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 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' 
 
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