION TO THE STATE what is most important introduce the most perverse ideas, which are most desirable to the government, to the pubhc, imagining all the time that with their writing, which gives them the means of existence, they are serving society. Thus reflection and experience show me that both methods for struggling against the government, which have been in vogue, are not only not effective, but equally contribute to the strengthening of the power and the arbitrariness of the government. What, then, is to be done ? Evidently not that which in the course of seventy years has proved to be fruitless and has attained the opposite results. What, then, is to be done ? The same that is done by those thanks to whose activity there has been accomplished all that forward move- ment toward the light, the good, which has been accom- phshed since the world has existed. It is this that ought to be done. Now what is it ? It is the simple, calm, truthful fulfilment of what one considers to be good and proper, quite independently of the government, of whether that pleases the government or not, — in other words, a defence of one's rights, not as a member of the Committee of Education, or as an alder- man, or landowner, or merchant, or even as a member of parliament, but the defence of one's rights as a rational and free man, and their defence, not as one defends the rights of County Councils and committees, with conces- sions and compromises, but without any concessions or compromises, as indeed the moral human dignity cannot be defended in any other way. In order successfully to defend a fortress, it is necessary to burn all the houses of the suburb and to leave only what is fortified and what we will not surrender under any con- dition. The same is true here : it is necessary at first to concede what we can surrender, and to keep only what is not to be surrendered. Only by fortifying ourselves on what is unsurreuderable, are we able to conquer every- ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE 535 thiug which we need. It is true, the rights of a member of parliament, or even of the County Council, or of a com- mittee are greater than those of a simple man, and, by- making use of these rights, it seems that very much may be accomplished ; but the trouble is, that, to acquire the rights of the County Council, the parhament, the com- mittee, it is necessary to renounce part of one's own rights as a man. And having renounced a part of one's own rights as a man, no fulcrum is left, and it is impossible either to gain any new rights or retain those already pos- sessed. To pull others out of the mire, a man must him- self stand on dry land, and if he, for greater convenience in the work, goes down into the mire, he does not pull any one else out, and himself sticks fast. It may be very well and useful to pass an eight-hour day in parliament or a liberal programme for school libraries in some com- mittee ; but if a member of parliament, to do this, must raise his hand and lie in public, and lie in pronouncing an oath and expressing in words a respect for what he does not respect; or if we, to carry into execution the most liberal programmes, are obliged to attend Te Deums, swear, put on uniforms, write lying and flattering docu- ments, and make similar speeches, and so forth, we, by doing all these things, renounce our human dignity and lose much more than we gain, and, by striving after the attainment of one definite end (as a rule not even this end is attained), deprive ourselves of the possibility of attain- ing other most important ends. The government can be restrained and counteracted only by men who have some- thing which they will not give up for anything, under any conditions. To have the power for counteraction it is necessary to have a fulcrum, and the government knows this very well, and is particularly concerned about coaxing that which does not yield, — the human dignity, — out of men. When this is coaxed out of them the government calmly does what it needs to, knowing that it will no 636 ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE longer meet with any real opposition. A man who con- sents to swear in public, pronouncing the unbecoming and false words of the oath, or submissively in his uniform to wait for several hours to be received by a minister, or to inscribe himself in the "guard of protection" during the coronation, or for decency's sake to go through the ceremony of the communion, or to ask the chiefs of the censorship in advance whether certain ideas may be expressed or not, and so forth, is no longer a danger to the government. Alexander II. said that the liberals were not dangerous to him, because he knew that they could all be bought with honours, if not with money. Men who take part in the government or who work under its guidance may, by pretending that they are lighting, deceive themselves and their like ; but those who struggle against them know incontestably from the opposition which they offer that they are not in earnest, but are only pretending. And this our government knows in relation to the liberals, and it is constantly mak- ing experiments as to how much real opposition there is, and, upon having ascertained to what extent it is absent for the government's purposes, it proceeds to do its work with the full assurance that anything may be done with these men. The government of Alexander III. knew this very well, and, knowing this, calmly abolished everything of which the liberals had been so proud, imagining that they had done it all : it limited the trial by jury ; abohshed the office of the justice of the peace ; abolished the university rights ; changed the system of instruction in the gym- nasia ; renewed the school of cadets, and even the govern- mental sale of hquor ; established the County Council chiefs ; legalized the use of the rod ; almost abolished the County Council ; gave the governors uncontrolled power ; encouraged pubhc executions ; enforced adminis- ON THE KELA.TION TO THE STATE 537 trative deportations and confinements in prisons, and the execution of political prisoners ; introduced new religious persecutions ; carried the stultification of the masses by- means of savage superstitions to the utmost limits ; legal- ized murder in duels ; established anarchy in the form of the guard of protection, with capital punishment, as a normal order of things ; and in the enforcement of all these measures it did not meet with any opposition, except the protest of one honourable woman, who boldly told the government what she considered to be truth. Though the liberals softly said to one another that they did not like it all, they continued to take part in the courts, and in the County Councils, and in the univer- sities, and in the service, and in the press. In the press they threw out hints at what they were allowed to hint at, and passed in silence what they were not allowed to mention ; but they continued to print what they were commanded to print. Thus every reader, who received the liberal newspapers and periodicals but was not ini- tiated in what was quietly talked of in the editor's office, read the uncommented exposition and condemnation of the most cruel and senseless measures, subservient and fulsome addresses meant for the authors of these meas- ures, and frequently even laudations of them. Thus all the sad activity of the government of Alexander III., which destroyed all the good that had begun to enter into life under Alexander II., and which endeavoured to bring Russia back to the barbarism of the times of the beginning of the present century, — all that sad activity of gibbets, rods, persecutions, and the stultification of the masses, — became the subject of a mad eulogy of Alex- ander III., which was printed in all the liberal newspapers and periodicals, and of his glorification as a great man, as a model of human dignity. The same has been continued during the new reign. The young man who took the place of the former Tsar, 538 ON THE EELATION TO THE STATE and who had no idea of life, was assured by the men who stand by the power aud who profit by it, that to govern one hundred millions it was necessary to do the same that his father had done, that is, that no one ought to be asked what was to be done, and that he ought to do any- thing that occurred to him or that he was counselled to do by any of the flatterers near his person. And imagin- ing that the unlimited autocracy is a sacred principle of the life of the Eussian nation, tliis young man begins his reign by this, that, instead of asking the representatives of the Eussian nation to help him with their advice in his government, of which he, who was educated in the regiments of the guard, understands nothmg and cannot understand anything, he boldly and indecently shouts at the representatives of the Eussian nation, who come to congratulate him, and calls the timid expression of the desire of some of them to inform the authorities of their wants " senseless reveries." Well ? Was Eussian society provoked, and did the enlightened and honourable men — the liberals — ex- press their indignation and contempt, and at least refrain from extolling such a government and from taking part in it and encouraging it ? Not at all. From that time there began a race to extol the father and the son, who emulates him, and not a single protesting voice is raised, except in one anonymous letter, which cautiously ex- presses the disapproval of the act of the young Tsar, and on all sides the Tsar is offered base, fulsome addresses, for some reason, all kinds of images, which are of no use to any one and serve only as a subject of idolatry for coarse men. A coronation, horrible in its insipidity and frantic waste of money, is arranged ; from disregard for the masses and from the insolence of the rulers there occur terrible calamities in which thousands lose their lives and upon which the guilty persons look as upon a small overcasting of the solemnity, that need not be inter- ON THE KELATION TO THE STATE 5ii9 rupted on account of them ; an exhibition is established, on which millions are wasted and which is of no use except to those who arranged it ; with unheard-of bold- ness they invent in the chancery of the Synod new, most stupid means for the stultification of the masses, — the relics of a man, of whom no one had ever heard anything ; the severity of the censorship is increased ; the persecu- tions for rehgiou's sake are enforced ; the guard of protec- tion, that is, legalized lawlessness, is continued, and the condition gets worse and worse. I think that all that would not exist, if those enlight- ened and honourable men who are now busy with their liberal activity on the basis of legality in the County Councils, committees, censored literature, and so forth, did not direct their energy to deceiving the government in the very forms which are established by the government, and somehow to compelling it to act to its detriment and ruiu,^ but directed it to the defence of their personal human rights, under no condition taking part in the government or in any affairs which are connected with it. " It pleases you to substitute County Council chiefs with rods in the place of justices of the peace, — that is your business, but we will not go to court to your County Council chiefs, nor will we ourselves accept such an office ; it pleases you to make the trial by jury nothing but a formality, — that is your business, but we will not become judges, nor lawyers, nor jurors : it pleases you, under the guise of a guard of protection, to establish lawlessness, — that is your business, but we will not take part in it and will frankly call the guard of protection a species of law- lessness, and capital punishment without trial simple murder; it pleases you to establish classical gymnasia with military exercises and religious instruction, or schools ^It sometimes amuses me to think how foolishly men busy them- selves with such an impossible matter, as though it were possible to cut off an animal's foot, without the animal's noticing it. — Avthor's Note. 640 ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE of cadets, — that is your business, but we will not be teachers in them and will not send our children to them, but will educate our children as we think best ; it pleases you to reduce the County Council to nothing, — we will not take part in it ; you forbid the publication of what displeases you, — you may catch and punish the printers and burn down the printing-offices, but you cannot keep us from talking and writing, and that we will do ; you command us to swear allegiance to the Tsar, — we will not do so, because that is stupid, deceitful, and base ; you command us to serve in the army, — we will not do so, because we consider mass murder to be an act which is as contrary to conscience as single murder, and, above all, the promise to kill whomsoever our chief will command us to kill the basest act which a man can commit ; you profess a religion which is a thousand years behind the times, with the Iberian Virgin, with its rehcs, and with . its coronations, — that is your business, but we not only do not recognize it as being a religion, but call it the worst kind of idolatry, and try to free people from ito" What can the government do against such an activity ? They can deport or imprison a man for preparing a bomb or even printing a proclamation to the labouring people, and they can transfer a committee of education from one ministry to another, or prorogue a parhament ; but what can a government do with a man who will not lie in public, by raising his hand, or does not want to send his children to an institution which he considers to be bad, or does not want to learn how to kill men, or does not want to take part in idolatry, or does not want to take part in coronations, meetings, and addresses, or says and writes what he thinks and feels ? By persecutmg such a man, the government causes universal sympathy to be directed toward such a man, makes a martyr of him, and under- miaes tho§Q foundations on which it holds itself, because, ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE 541 by doing so, it violates the human rights, instead of pro- tecting them. Let all those good, enlightened, and honourable men, whose energy is now wasted to their own detriment and to the detriment of their cause in a revolutionary, social- istic, and liberal activity, begin to act thus, and there would form itself a nucleus of honest, enlightened, and moral men, welded together by one thought and one sentiment, and this nucleus would immediately be joined by the whole wavering mass of average men, and there would appear that one force which vanquishes govern- ments, — that public opinion, which demands the freedom of the word, the freedom of conscience, justice, and humaneness ; as soon as public opinion would be formed, it would not only become impossible to close a com- mittee of education, but all those inhuman institutions, in the form of the guard of protection, the secret pohce, the censorship, Schliisselburg, the Synod, with which the revolutionists and liberals are struggling now, would naturally be destroyed. Thus, two methods have been tried in the struggle with the government, both of them failures, and now a third, the last, is left ; it has not yet been tried, but in my opinion it cannot help but be successful. This method, briefly expressed, consists in this, that all the enlightened and honest people should try to be as good as possible, — I do not even mean good in every respect, but only in one, namely, in the observation of one elementary virtue, — to be honest, not to lie, and to act and speak in such a way that the motives which prompt you to act may be compre- hensible to your seven-year-old son, who loves you ; act in such a way that your son may not say : " Why, papa, did you then say so, and now do and say something quite different ? " This method seems to be very weak, and yet I am convinced that it is this one method that has ad- vanced humanity ever since its existence. It was only 542 ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE because there were such straightforward, truthful, manly men, who did not yield to any one in the matter of their human dignity, that all those beneficent changes which men now enjoy — from the abolition of torture and slavery to the freedom of speech and of conscience — were accomplished. And this could not be otherwise, because what is demanded by the conscience, the highest presenti- ment of the truth which is accessible to man, is always and in all relations at a given moment the most fruitful and the most necessary activity for humanity. But I must explain myself : the statement that for the attainment of those ends toward which the revolutionists and the liberals alike are striving, the most effective means is an activity which is in conformity with one's conscience, does not mean that for the attainment of these ends it is possible to begin by living in conformity with one's con- science. It is impossible to begin on purpose to live in conformity with one's conscience, in order to attain any external ends. A man can live in conformity with his conscience only in consequence of some firm and clear religious convictions. When there are such firm and clear religious convictions, the beneiicent consequences from them in the external life will inevitably come. And so the essence of what I wanted to say consists in this, that it is unprofitable for good, sincere men to waste the forces of their mind and soul on the attainment of triHing, practical ends, as in all kinds of struggles of nationahty, parties, liberal programmes, so long as there has not been established any clear and firm religious world-conception, that is, the consciousness of the meaning of their life and its destiny. I think that all the efforts of the soul and the reason of good people who wish to serve men, ought to be directed upon this. When this shall be, all the rest will happen. Pardon me for having written you at such a length : perhaps you do not need this, but I have for a long time ON THE EELATlOI^j TO TUE STATE 543 been wishing to say something iu regard to this question. I even began a long article on the subject, but I doubt whether I shall be able to finish it before my death, and so I wanted to say what I could. Forgive me, if I hav3 erred in anything. August 31, 1896. III. LETTEK TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE Ever since the appearance of my book, The Kincjdom of God Is Within Yo7t, and of the article, Christianity and Patriotism, I frequently have had occasion to read in ar- ticles and in letters retorts, I shall not say to my thoughts, but to their misinterpretations. This is sometimes done consciously, and sometimes unconsciously, only through a sheer misunderstanding of the spirit of the Christian teaching. " All that is very vv^ell," I am told ; " despotism, capital punishment, the armament of the vv^hole of Europe, the oppressed condition of the labourers, and the wars are all great calamities, and you are right when you condemn the existing order, but how can we get along without a government ? What right have we, the men with a lim- ited comprehension and intellect, because it seems better to us, to destroy that existing order of things, by means of which our ancestors attained the present high degree of civilization and all its benefits ? While destroying the government we ought to put something else in its place. If not, how can we risk all those terrible calamities, which must inevitably assail us, if the government is destroyed ? " But the point is, that the Christian teaching, in its true sense, has never proposed to destroy anything, nor has it proposed any new order, which is to take the place of 544 ON THE DELATION TO THE STATE 545 the older one. The Christian teacliiug differs from all the other religious and social doctrines in this very thing, that it gives the good to men, not by means of common laws for the lives of all men, but by the elucidation for every individual man of the meaning of his life, by show- ing him what the evil and what tlie true good of his life consists in. And this meaning of life, which is revealed to man by the Christian teaching, is so clear, so con- vincing, and so unquestionable, that as soon as a man has come to understand it and so cognizes what the evil and the good of his life consists in, he can in no way consciously do that in which he sees the evil of his life, and cannot fail to do that in which he sees its true good, just as water cannot help but run down, and a plant tend toward the light. But the meaning of life, as revealed to man by Chris- tianity, consists in doing the will of Him, from whom we have come into this world and to whom we shall go, when we leave it. Thus the evil of our life lies only in the departure from this will, and the good lies only in the fulfilment of the demands of this will, wliich are so simple and so clear that it is as impossible to miss under- standing them as it is absurd to misinterpret them. If you cannot do unto another what you wish that he should do unto you, at least do not do unto another what you do not wish that another should do unto you : if you do not wish to be compelled to work in a factory or in mines for ten hours at a time ; if you do not wish your children to be hungry, cold, ignorant ; if you do not wish your land, on which you can support yourself, to be taken from you ; if you do not wish to be locked up in a prison and hanged, because through old age, temptation, or igno- rance you have committed an illegal act ; if you do not wish to be wounded and killed in war, — do not do the same to others. All this is so simple, so clear, so incontestable, that a 646 ON THE KELATION TO THE STATE small child cannot help but understand it, and no sophist can overthrow it. Let us imagine that a labourer, who is entirely in the power of his master, is put to some comprehensible work, which he likes. Suddenly this labourer, who is in the full power of the master, is approached by men who, he knows, are in the same dependence on the master as he, and who are charged with a similar definite work as he, — and these men, who themselves have not fulfilled the work entrusted to them, demand of the labourer that he shall do the very reverse of what is clearly and unques- tionably, without any exception, prescribed to him by his master. What can any sensible labourer reply to such a demand ? But this comparison is far from expressing what must be the feelings of a Christian, who is approached with the demands that he shall take part in oppression, in the seizure of land, in capital punishments, wars, and so forth, demands which are made upon us by the governmental authorities, because, no matter how impressive the com- mands of the master may have been for the labourer, they will never compare with that unquestionable knowl- edge of every man who is uncorrupted by false teachings, that he must not do unto others what he does not wish to have done unto himself, and that he, therefore, must not take part in acts of violence, in levying for the army, in capital punishments, in the murder of his neighbour, which is demanded of him by his government. Thus, the question for a Christian is not, as it is unwittingly and sometimes consciously put by the advocates of the govern- ment, whether a man has the right to destroy the existing order and put a new one in its place, — a Christian does not even thinlv of the general order, leaving this to be managed by God, being firmly convinced that God has implanted His law in our minds and hearts, not for dis- order, but for order, and that nothing but what is good ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE 547 will come from following the unquestionable law of God, which is revealed to us ; the question for any Christian, or for any man in general, is not, how to arrange matters in an external or new way (no one of us is obliged to solve this question), — what is subject to the solution of every one of us, not at will, but inevitably, is the question as to how I am to act in the choice which presents itself to me all the time : must I, contrary to my conscience, take part in the government, which recognizes the right to the ownership in land in the case of those men who do not work upon it, which collects the taxes from the poor, in order to give them to the rich, which deports and sends to hard labour and hangs erring men, drives soldiers to slaughter, corrupts the masses with opium and whiskey, and so forth ; or must I, in accordance with my con- science, refuse to take part m the government, whose acts are contrary to my conscience ? But what will happen, what the government will be as the result of this or that act of mine, I do not know ; not that I do not wish to know it, but I cannot know it. In this does the force of the Christian teaching consist, that it transfers the questions of life from the field of eternal guesses and doubts to the field of undoubted knowledge. But I shall be told : " We, too, do not deny the neces- sity of changing the existing order, and also wish to mend it, — not by refusing to take part in the government, in the courts, in the army, not by destroying the govern- ment, but on the contrary, by taking part in the gov-- ernment, by acquiring liberty and rights, by choosing as representatives the true friends of the people and the enemies of war and of every violence." All that would be very nice, if the contribution to the improvement of the forms of the government coin- cided with the purpose of human life. Unfortunately it not only fails to coincide with it, but even contradicts 548 ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE it. If human life is limited by this world, its purpose is much nearer than a gradual amelioration of government, — it is in the personal good ; but if hfe does not end with this world it is much farther, — in the fulfilment of God's will. If it is in my personal good, and life ends here, what business have I with the future slow improved order of the state, which will be accompHshed sometime and somewhere, in all probability when I am no longer alive ? But if my life is immortal, the purpose of the improved order of the English, German, Eussian, or any other state in the twentieth century is too little for me, and abso- lutely fails to satisfy the demands of my immortal soul. What may be an adequate purpose for my life is either my immediate good, which by no means coincides with the state activity of taxes, courts, wars, or the eternal sal- vation of my soul, which is attained only by the fulfilment of God's will, and this will just as little coincides with the demands of violence, of capital punishments, of wars, of the existing order. And so I repeat : the question, not only for a Christian, but for every man of our time as well, is not, what social life will be more secure, the one which is defended with rifles, cannon, gibbets, or the one which will not be de- feuded in this manner. There is but one question for each man, and this is such as we cannot get away from : " Do you, a rational and good being, who have appeared to-day and may disappear to-morrow, wish, if you recog- nize God, to act contrary to law and to His will, knowing that you may any moment return to Him, or, if you do not recognize God, do you wish to act contrary to those qualities of reason and of love, by which alone you may be guided in hfe, knowing that if you are mistaken you will never be able to correct your mistake ? " And the answer to this question for those men for whom it has arisen can only be : " No, I cannot, I will not." ON THE RELATION TO THE STATE 649 I am told, " This is the destruction of govern raent and the annihilation of the existing order." But if the fulfil- ment of God's will destroys the existing order, is not that an undoubted proof that the existing order is contrary to God's will and ought to be destroyed ? December 15, 1894' THE END. 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