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 TOIL 
 
LEO TOLSTOI and TIMOTHY BONDAREFF 
 
 / 
 
 TOIL 
 
 In the sweat of thy face thou 
 Shalt knead thy bread. 
 
 Gen. 111:19. 
 
 Translated from the Russian by 
 
 B. TSEYTLINE AND A. PAGES 
 
 
 And from the French by 
 
 
 
 JAMES F. 
 
 ALVORD 
 
 
 
 
 UNIV^ 
 
 
 
 s>^^U 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 
 
 CHARLES H. SERGEL & CO. 
 
ComuQHT, 1890, BY CHARLES H. SERGEL & CO. 
 
 ,/ 
 
TOIL 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 How Toi/ was composed. 
 
 The peasant Bondareff, inspirer of Tolstoi's social 
 theories. The two laws of humanity: Manual labor is the 
 law of men; child-bearing is the law of women. Criticism 
 of Bondareff by Tolstoi. The Bible and the Gospel. 
 
 How one must interpret the theory of manual labor. 
 Toil on the land, a social remedy. Extent and conse- 
 quences of this theory. Bondareff's book. Remarks up- 
 on the translation. 
 
 Toil is the work of Count Leo Tolstoi and the peasant, 
 Timothy Bondareff. But it has had no joint work, prop- 
 erly speaking. This book is composed, in fact, of two 
 different studies which are, as it were, the two different 
 parts of one single book, one by Leo Tolstoi, entitled 
 Toi7 and Bofidarcff' s Theory, and serves as a preface to 
 the essay of the latter; the other by Bondareff which is 
 called Toil, by the peasant Bondareff, and which con- 
 tains three main chapters, which we have named; 
 
vi TOIL 
 
 I. Introduction. Life of Bondareff . Aim of his work. 
 
 II. Toil, according to the Bible. 
 
 III. Appendices. Love and Toil. Bondareff' s Will. 
 Bondareff is a peasant of the district of Manoussiliak. 
 
 He belongs to that class of country people, numerous 
 in Russia, who seek truth in the sacred writings. But 
 while most know only the Gospels, Bondareff, who 
 belongs to the sect of Sabbatists, reads little but the Old 
 Testament. Hardly knowing how to spell, he has stu- 
 died out each verse painfully, and from the beginning 
 he believed he had found the solution of all social 
 questions. He has found formulated in Genesis the 
 fundamental law of man, the obligation to manual labor. 
 Persuaded that redemption cannot be found but by 
 labor, he learned to write in order to disclose what he 
 considered the truth of truths. At the age of sixty-five 
 years, he set himself to composing a work in which, in 
 the form of Bible verses, he undertakes to show that 
 toil on the land is the toil, par excellence. This labor 
 overcomes all the difficulties tnat come to him from 
 his ignorance and his great age. Working by day in 
 the field, and by night on his book, he accomplishes ^t 
 the end of many years the project he had formed. But 
 the manuscript which he sends to the czar, under the 
 form of a request, is rejected; the censorship does not 
 even authorize its printing. 
 
 Under these circumstances, about 1885, Bondareff -was 
 presented to To.-stoi, whose fame was already great 
 among the peasants. Struck by the profundity and the 
 truth of the peasant's theories, the author of "My Re- 
 
TOIL vii 
 
 /igion" actually introduced into his life the reform that 
 Bondareff preached ; he set himself to following the 
 plow, to using the awl, in short to toiling with his 
 hands. Until then he had caught a glimpse of, rather 
 than professed, these reforms.* The truth, which he 
 had suspected, did not appear to him in all its might 
 until Bondareff had communicated to him his manu- 
 script. It was then that he developed, modifying them 
 and giving them wider scope and deeper meaning, the 
 leading views of Bondareff in his splendid work "What is 
 My Life" (whose true title is, "What Must We Do Then") 
 and in "What to Do, " which is the answer to the former 
 book and forms with it only one single work.f But in 
 1888, to show that the ideas of which he had made 
 himself the apostle were not the dreams of a fanatic, 
 the imaginations of a mind paradoxical and blase he 
 published in the J "Russkoye Bogatsvo" *Bondareff's 
 
 * Read in "War and Peace" the reflections of Bezouchoff and 
 Levin; consult, also, "Anna Karenina" and "My Confession." 
 
 f Tolstoi was familiar with Bondareff 's work before writing "What 
 is My Life" and "What to Do." Besides the many points of contact 
 easily established between the two doctrines, which we shall point out 
 further on, here is a passage from ' ' What is My Life, " where Tol- 
 stoi clearly alludes to Bondareff: ' ' Money, " says Tolstoi, "is slavery 
 still, the aim and the results are the same. Its aim is to free man 
 from the ' primordial law, ' as a popular writer calls it, or the ' ' nat- 
 ural law of life," as we call it. This law prescribes to each of us per- 
 sonal toil as the means of existence." The "popular writer" of whom 
 Tolstoi speaks is none other than Bondareff, who, as we will see, bases 
 toil on the primitive or primordial law, ' In the sweat of thy brow 
 shalt thou eat thy bread " 
 
 X ' ' Russian Wealth, " a magazine under the direction of M. Obolen- 
 ski. 
 
viii TOIL 
 
 work whose publication the censorship had at first for- 
 bidden. On this occasion he wrote a profound essay on 
 Toil and Bondareff's theory. It is this essay that we 
 publish to-day, following it with Bondareff's work. 
 
 The chief reason why we present a translation of Toi7 
 is that this work awakens great interest not only in 
 relation to the history of Tolstoi's thought, but in rela- 
 tion to the understanding of the reform that it preaches. 
 In short, Bondareff's book gives us the work, simple 
 but profound, of an illiterate peasant who stamm'eringly 
 spoke, in 1881, of the grand reform, of which Tolstoi 
 later made himself the champion and the herald. 
 
 I 
 
 Between the teaching of the peasant Bondareff and 
 that of the nobleman, Leo Tolstoi, the resemblance is 
 great, and these manifold resemblances point very pro- 
 bably to a borrowing direct. Tolstoi, we have said, 
 knew Bondareff ; he questioned him on toil, imagined 
 to be the social remedy, he read his work; he even 
 published it at his own expense. Bondareff then has 
 been, in some measure, the inspirer of Tolstoi's social 
 theories, as the secretary Soutaief has been the inspirer 
 of his religious theories. § 
 
 In fact, if we open Tolstoi's last philosophical work 
 "What to Do," we will find there set forth Tolstoi's 
 ideas on social reform. 
 
 § On the relations between Tolstoi-ism and Soutaief-ism read the 
 masterly essay in the "Revue des Deux-Mondes" of Sept. 15, 1888, by 
 M. Anatole Leroy. — Beaulien. 
 
TOIL ix 
 
 Every man ought, by the labor of his own hands, to 
 support himself and family; every woman ought to bring 
 forth children and raise them herself. To man, as the 
 Old Testament says, God has given the law of manual 
 labor, to woman that of child-bearing. To violate these 
 laws is to incur the penalty of death. But while, for 
 man, disobedience to the law which is peculiarly his 
 would be followed by death in the near future, for wom- 
 an the penalty does not come till later. The violation 
 of these laws would lead directly to the annihilation of 
 mankind. 
 
 Now, for a long time, men have violated, for the most 
 part, the law that concerns them. For a long time cer- 
 tain classes have oppressed others, and the violation of 
 the law has, in our da3^s, reached madness even. Do we 
 not see Renan and others dreaming that some day ma- 
 chines will do all the work while men will be nothing 
 more than *' bundles of nerves of enjoyment." As to 
 the violation of the law that concerns women, that is 
 luckily quite rare. Prostitution and abortion are the two 
 ways of infringing it. 
 
 In substanc'=^, while men transgress their law women 
 ordinarily observe theirs. So women, according to Tol- 
 stoi, are stronger than men, and it is through them that 
 men can dream of returning to the fulfilment of the prim- 
 itive law. Only the mother who will regard child-birth 
 as a disagreeable accident, and will find the meaning of 
 life in the pleasures of love, luxury, learning, and social 
 relations, only she, says Tolstoi, will brmg up her child- 
 ren in false ideas and will teach them to rid themselves 
 
X TOIL 
 
 of toil by usurping that of others. The true mother will 
 teach them on the contrary to perform the toil necessary 
 to life. 
 
 These ideas may be compared with those which Bon- 
 dareff sets forth from the first paragraphs of '*Toil Ac- 
 cording to the Bible." Bondareff interpreting the story 
 of Genesis shows us that Adam was punished for having 
 eaten forbidden fruit, that is, ''usurped the labor of an- 
 other." He was condemned to seek his sustenance by 
 the sweat of his brow; to ''knead his bread," * to 
 use Bondareff's expression. 
 
 It is by manual labor and especially agricultural labor, 
 and not by the merits of Christ, the sacraments or any 
 other virtues, that Adam was able to save himself from 
 hell. His descendants inherited not only original sin, 
 but also this obligation to labor for their redemption. 
 The penance inflicted on Adam by Jehovah is not at all 
 allegorical. In like manner the penance inflicted on 
 Eve: "In sorrow shalt thou bring forth " ought to be 
 taken in its proper meaning. So then, on the one hand, 
 man ought to gain by the labor of his hands, the bread 
 needed for his subsistence and also for that of his wife 
 and his children; on the other hand, woman ought to 
 perform the duties of child-bearing. Neither one can 
 get free from his respective obligations either by means 
 of money or by any other means whatever. 
 
 In reality, then, it is from "Toil according to the Old 
 Testament " that Tolstoi has drawn the idea which he 
 
 * It will be seen how this way of interpreting the Bible may be 
 justified. 
 
TOIL xi 
 
 has for the first time fully presented in ''What is My 
 Life" and ''What to Do." But while the Jew, Bondareff, 
 assumes that the law of toil and the law of child-bearing 
 are the effects of the divine curse, Tolstoi protests 
 vehemently against such a conception. It is really what 
 we find in the verses of Genesis cited by Bondareff, and 
 on which he bases his whole theory. The God of the 
 Old Testament says to Adam: "In the sweat of thy 
 brow thou shalt eat thy bread" and to Eve: "In 
 sorrow shalt thou bring forth."* But according to 
 Tolstoi it is an error to believe that labor is a curse, 
 and it is this error which, of itself has led men to free 
 themselves from the different forms of manual labor, 
 that is, to usurp the labor of others. Tolstoi unceas- 
 ingly proclaims labor to be, not the sorrow but the joy 
 of life. Neither is child-bearing a curse. It is not only 
 an imperative and sacred duty; it is also a joy, a satis- 
 faction to the whole being. 
 
 Tolstoi, then, comes to Bondareff's conclusions from 
 a different starting point. For, to speak truly, Tolstoi 
 opposes the Gospel to the Old Testament. He claims 
 even to draw from the Christian precept of charity and 
 love the law of manual labor — "because, in truth," as he 
 says so eloquently mToil, "the man who professes not by 
 words but by deed the doctrine of the truth (that is, the 
 true doctrine, par excellence, ) and of love cannot deceive 
 himself as to the end toward which his activity should 
 
 * It is to be noticed that the Talmud, also law, teaches that every man 
 ought to have a trade, and the Sanhedrim declares that the Mosaic 
 religion ordains manual labor. 
 

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xii TOIL 
 
 tend. Never can the man for whom the meaning of life 
 service of others deceive himself to the point of believ- 
 ing he serves those who are dying of hunger and of cold 
 by compiling codes of law, casting cannon, working on 
 articles of luxury, or by playing the violin or the piano. 
 Love cannot be so mad!" 
 
 Out of harmony here, yet Bondareff and Tolstoi soon 
 come together again, and proclaim in unison that physi- 
 cal toil is not only the duty of man, but is, besides, the 
 supreme moral remedy, the most efficacious agent of our 
 salvation. Bondareff has shown Tolstoi how field labor 
 (which he calls so expressively " bread labor") is the 
 primitive toil, to which all men ought to apply them- 
 selves and by which all men ought to live. Other sec- 
 ondary tasks should not be performed till one has stirred 
 the earth for at least forty days. In short, as a general 
 rule, man ought to feed himself, clothe, lodge and shel- 
 ter himself, through his own efforts, without need of 
 others. 
 
 Finally, it is clear to Bondareff as well as to Tolstoi 
 that not only physical toil does not prevent mental activi- 
 ty, but that on the contrary it rather increases the dignity 
 and the power of the mind. Accordingly Toil shows us 
 that what Tolstoi teaches us, the peasant Bondareff put in- 
 to practice before him. If a comparison were made again 
 between ''What to Do" and ''Toil" it will be seen that 
 Tolstoi sets forth almost the same theories as Bondareff. 
 Undoubtedly the romancer-philosopher keeps all his 
 originality, but it is still true that he found the first 
 traces of his teachings in the peasant's book. And is it 
 
TOIL xiii 
 
 not a grand sight, that of this gifted writer, the famous 
 author of ''War and Peace " seeking in the izbs (hut) of 
 a peasant the word of Hfe, the magic formula which will 
 let that heavenly Jerusalem of which all men dream rise 
 here below. 
 
 II 
 
 Toil not only shows us how Tolstoi's ideas upon social 
 reform through physical toil were developed under the 
 mfluence of Bondareff, but it enables us the better to 
 understand how, till now, no one formed the theory of 
 physical toil and its effects on the solution of the social 
 problem. 
 
 What have people not said about Tolstoi, laborer and 
 cobbler? A man of letters quite recently wrote: ''Tol- 
 stoi's countrymen sometimes are lacking in respect to- 
 ward that grand old man. From them has come the 
 story of Tolstoi turned cobbler. We saw the nobleman 
 established in a shop, and did not know whether we 
 should admire or pity him. Neither pity nor admiration 
 is needed. He does not make shoe-making his life work; 
 he seeks only a distraction — rest to the brain in toil of 
 the hands. Others use weapons, weights; he has a 
 horror of useless efforts — he prefers to make shoes." 
 . That is an utter misunderstanding of the spirit of Tol- 
 stoi's and Bondareff's teachings. ^Physical toil is, in 
 their opinion, the first attribute, the essential character 
 of man, the true, the only meaning of hfe, or rather the 
 means to find life's meaning. Beyond doubt, one must 
 work to preserve the equilibrium between mind and 
 
xiv TOIL 
 
 body, but that is not the leading motive that leads Tol- 
 stoi to take the plow or the awl. He makes little ac- 
 count of the arguments that Jean Jacques Rousseau enu- 
 merates in favor of corporal labor. If it is necessary to 
 work with the hands it is because life consists in the 
 strife against nature to conquer the means of existence, 
 and physical toil is the very law of life. Man finds in 
 the accomplishment of this duty the complete satisfying 
 of his needs, corporal as well as spiritual. To feed him- 
 self, to clothe himself, to care for himself and his own — 
 these are the corporal needs he must satisfy. To feed, 
 to clothe, to care for others — these are the sum of his 
 spiritual needs. Every other form of activity is legiti- 
 mate only if it conspires to satisfy these primordial needs 
 of man, for in this lies all man's life4 
 
 Let us go further. Tolstoi is an idealist. Nature is 
 not what we fancy it. The true nature is mind, and mind 
 is superior to this or that individual. To recognize that 
 individuality is only an illusion, and that we are the arti- 
 sans of an infinite plan that infinitely surpasses us, this 
 is life's meaning. To set ourselves free, to strip off per- 
 sonality, to follow the path of renunciation and of self- 
 denial, ought to be our law. Now the act in which this 
 ideal is incarnate, that in which it takes a body, is toil, 
 the task of the centuries which binds the generations to 
 one another and makes of the universe a harmonious 
 whole, a single being accomplishing the same work.* 
 
 The results of this theory of toil are, in one direction, 
 belief in the possibility of paradise on this earth, and in 
 
 * See Tolstoi's book "Life." 
 
TOIL HLv 
 
 another direction, contempt for industrial toil, condemna- 
 tion of commerce, hatred of cities, ' 'veritable filthy Baby- 
 Ions." *'*It is necessary," says Tolstoi, ''to abandon the 
 city, where there are only consumers and no producers, 
 and renounce all the habits of city life, which far from 
 constituting progress, are only the worst forms of cor- 
 ruption, "f ' 
 
 Further, if this theory of manual labor is adopted, the 
 problem of pauperism will be easily solved; it will be 
 enough to divide the poor of the city among the peas- 
 ant's hous^. "How is it possible," Tolstoi asks, "to 
 leave the village, the mz'r where are fields, forests, wheat, 
 cattle, in a word, all the wealth of earth and go to seek 
 one's living in places where are only stones and dust. " * 
 
 Live by the toil of your hands, "work for bread," is 
 what both Tolstoi and Bondareff recommend to all those 
 who seek a cure for the social sores, to all those in whose 
 hearts dwells the love of humanity and the sentiment of 
 justice. 
 
 Tolstoi adds that if there are two, three, ten men who 
 without entering into conflict with any one, without 
 disturbing the government, without revolutionary vio- 
 lence, decide for themselves the terrible question that 
 divides the world, the result will be that other men will 
 see happiness near them, within their reach; that the 
 hitherto irreconcilable contradictions between con- 
 science and the organization of society will be settled 
 of themselves by physical toil ; that "cruel inequality" 
 
 f See "What is my Life ?" 
 
xvi TOIL 
 
 will disappear, and that finally heaven will descend 
 upon earth. 
 
 So then, science, statesmans) ^, political economy, 
 and, in a word, all external means are powerless to dis- 
 sipate the evil. The only remedy is in a personal, 
 moral reform, ^ased on cha 'ty and manual toil. Hu- 
 manity will transform its only through the inner 
 transformation of the individual. The whole social 
 question comes to a question of morals. Social reform 
 is for the honest man only a reform within. Let each 
 one of us try to avoid sinning, to cultivate fraternity 
 and Christian charity, and soon there will be no more 
 need of policemen, of soldiers or of judges. Freedom 
 from law, the city of God, the republic of the wise, will 
 speedily be realized here below. Have we not here an 
 original and powerful attempt to reform society and to 
 save the human race? Is the reform that Tolstoi 
 preaches possible? He only can doubt it who has not 
 comprehended the true teachings of Christ which teach 
 the renunciation of personal life and admit no other 
 immortality than that of humanity. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We have tried to set forth briefly the teachings of 
 Tolstoi and of Bondareff; comparing them, we have 
 shown their scope and the consequences to society; it 
 remains only to say a few words about Bondareff's book 
 in particular. 
 
 The reading of Bondareff's work is interesting and 
 suggestive. In this peasant is found profundity, close 
 
TOIL xvii 
 
 joined to simplicity. To be sure, the thought is not 
 always displayed with satisfactory clearness, a fault due 
 in part to the vocabula- y and Biblical style of the author. 
 But this difficulty is easily overcome if one reads with a 
 little attention. We have done our best to translate 
 the text in a manner as ex^-r^.t and as precise as possible, 
 preserving in it generally mode of speaking common 
 to the peasants of Russia, .±xcless readers of the Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
 We have tried to explain in notes all that can offer 
 any serious difficulty, and to illuminate, as it were, the 
 texts of Tolstoi and of Bondareff by comparisons and 
 contrasts. 
 
 I ought finally to thank my brother, M. Emile Pag^s 
 who has already translated one work of Tolstoi, ("What 
 is My Life?") It was he who having gone in i888 to 
 visit the great Russian author, at Moscow, received 
 from his hands the manuscript of Toil. My brother, 
 too busy to translate this work himself, entrusted it to 
 us. I may add that he has taken the trouble to exam- 
 ine with us some passages whose sense did not appear 
 quite clear. May Leo Tolstoi and the peasant Bon- 
 dareff, recognize their work through the medium of our 
 translations ; that will be the best reward of our efforts. 
 
 Amedee Pages. 
 
TOIL 
 
 AND BONDAREFF'S THEORY 
 
 1 
 
 The work which I offer to the public to-day is by Tim- 
 othy Bondareff. I have changed nothing from the shape 
 in which the author gave it. The only difference be- 
 tween the book and the manuscript is the spelling; in 
 the place of Bondareff's own spelling, I have adopted the 
 one usually used in books. 
 
 Another difference consists in the division of the work 
 into two parts: the Theme and the Appendix. Under the 
 title of appendix I have put all that appeared to be a 
 repitition or a digression from the main subject. 
 
 The work seems to me very remarkable through its 
 strength, its clearness, the beauty of the style, the sin- 
 cerity of the convictions which one feels in every line, 
 and especially for the importance, the truth and deepness 
 that lies in the fundamental idea. 
 
 The starting point of the work is this: In all of the 
 circumstances of life the most important is not to know 
 what is good and necessary, but to distinguish, amongst 
 the good and necessary things, the first in importance, 
 the second, the third, etc. That is of vital importance 
 through life, it must therefore be so in religious matters 
 in which humanity is bound down to precise duties. 
 
22 TOIL 
 
 Tatien * the master of the first epoch of the church, 
 said that the unhappiness of mankind was due, not so 
 much to their ignorance of the real God, as to their be- 
 hef in false gods and to the fact that they look upon God 
 as he is not. One can say the same of the duties of 
 mankind. The unhappiness and the crimes of men are 
 
 * Tatien, one of the apologists of the second century, who, in our 
 days, attracts the historian's attention more by the originality with 
 which he assimilates the revealed truths, the rough eloquence with 
 which he attacks the pagan corruption, his sudden and obscure pas- 
 sage from orthodox to gnostic heresy. He was born in Syria, as he 
 says himself in his Discourse to the Grecians. 
 
 After having uselessly searched the popular beliefs, the oriental 
 mysteries and the various philosophical schools for a doctrine that 
 could quiet his intellectual doubt and satisfy the needs of his con- 
 science, he found it in the lessons of the Gospel, and developed in his 
 first and most celebrated work, the Discourse to the Grecians, the 
 causes of his conversion. That apology, which he probably wrote in 
 Rome, differs from all of the others that were written at the same 
 epoch by the bitter antagonism between the pretended pagan wisdom 
 and the Gospel, antagonism which is found on every page. On one 
 side, light, nothing but light; on the other, darkness; here mythology 
 with its ridiculous fables, the clumsiness of which is but very roughly 
 covered by their subtle allegories, art entirely devoted to sensual 
 pleasure, philosophy with its chaos of contradictions; there, Chris- 
 tianity with its simple universality, giving its adepts a pure life and 
 the courage to face death. 
 
 After the death of Justin the martyr, Tatien returned to Syria and 
 joined one of the numerous sects to which oriental imagination had 
 given birth. 
 
 We have ascertained, as surely as one can in such a domain of con- 
 tradictions, that Tatien belonged to the sect of the Encratites, al- 
 though he was not its originator. (E. Stroehlin, Encyclopedia of Re- 
 ligious Sciences.) 
 
 The best known of his works of that time, "The Diatessarion, " 
 might have been a mixture of the four Gospels, and Eusebius speaks 
 of it without having seen it himself. Tatien wrote "The Diatessarion" 
 Gospel in order to erase from the canonical texts the genealogies and 
 other parts that trace the Savior's descent from David by successive 
 birth. 
 
TOIL 23 
 
 not due so much to the fact that they are not aware of 
 their duties as to the fact that they admit false ones, con- 
 sidering their duty what is not so, and ignoring entirely 
 as such what is their principle duty. 
 
 Bondareff says that the unhappiness and crimes of men 
 are due to the fact that they have taken too many friv- 
 olous and injudicious precepts for sacred duties, and that 
 they have hidden from themselves and from others that 
 duty which is undoubtedly the first, the most important 
 of all duties; that which is found in the first chapter of 
 the Gospel: ''With the sweat of your brow, you will 
 knead your bread." * 
 
 For those who believe in the holiness and infallibility 
 of the divine word expressed in the Biole, it is evident 
 that that commandment proves clearly enough through 
 itself its own truth, since it was given by God and has 
 never been contradicted. 
 
 As to those who do not believe in the Gospel, if, lay- 
 ing aside every prejudice, they consider this precept as 
 a simple and natural expression of human wisdom, they 
 will see how true it is when they examine the conditions 
 
 * It is thus that Tolstoi and Bondareff interpret the verse of the 
 Genesis, in order to present more clearly the idea of manuel work. 
 The usual translation is: "With the sweat of your brow you will eat 
 your bread." The following is the same text translated by Reuss 
 from the Hebraic: "And to man the eternal God said: Since you have 
 listened to the voice of yonr wife, and have eaten of the fruit which I 
 had forbidden you to eat, let the soil be cursed on your account; it 
 
 WILL BE WITH TROUBLE THAT YOU WILL DRAW FORTH YOUR FOOD DUR- 
 ING YOUR LIFE. IT WILL OFFER YOU BRIARS AND THORNS, AND WHEN 
 -'OU EAT THE PLANTS OF THE FIELDS, YOU WILL FEED YOURSELF WITH 
 
 THE SWEAT OF YOUR BROW, uutil you retum to dust; for it is from that 
 that you were taken, dust you are, dust you will become." 
 
 This shows that the intrepretation of Tolstoi and Bondareff is not 
 wrong. They are right in their belief that the Genesis teaches that 
 the natural condition of man is to dig the earth. 
 
M TOIL 
 
 of human life; and that is exactly what Bondareff has 
 done in his book. 
 
 What prevents them from seeing this statement in its 
 true light, is the fact that most of them are accustomed 
 to the erroneous explanations which theologians have 
 given of the Gospel. And that habit is so strong that, 
 as soon as you remind them that a doctrine is connected 
 with the Gospel, they look at it with disdain: ''What 
 do we care," they say, *'for the Gospel! We know that 
 one can find in it the justification of anything, and that 
 it is all a lie." 
 
 Nothing could be more unjust; one should not disdain 
 the Gospel because men have not explained it right; 
 and the man who says the truth is not guilty because 
 that truth has been said before and in the same terms by 
 the Gospel. 
 
 If we admit that what is called the Gospel is not the 
 work of God, but that of man, and if, besides, what is 
 purely and simply the writing of man is looked upon as 
 coming from God, we must not forget that there is some 
 reason for that. And that reason is very easily found. 
 
 Superstitious men call it the work of God because it is 
 more deep than any human science, and that, in spite of 
 continual refutations, it has reached us without losing 
 its reputation of divine descent. It is called divine and 
 it has been transmitted to us because it gives the most 
 perfect rules we know of for human wisdom. At least 
 that is the case in the greater part of the work that is 
 the Bible. 
 
 Such is, in truth, in its literal sense, the text which 
 Bondareff has chosen and on which he comments; such 
 is the commandment which mankind has forgotten, and 
 the meaning of which is annihilated by the present inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 People generally look upon that judgment of God and 
 
TOIL 25 
 
 Adam's life in the Paradise as historical and real events, 
 whereas the story should be considered in an allegorical 
 sense, because it shows the contending tendencies which 
 God has placed in human nature. 
 
 Man fears death and is submitted to it. A man igno- 
 rant of both good and evil seems to be more happy than 
 we are, and yet our tendency is to learn everything. 
 Man is fond of pleasure and of satisfying his needs 
 whenever he can do so without incurring pain, and still 
 it is in pain and sorrow that he finds himself and all of 
 his race. 
 
 The words: ''Knead your bread with the sweat of 
 your forehead," is important, not because, as it is said, 
 God spoke the words himself to our father, Adam, but 
 because it is true, because it asserts one of the unavoid- 
 able laws of human life. 
 
 The law of gravitation is not true only because it was 
 given by Newton; on the contrary, I only know Newton 
 because he discovered it, and I am grateful to him for 
 having taught me the eternal law that explains such a 
 countless number of phenomena. 
 
 It^s the same with the law: "With the sweat of your 
 brow, knead your bread." It is a law that explains 
 also an entire class of phenomena. Having once known 
 it I cannot forget it, and I am grateful to the one who 
 unrolled it to me. 
 
 That law, it seems, is very simple and known long 
 since. But that is only in appearance and, to be con- 
 vinced of the contrary, one has only to cast a glance 
 around him. Not only that law is not recognized, but 
 the one that is practised is diametrically opposed to it. 
 
 All of those who believe in God, from the tzar down 
 to the beggar, every one, I say, is anxious, not to obey 
 that law, but to break it. 
 
 To show that that law is eternal and unchangeable, to 
 
26 TOIL 
 
 explain how, if it is broken, unhappiness is the immediate 
 result: that is what Bondareff tried to do in the work I 
 am presenting. 
 
 That law, Bondareff calls it the primitive law, the first 
 commandment, he places before all others. He then 
 proves that sin, we may say the faults and treacheries, 
 re due solely to its neglect. According to his views 
 die principle one of the positive duties of humanity, the 
 first and most evident duty of each individual, is to knead 
 he bread with his own hands; he means by that that 
 every man must accomplish the long and irksome work 
 necessary to keep him from starvmg or freezing to death, 
 and consequently to earn by his own manual labor his 
 food, his clothes, his lodging and his fire. 
 
 Bondareff's fundamental idea is that the law, man must 
 work for a living, recognized up to this day as being nec- 
 essary, must be considered invariable and better than all 
 others. Even more, it must be observed as a religious 
 law, just as much as the Sabbath and the circumcision 
 with the Hebrews, the fasting and the sacraments with 
 Christians, the prayer five times a day, and other Ma- 
 
 homedan customs. 
 « 
 Bondareff asserts also that if men recognize in that 
 
 manual labor a religious duty, no other occupation could 
 prevent them from obeying that law, as^nothing can pre- 
 vent the believers from observing the days of rest pre- 
 scribed by religion. 
 
 We have over eighty holidays a year, while the work 
 of the bread only requires, according to Bondareff, about 
 forty days. 
 
 How extraordinary it seems at first that so simple a 
 way, one that every individual can understand so readi- 
 ly, requiring neither skill nor science, could save human- 
 ity from all terrestrial woes, however numerous they may 
 be. But how much more extraordinary it is that, hav- 
 
TOIL 27 
 
 ing within our reach a means so simple, so clear and 
 known for so long, we should ignore it and seek to cure 
 our pain by the means of subtle and false theories! 
 
 Think it over and you will see that it is just as if a > 
 a man, instead of putting a new bottom on his broken 
 barrel, would invent an infinity of other means of keeping 
 the water in it. Those inventions are a picture of the . 
 efforts we make to cure our woes. 
 
 And where does all of the evil come from, all of the 
 sorrows of men, all of those that are not caused by mur- 
 ders, the gibbet, the prisons, fights and all the other 
 cruelties of which they are guilty, because it is impossi- 
 ble for them not to be violent ? 
 
 All of the sorrows of mankind, except the direct acts 
 of violence, are assignable to hunger and privations of 
 all kinds, to discouragement in work; they are due to 
 wealth, to laziness and all of the vices to which they 
 give birth. If man wishes to improve, must he not try 
 to destroy that inequality which causes some to suffer 
 from misery and want, while others are suffering from 
 wealth and its seductions? How can those sorrows be 
 eliminated if not by sharing the work that satisfies our 
 needs, and by shunning wealth and laziness, creators of 
 vice and temptations; or, in other words, to obey the 
 law that orders every man to work at his own bread, as 
 says Bondareff, to earn his living with his own hands ? 
 
 We are so perplexed by the multitude of our religious, 
 social and domestic laws; we have invented so many 
 commandments by giving out, as says Isaia, rule after 
 rule — one rule for this, one rule for that, that we have 
 entirely lost the feeling of what is good and what is bad. 
 One says mass, another recruits the army or collects the 
 military taxes, a third judges, a fourth studies, a fifth 
 heals, a sixth teaches; all in a word, thanks to such pre- 
 texts as the preceding, avoid the work of the bread, cast 
 
28 TOIL 
 
 it off onto others and forget that there are people who 
 are dying of fatigue and hunger. But before giving the 
 people priests, soldiers, judges, doctors and teachers, it 
 would be best to look whether they are not starving to 
 death. Not only we are forgetting that we have a host 
 of duties to fulfill, but also that there is a first duty and 
 a last, and that we cannot fulfill the last without having 
 fulfilled the first, just as one cannot harrow the ground 
 before having plowed it. 
 
 It is the accomplishment of the duty which is undoubt- 
 edly the first of all which Bondareff's doctrine advises. 
 
 Bondareff shows that the accomplishment of that duty 
 will not be injurious to any of our other occupations — 
 that it offers no difficulty, and that it saves man from pov- 
 erty, need and temptation. 
 
 The accomplishment of that duty destroys above all 
 the odious division of mankind into two classes which 
 hate each other, and hide their mutual hatred under false 
 caresses. 
 
 ' The work of the bread, says Bondareff, will make men 
 .equal and clip the wings of luxury and envy. ' 
 
 People cannot plow the earth and dig wells with rich 
 clothes on their backs, with white hands and living on 
 delicate food. ^^ 
 
 It is by giving themselves to an occupation saintly 
 and good for every one that men will become united. 
 The work of the bread, says Bondareff, gives intelli- 
 gence to those who have lost it, to those who have not 
 lived the life that man should live; it gives joy and 
 happiness to those who accomplish it, for it is an inter- 
 resting and joyful occupation which God or nature has 
 reserved for men. 
 
 The work of the bread, as says again Bondareff, is a 
 remedy that saves humanity. If men would recognize 
 that primitive law as being divine and unchangeable, 
 
TOIL 29 
 
 if every one recognized the work of the bread as an un- 
 avoidable duty, every individual, living on the result of 
 his own work, would have the same belief in God, the 
 same affection for his brothers ; the poverty frc m which 
 suffer the great majority would disappear. 
 
 We are so accustomed to the 'modus vivendi that ad- 
 mits the contrary, that is, that wealth and the means of 
 avoiding the work of the bread are a gift of God, and 
 the highest social position we can long for ; we are, I 
 say, so accustomed to that state of affairs that we are 
 not willing to examine it carefully and recognize that it 
 is incomplete, unjust and inconceivable. 
 
 We must therefore analyze carefully that condition of 
 society and ask ourselves whether or not it is just. 
 
 Relating to that subject there are religious theories 
 and political theories enough to satisfy every taste. 
 Let us see what would happen if, following Bondareff's 
 wishes, the clergy tries in its sermons to explain the 
 first commandment, and if all mankind recognized the 
 holy and primitive law relating to work, what would 
 happen? 
 
 • Everybody would work out and eat the bread he had 
 made, and the bread which, let us say it again, is. abso- 
 lutely necessary, will be neither sold nor bought. What 
 will be the result? Simply this: no one will starve to 
 death. If a man does not gain enough to feed himself 
 and his family, his neighbor will help him. He will 
 help him because he could make no other use of things 
 that cannot be sold. The consequence will be that man 
 will have no more temptations, he will not feel the need 
 of winning through deceit or violence the bread which 
 he cannot get otherwise. "^ 
 
 And, having no temptations, he will have no more use 
 for violence and deceit. Such means will no longer be 
 necessary as they are to-day, and, if he does have 
 
30 TOIL 
 
 recourse to them, it will be because he loves violence 
 and deceit, not because he needs them as he does now. 
 
 The weak, those who have not strength enough to 
 earn their bread, or have lost it in one way or another, 
 will no longer need to sell themselves, to sell their work 
 and sometimes also their soul in order to get their daily 
 bread. 
 
 People will no longer try, as they do now, to cast off 
 the work of the bread, and load it onto some one else; 
 people will no longer kill the weak with labor and take 
 it all off the strong. One will no longer notice in man- 
 kind the tendency to use every atom of intellectual 
 strength in order to help, not the workingman in his 
 work, but the lazy man in his laziness. 
 
 In sharing the work of the bread and recognizing in it 
 one of the principle occupations of mankind, one would 
 do the same as a man who, in the presence of a carriage 
 dragged by madmen with the wheels up, would upset it 
 to its right position, he would not break it, and it would 
 go better after that. 
 
 The life which we lead in hatred and disdain for the 
 work of the bread, and all of our efforts to reform that 
 life so contrary to nature, what is it if not the carriage 
 which we are dragging with the wheels uppermost ? And 
 all of the efforts which we can make to improve our con- 
 duct will remain fruitless as long as we do not turn the 
 carriage over and put it on its wheels. 
 
 Such is the doctrine of Bondareff, and I am a believer 
 in it. 
 
 Here is another way by which I explain to myself Bon- 
 dareff 's conception: 
 
 The time has been when men were eating each other. 
 But the idea of the equality of mankind has been gradu- 
 ally developed, so that such a social condition seemed 
 doomed to disappear, and cannibalism disappeared. 
 
TOIL 31 
 
 Then there came a time when some seized upon the 
 work of others, after having made them slaves. But, 
 human conscience becoming more and more enlightened, 
 that social state could not last. 
 
 But that tyranny, having done away with its rough 
 shape, hid itself under the veil of hypocrisy, and is still 
 subsisting to-day. Man does not openly take the work 
 of another. Violence has now taken another shape: the 
 rich, thanks to the needs of the poor, make slaves of 
 them. 
 
 But, according to Bondareff, the time is coming when 
 the equality of men will at last be recognized, individuals 
 can no longer draw their profit from the need of others; 
 they can no more take advantage of their hunger and 
 cold to make slaves of them, for men, having admitted 
 that the work of the bread is a law necessarily imposed 
 on one and all, will consider it as their strict duty not to 
 sell the bread (meaning the objects of first necessity) and 
 to feed, to clothe and warm each other. 
 
 I look at Bondareff's work in another light still, 
 which is the following : 
 
 We often happen to hear that we must not be satis- 
 fied with negative laws, with negative commandments, 
 meaning by that, rules which tell us what we must not 
 do ; we need, it is said, positive laws, positive com- 
 mandments, rules that tell us exactly what we must do. 
 
 It is said, for instance, that Jesus Christ gave five 
 negative commandments : * 
 
 I. Do not look upon others as stupid and foolish, 
 and do not be angry with any one; f 
 
 * In these precepts of the Gospel we find all of Tolstoi's beliefs. 
 See for the development of the doctrine and the explanation of the 
 Sermon On The Mount, his fine work called "My Religion." 
 
 f And I tell you that whoever gets angry with his brother will be 
 punished by the judgement; that he who says to his brother, Racca, 
 will be punished by the council; and that he who says, Madman, will 
 be punished by the gehenna of fire. 
 
32 TOIL 
 
 II. Do not consider marriage as a source of pleas- 
 ure ; let the husband not leave his wife nor the wife her 
 husband ; J 
 
 III. Do not take an oath ; never bind yourself by 
 promises towards whomsoever it may be ; or for what- 
 ever it may be ; § 
 
 IV. Bear all violence and insult and offer no resist- 
 ance to the wicked; * 
 
 v. Do not look upon men as your enemies. Love 
 your enemies like your brothers ; f 
 
 It is said that those five commandments only teach us 
 what we must not do, and that they contain no com- 
 mandment prescribing what we must do. 
 
 X It has been said, ' 'If a man repudiates his wife, let him give her 
 the letter of divorce." 
 
 "But I say unto you that whoever repudiates his wife, unless it be 
 for the cause of adultery, exposes her to commit adultery; and who- 
 ever marries the woman who has been repudiated commits adultery." 
 
 § Again you have heard that it was said to the ancients, ' 'You will 
 not perjure yourself, but you will answer to the Savior for whatever 
 you have promised with oath. " 
 
 "But I say unto you, Do not swear at all; neither by heaven, for it 
 is the throne of God; neither by the earth, for it is his footstool; 
 nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king" 
 
 "Do not swear either by your head, for you could not change a sin- 
 gle hair to black or white. " 
 
 * You have heard what has been said, ' 'Eye for eye and tooth for 
 tooth." 
 
 "But I tell you to offer no resistance to the man who injures you; 
 but if you are stricken on the right cheek hold out also the other." 
 
 f You have heard that it has been said, "You will love your brother 
 and hate your enemy." 
 
 ' 'But I tell you, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, re- 
 turn the good to those who hate you, and pray for those who outrage 
 and persecute you, that you may be children of our Father who is in 
 Heaven; for He makes His sun rise over the wicked and over the good, 
 and He pours His rain down on the just and the unjust." 
 
TOIL 33 
 
 It may In truth seem strange to you that there should 
 not be in the doctrine of the Christ any precise com- 
 mandments as to what should be done. But he alone 
 can be surprised by it who does not believe in the doc- 
 trine of the Christ in which can be found not only those 
 five commandments, but the doctrine of truth (the real 
 and only doctrine). 
 
 The doctrine of the truth, taught by the Christ, is 
 found neither in laws nor in commandments, but only 
 in the direction which one gives to life. 
 
 The doctrine of truth teaches that life and righteous- 
 ness do not consist in personal happiness, as many peo- 
 ple think, but in the way you obey God and help your 
 neighbor. And that precept is not a prescription that 
 one must fill in order to obtain a reward; nor is it the 
 mystical expression of a hidden and incomprehensible 
 mystery; it is the revelation of the law of life which was 
 not known in ancient times, the demonstration that life 
 cannot be good unless it is directed in its true channel. 
 
 That is why the entire positive doctrine of Christ, the 
 doctrine of the truth, is expressed in these few words: 
 ^' Love God and your brothers as you do yourself." 
 
 It is impossible to give any explanation of that thesis: 
 it is self-sufficient, because it is all. 
 
 The laws and the commandments of Christ, like the 
 Judaic and the Buddhistic laws and precepts, only show 
 the cases where the temptations of the world turn man 
 away from the real channel of life. 
 
 Thus, there may be many laws and commandments, 
 whereas there can be but one single positive doctrine of 
 life which teaches us what we must do. 
 
 The life of any man must consist in the pursuit of 
 some end. Whether he wishes it or not, he must walk 
 towards it, since he lives. Christ shows man the road 
 he should follow, and, at the same time, he shows them. 
 
34 
 
 TOIL 
 
 how they can leave the right road to take the wrong: 
 and these last indications may be very numerous. They 
 are called the commandments. Jesus Christ has given 
 five of those commandments, and they are such that, up 
 to the present day, no one has been able to add to them 
 or take anything from them. But a single precept 
 shows us the right road, as if there could not be more 
 than one commandment to teach us how to guide our- 
 selves. 
 
 Thus the reasons for which the doctrine of Christ 
 contains negative precepts and no positive precepts, 
 only seems illegitimate to those who know neither the 
 doctrine of the truth, nor even the real channel of life 
 given us by Christ, and also to those who do not be- 
 lieve in His teaching. As to those who believe that 
 the road given us by Jesus Christ is the only true one, 
 they can not look for positive commandments in His 
 doctrine. 
 
 The various positive doctrines that result from that 
 doctrine of the real channel of life are always clear and 
 precise for those who believe in the lessons of Christ. 
 The people who know the real channel of life resemble, 
 to use the expression that Christ gave us, a spring of 
 fresh water, a spring that flows out of the soil. 
 
 All of their actions result naturally one from the other 
 as the stream spreads in spite of the obstacles it meets 
 with. 
 
 The man who believes in the doctrine of Jesus Christ 
 can not ask what are his positive duties any more than 
 the spring that flows out of the soil can ask what it 
 must do. . It gives water to the fields, the earth, the 
 grass, the trees, the birds, the animals and men. 
 
 That is also the conduct of the man who believes in 
 the definition of life given by Jesus Christ ; he goes 
 straight to his end. 
 
TOIL 35 
 
 The man who believes in the doctrine of Christ will 
 not ask what he must do. Love, which will be the ele- 
 ment of his life, will show him plainly and clearly what 
 road he must follow, an^ what are his duties for the 
 present and the future. 
 
 The first and most pressing of the works which love 
 must accomplish consists in feeding him who is hungry, 
 in giving water to him who is thirsty, in clothing him who 
 is naked, in helping the sick and the prisoners. Such is 
 the advice which we find continually in the doctrine of 
 Christ, and which is given us by our own heart. Even 
 more — the entire doctrine of Christ, the wisdom, the con- 
 science, the feeling, everything tells us to give no other 
 proof of love to the living men before having assured the 
 life of our brothers, and sparing them the pain and death 
 which overtake them in their unequal contest with nature;'*' 
 everything, in a word, tells us to accomplish what is the 
 first condition of human life, which is the work of the 
 bread, the most important, the most irksome of all works, 
 and the one which all should be submitted to. 
 
 Just as the spring cannot ask where it will send its 
 water, if it should water the grass and the leaves of the 
 
 * That idea of the eternal struggle with nature, appearing to him 
 as the principle duty of mankind, is constantly to be found in the works 
 of Tolstoi and especially in "What Should Be Done." "The first" 
 says he, "the most unquestionable duty of man, is to share in the strug- 
 gle against nature for one's own life and that of others." And again: 
 ' 'That God or that law of nature that created the world and man- 
 kind acted either right or wrong. But the situation of men in the 
 world since we know them is such that, naked, without hair on their 
 bodies, without a hole in which to seek refuge, unable to find food in 
 the fields, like Robinson on his island, they are all obliged to struggle 
 constantly, to struggle unremittingly with nature in order to cover 
 their bodies, to make clothes, to surround themselves with a barrier, 
 to build a roof over their heads, to prepare their food in order to ap- 
 pease, two or thr-ee times a day, their hunger, that of their children, 
 too weak to work, and that of the old and feeble," 
 
36 TOIL 
 
 trees, or flow lower down and moisten the roots of the 
 plants and of the trees, likewise also a man who knows 
 the doctrine of the truth cannot ask what he must do 
 first of all, whether he must teach men or protect them 
 against the enemy, amuse them or give them the com- 
 forts of life, or else help those who are dying of starva- 
 tion. A spring does not spread over the soil, does not 
 fill the ponds and quench the thirst of animals and men 
 before quenching that of the earth: likewise the man 
 who knows the doctrine of the truth cannot think of sat- 
 isfying the less imperious needs of mankind before hav- 
 ing satisfied their first one, before having helped to feed 
 them, and having shared their struggle against poverty. 
 The man who practices the doctrine of the truth and of 
 love can never be mistaken as to the use he should make 
 of his activity. The man who sees that his duty in life 
 is to help others will never be mistaken to the point of 
 thinking that he helps those who are dying of hunger 
 and of cold by making laws, by casting cannons, by mak- 
 ing objects of luxury or playing on the violin or the piano. 
 
 Love can not be stupid. 
 
 Just as love for a person does not consist in reading to 
 her novels if she is hungry, or in giving her costly ear- 
 rings if she is cold; likewise it is not admissible mat love 
 for one's fellow beings can consist in amusing tliose who 
 have eaten, and abandon to neglect and poverty those 
 who are hungry and cold. The true love, that which 
 acts, far from being unintelligent, gives alone, on tlie con- 
 trary, the real sagacity and the real wisdom. That is 
 why the man who really does love will not make a mis- 
 take; he will accomplish immediately the first action de- 
 manded by love for mankind; he will help those who are 
 hungry and cold, those who are in pain. But to help the 
 hungry and all of those who are unhappy, it means to un- 
 dertake a personal contest with nature. He who wishes 
 
TOIL 37 
 
 to deceive himself and deceive the others can, at the time 
 of danger, in the struggle of humanity against poverty, 
 refuse to help them, increase their unhappiness, and as- 
 sert to himself as well as to those who are dying before 
 him, that he has other occupations or that he is seeking 
 for some way of saving them. 
 
 A true man, a man for whom life consists in doing 
 good, could not say such heartless words; and, should 
 he make an answer like that, his conscience would 
 never approve of the lie ; his only refuge would be in 
 the wily and diabolical theory of the "Division of 
 Labor. "* 
 
 Amongst all of the doctrines on human wisdom, from 
 that of Confucius up to the Koran of Mahomet, the 
 Gospel is the only one in which he will find that idea 
 strongly expressed. It is the Gospel that will convince 
 him of the necessity of helping mankind, not with the 
 theory of the division of labor, but in the most simple 
 way, the most natural, the most necessary. It is the 
 Gospel that will show him the necessity of helping the 
 sick, the prisoners and those who are dying of cold and 
 hunger. 
 
 But one can not help the sick and the prisoners with- 
 out contributing personal and immediate work, for sick- 
 ness, hunger and cold do not wait in their mortal work. 
 
 * Tolstoi has discussed the theory of the division of labor and shown 
 its disastrous results in "What Must Be Done." 
 
 Of course, according to Tolstoi, the division of labor M^ould still ex- 
 ist in the human society, but the question is to discover how it can be 
 rendered just. It has engendered admirable progress, but, I know 
 not by what unlucky chance, that progress has not improved, it has 
 even been injurious to the majority, to the workingmen. 
 
 How then can we make the distribution of work more equal ? 
 
 To reserve one's life for a manual work, identical for all, that is the 
 first duty; when that one is fulfilled each individual can choose a 
 speciality, but still in such a way as to be useful to others. 
 
38 TOIL 
 
 The man who practices the doctrine of the truth will show 
 in his life, entirely devoted to helping others, the truth 
 of the primitive law, formulated in the first book of the 
 Genesis : "By the sweat of your brow, knead your 
 bread." It is the primitive law, or the first command- 
 ment, as Bondareff calls it ; and he shows us that it is a 
 positive law. 
 
 The law is such, in fact, for those who do not under- 
 stand the real channel of life as shown by Jesus Christ ; 
 it was such for those who lived before Him, and it will 
 remain such for those who do not believe in Him. That 
 law seems positive to them : it asks that each one of 
 us, accorfiing to the will of God, manifested in the 
 Bible and in our intelligence, should feed himself . with 
 the result of his own work. It will keep that character 
 as long as the channel of the human life, expounded by 
 the doctrine of the truth, will not be known to man. 
 
 But when the men will be familiar with the road they 
 are to follow, the one discovered by Jesus Christ, the 
 law which consists in kneading the bread, while still 
 remaining as true as ever, will become a part of the 
 only positive doctrine of Christ, (love each other), and, 
 from then on, it will be positive no longer, but neg- 
 ative. 
 
 When men will understand the real Christian doc- 
 trine, that law will simply show them what temptations 
 man has been exposed to, it will tell them what man 
 mu St avoid in order to remain in the channel of true life. 
 
 For a man of the old testament who will not recog- 
 nize the doctrine of the truth, the law reads as follows: 
 *' Work the bread with your own hands." 
 
 But for the Christian its meaning is negative. It says 
 to him: '^Do not think that one helps humanity by 
 taking advantage of the work of others, and not earning 
 your bread with your own hands." 
 
TOIL 39 
 
 It draws the attention of the Christian to one of the 
 most ancient, one of the most criminal temptations that 
 man was ever submitted to. Against that old tempta- 
 tion, so fatal in its consequences, and which it is so hard 
 to look upon as deceitful and contrary to human nature, 
 against that temptation, I say, Bondareff's book is 
 entirely written. His advice is equally telling for him 
 who believes in the Old Testament, and for him who 
 believes in the Gospel; as well as for him who does not 
 believe in the writings of a man and obeys his own rea- 
 son, and, lastly, for him who knows the doctrine of the 
 truth 
 
 Reader, my dear brother, whoever you may he, I love 
 you. Far from wishing to sadden you, to offend you or 
 introduce evil into your life, I want but one thing: to 
 help you! 
 
 I could and I wished to prove by a long development, 
 the truth of this thesis, answer all of the objections 
 which I hear made against it; but what good would 
 length or talent do me, what good would it do me to be 
 right, I cannot convince you if you only allow your mind 
 to struggle with me and let your heart remain cold. 
 
 That is what I fear. I fear that if I discuss with you, 
 I will offend you by the pride and coldness of my 
 mind, and consequently be injurious to you. Let us 
 not reason then. I have but one request to make: do 
 not discuss, do not demonstrate, but question your 
 heart. 
 
 Whoever you are, whatever your qualities, however 
 good you may be, whatever situation you may occupy, 
 can you quietly drink your tea, eat your dinner, talk of 
 politics, of art, of medicine, of science, of teaching, when 
 you see or hear at your door a man who is hungry and 
 cold, who is exhausted and ill? No, but you will say, 
 they are not always there at my door. That may be, 
 
40 TOIL 
 
 but they are fifteen miles or ten rods away from your 
 house; they are there and you know it. Consequently 
 you cannot live peacefully however great may be 
 your joy, it is poisoned by that recollection. To 
 keep from seeing those unhappy people you must 
 bolt your door, keep them away by your coldness or 
 else seek refuge in some retreat where you will not 
 find them. But they are everywhere! And if there 
 was a single spot from where you could not see them, 
 could you escape from your conscience? What can 
 you do then? 
 
 You know, and Bondareff's book tells you,^you must 
 go down to the bottom, to the place which seems to you 
 to be the bottom, but which is the top. Unite yourself 
 with the men who feed those who are hungry and clothe 
 those who are cold. Fear nothing. Far from being 
 worse, your new condition will be better than the previ- 
 ous one. Put yourself on a level with the others; under- 
 ta"ke with your weak and unskilled hands, the work 
 necessary to feed those who are hungry, dress those 
 who are cold, work the bread, struggle with nature, and, 
 for the first time, you will feel solid ground beneath 
 your feet; you will grow famihar with independence, 
 liberty and strength; you will no longer need to hide, 
 and you will enjoy a pure delight and pleasures which 
 the world had never given you any idea of. You will 
 have delights unknown until then. For the first time 
 you will meet simple and strong men, your brothers, 
 who, in spite of the distance that separated you from 
 them, have fed you until to-day. 
 
 To your great satisfaction you will find in them vir- 
 tues of which you had been unaware ; you will find such 
 modesty and such kindness with you that you will feel 
 unworthy of it. Instead of the hatred and the disdain 
 which you expected, you will meet caresses, grateful- 
 
TOIL 41 
 
 ness and respect, because having lived all of your life 
 through them, you have suddenly remembered their 
 poverty, and wish, with your weak hands, to help them. 
 You will see that the island on which you had sought 
 refuge in order to be spared by the sea, was nothing 
 but a heap of mud in which you were being drowned, 
 while the sea, that you dreaded, was dry land. It is 
 there that in the future you will walk bravely, quietly, 
 happily. 
 
 It was bound to be thus because, turning aside from 
 the road of deceit onto which you had been drawn in 
 spite of yourself, you will find the highway of truth. 
 After having disobeyed God's will, you will accomplish it 
 faithfully.   
 
 Leo Tolstoi. 
 Moscow, March, 1888, 
 
PART II: 
 
 Toil according to the Bible 
 
 BY THE 
 
 PEASANT BONDAREFF 
 
TOIL 
 
 ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE 
 
 In the sweat of thy face shalt 
 thou knead thy bread ; for dust 
 thou art, and unto dust shalt thou 
 return — Genesis hi: 19. 
 
 Before- speaking, according to my strength, of the 
 question of toil and of idleness, I must tell who I am. 
 Am I not like those who, showing people the road they 
 must follow, the road of righteousness, follow themselves 
 the road of evil, the most contrary to justice and com- 
 mon right ? 
 
 Up to the age of thirty-seven I worked as a farmer for 
 a pomestchik* of the Don, called Tchernozouboff. 
 Everyone knows how the men of my class are laden down 
 with work. Later on the pomestchik enlisted me as a 
 soldier, and my five young children remained under the 
 same heavy, intolerable yoke, 
 
 When I arrived in Siberia, in 1857, with my wife and 
 two children, the clothes we wore were the only ones we 
 had, and they had been given us by the state. 
 
 * Lord, owner of an estate. 
 
46 TOIL 
 
 But in the last fourteen years I have earned a little 
 house, so that I am now the equal of the comfortable 
 peasant who has always lived here. 
 
 And how did I acquire all that ? Simply by cultivat- 
 ing the earth. Here is the amount of work I can accom- 
 plish. When they are mowing the wheat, where two 
 good workmen can hardly succeed in tying the sheaves 
 behind a mower, I can succeed alone in spite of my sixty- 
 five years, and the work is as well done, and the sheaves 
 are as strongly bound. God is witness, reader, that I 
 am telling the truth. 
 
 One can see that, just as it is with you in the high 
 world, the superior rank is given to the general, in our 
 world it is given to the skilful workmen. 
 
 I have then in all justice the right to sit, like the 
 general, on the same chair. What am I saying? The 
 general should remain standing before me. 
 
 Why? the reader will ask anxiously. Because the 
 general eats the bread produced by my work, while the 
 contrary is not true, and that is what will be fully ex- 
 plained and justified further along. 
 
 You know now, reader, who I am. 
 
 Have I not the right to speak and write about toil 
 and idleness? I have that right, and I make use of it. 
 
 If, among the developments and explanations that 
 follow, you should find some that are useless, or per- 
 haps evep injurious, please consider them void. They 
 are not dictated by any bad intention ; but, on account 
 of the weakness of my mind, they seemed to me, erro- 
 neously it is true, to be interesting. 
 
 You, the high classes, you write thousands of books. 
 Are they less untimely and injurious? And still those 
 books are adopted, approved of and published. 
 
 But we, in the lower class, write on our side, the 
 present short story for all time and for our defence, and 
 
TOIL 47 
 
 you will probably cast it aside, as I have been told by 
 more than one, on account of my lack of talent and elo- 
 quence. That would be a great insult to us and also a 
 great insult to God ; I know with perfect certitude, that 
 heaven will soon come to our defence if you refuse the 
 bread, I mean the truth. 
 
 Can you deny the truth, can you live without eating? 
 No ! Inside of an hour you will hold out your hand 
 toward that tree of life, forbidden to you, toward the 
 bread produced by the work of others, and you will 
 carry it away. There is something there that makes 
 one think. ^ 
 
 That is why I request you, reader, to have pity on 
 yourself; give the question all of the care that it de- 
 mands, and then you will be right; and if some one else 
 refuses to consider it, you will not be responsible. 
 
 Do I expect any reward for the trouble I am taking? 
 
 That may be why I work, why I write? No; the only 
 return I expect from it is punishment; the rich people 
 have warned me. 
 
 If, they said, you addressed the blame to the lower 
 classes, then you might be rewarded; but you are 
 wounding well known people, and will be punished as 
 surely as you will die. 
 
 But what may save you, perhaps, is that this work will 
 be destroyed. 
 
 One must have an aim, I answered. For the truth 
 which is proclaimed, one must be ready not only to 
 suffer, but even to die. But it may be with them that 
 lies the greatest fault, they might be punished severely; 
 that is what we will show further on. 
 
 That is then the answer I made to the idlers who were 
 predicting such terrible suffering for me. Certainly it 
 would be in my interest to speak allegorically, but I do 
 
4R TOIL 
 
 not do it. You may be angry if you wish; I will follow 
 the straight path. 
 
 Several rich people, having read my writings, were 
 deeply offended. ''You are writing that," they said to 
 me, '' not against everybody, but against me alone." 
 
 That is why, in the name of the God of truth, I beg 
 you, reader, not to have that same idea. I am writing 
 in the name of every farmer and against all of those, 
 whoever and however many they may be, who do not, 
 by the work of their hands, produce the bread which 
 they eat. 
 
 My whole work can be resumed in two words: 
 
 1. Why, according to the first commandment, do you 
 not reap the bread which you eat, and do you eat the 
 bread produced by the work of others ? 
 
 2. Why, in theological and other books, are the 
 farmer and the work of raising wheat not approved of, 
 and even held in the greatest contempt ? 
 
 It should be enough to ask those questions. But as 
 you persist in denying manual labor in every way, I am 
 obliged to write to greater length on the subject. 
 
 And now, reader, I request that you do not eat for 
 two days before judging my book. 
 
   Humanity is divided into two groups: one is noble 
 and honored, the other is humble and deprived. The 
 first is richly clad, owns a table covered with delicious 
 food, and sits pompously at the seat of honoir: they are 
 the rich; but the second group, clothed in rags, exhaust- 
 ed by the use of dry food and by the irksome work, 
 bearing a humble and humiliated look, remains standing 
 on the threshold: they are the poor laborers. 
 
 The truth of my words is confirmed by the parable: 
 
 ''There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in 
 purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day; 
 
TOIL 
 
 49 
 
 ''And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which 
 was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed 
 with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table; 
 moreover the dogs came and licked his sores." (Luke 
 xv: 19, 20.) 
 
 Well ! I will ask my companions, the laborers who 
 always remain on the threshhold : Why do we always 
 remain silent before them like the quadrupeds? Cer- 
 tainly one should be silent before a more deserving 
 man, on the condition that one should know why, where 
 and to what extent to be silent, but one should not be 
 vilely humble, and adore him as an idol. 
 
 It is therefore in the name of all of the latter that I 
 speak to all of the former and say : Answer the ques- 
 tions which I will ask. 
 
 1. Adam, for having disobeyed God's order, "Do not 
 taste of the fruit of the forbidden tree," not only lost 
 his own happiness, but brought the same punishment 
 down onto all of his descendants until the end of cen- 
 turies. That shows that he committed the greatest act 
 of impiety, but we must not think that his crime con- 
 sisted in eating, so to say, the forbidden fruit, that is 
 the apple. 
 
 2. Then he tried to hide himself amidst the bushes 
 of that garden. According to the words of Scripture, 
 "Adam and his wife hid amongst the laurel bushes. " 
 
 But who was he hiding from? Men did not exist 
 yet. From God, most certainly. 
 
 See into what madness evil draws man ! Can one 
 hide from God? That shows that, understanding his 
 fault, he expected to receive the punishment, and here 
 is the unhoped for sentence which God passed on him : 
 * "For having disobeyed the order I gave you, this 
 will be your punishment : You will knead your bread 
 
 Toil-4 
 
50 
 
 TOIL 
 
 in the sweat of your brow, and you will return to the 
 earth whence you came." 
 
 3. Should not Adam have wept tears of grate- 
 fulness towards God for the unspeakable mercy He 
 showed for him? What was that punishment compared 
 to what he expected? 
 
 4. Can we now believe that Adam worked for nine 
 hundred and thirty years, that he ate his bread in the 
 sweat of his brow and that he lived from the work of his 
 hands although he was noble, according to the ideas of 
 his time, for it is through him that humanity increased 
 and he is the father of mankind? 
 
 5. Did he wish for authority then or any power? No. 
 For although he listened in the paradise to the advice of 
 the snake that said to him and to his wife: *' You will be 
 like Gods if you know the good and the evil," which 
 means that you will live like pomestchiks and will be the 
 most intelligent and wise in the world, and, in spite of 
 that, they were trying to hide from God. 
 
 Following the serpent's advice, Adam hoped to live in 
 this world without working, but he was condemned, on 
 the contrary, to seek for his food with the sweat of his 
 brow, and, instead of attaining a supreme rank, he lost 
 the dwelling where he had been born, and, exiled from 
 it, he appeared poor and naked with his body for sole 
 possession. As soon as the serpent became for him a 
 horrible animal, the desire for evil contributed to his fall 
 and that of all his race. 
 
 6. You see, reader, what resulted from this desire for 
 possession. 
 
 And what must we think of the man who desires 
 wealth, of the man who can live under parasols, with 
 white hands, and, during his whole life eat the bread 
 that others have worked for? The solution of this enig- 
 ma is beyond the reach of our mind. 
 
TOIL 51 
 
 I know that you have already a multitude of objec- 
 tions to make, but do not criticise my ideas, I beg of 
 you, before reading to the end. 
 
 7. Did Adam expect for a single minute, thanks to 
 money which did not exist, or by any other unlawful 
 means, to give that work into other hands, and to re- 
 main himself under the parasol waiting for a share of 
 the work of others, like a beggar or a hornet? That is 
 what is done to-day by many who think it would be a 
 great crime to take a whisp of straw or a grain of wheat 
 from others, and who see nothing wrong in taking and 
 eating the bread made by other people which is served 
 on their table. 
 
 8. But if our father Adam received for his crime a 
 punishment to which he submitted willingly, or other- 
 wise if he lived from the work of his hands until the end 
 of his days; as it is said: ''you will return to the earth 
 whence you came,'* we see that he is now innocent and 
 that he has paid the price of the crime which he committed. 
 
 9. Scripture says again: ''And then Adam will hold 
 out his hand and eat the fruits of the tree of life, and he 
 will live forever." Some suppose that it means literally 
 of the tree on which the Christ was crucified. But such 
 a supposition is not justified. Is it possible to admit 
 that it is, thanks to the worthiness of others, from Christ, 
 that man, who is not deserving, obtained the forgiveness 
 of his sin? That is evidently invented to strengthen 
 people in the hope that, without work, lying continually 
 on their side, they can receive the inheritance of eternal 
 wealth. 
 
 But if that tree has any connection with Adam's expi- 
 ation, that is with the work of the bread, then it is a very 
 irksome duty that is imposed on us. 
 
 Was I not giving a more just interpretation in saying 
 that when Adam would eat the bread produced by the 
 
52 TOIL 
 
 work of his hands, then only he would live for centuries 
 of centuries? 
 
 Let us suppose, for instance, that no one should hold 
 out the hand towards that tree of life, meaning the work 
 of the bread, as is the case with most of us ; in such con- 
 ditions would it be possible for the world to live ? 
 * It is therefore plainly and legitimately evident that we, 
 the laborers, we are near the tree of life, but that all of 
 you who avoid work, you are near the tree of death. 
 Have I spoken right ? You will be obliged to admit, I 
 believe, that my conclusion is true. 
 
 10. Thus it is evident that if Adam by that expiation 
 had purified himself of his crime in the eyes of God, that 
 expiation has, during his whole life the power to atone 
 for his sins. 
 
 As man is doomed to sin against God until the end of 
 his life, this punishment is given to him: ''You will 
 return to dust." 
 
 Is it right? 
 
 11. And you of the higher class, only a limb of the 
 same tree, why is it that during your whole life you will 
 not consent to accomplish that expiation, and why do 
 you eat several times a day? Are you not just as great 
 a sinner as the laborers, my brothers? 
 
 But no, you are above us, you are more intelligent 
 and more learned, and you are committing the greatest 
 crime of all towards God and towards the world. 
 
 You will say: ''I work more than the laborer; and it is 
 with the money I have earned that I buy my bread." 
 We will speak of that later. 
 
 12. It is seen by all that has been said, how useless 
 it is to endeavor to transfer the expiation of our sins on 
 to anyone else, for God knew himself what treatment 
 should be prescribed for our illness, for our sin, and he 
 prescribed. 
 
TOIL 
 
 53 
 
 Is it true? 
 
 13. But if we, the descendants of Adam, have inher- 
 ited his sin, and at the same time, the atonement that 
 was attached to it, and if we are really guilty of it, 
 more so perhaps than Adam, for Adam did not know all 
 that we have learned since then, in that case we must 
 neither endeavor to avoid the punishment which God 
 himself inflicted on, Adam as well as on us, his posterity, 
 and each one must work and earn his bread with his 
 own hands, whoever he may be, whether rich or poor, 
 whatever his worth and rank, except the excusable cases 
 of illness or impotent old age. 
 
 14. Of course if one does not examine attentively 
 manual labor, the anxiousness of earning one's life and 
 one's worthiness, it may seem too little to atone for the 
 multitude of our sins and make us innocent in the sight 
 of God. For, since you are working for yourself, what 
 reward can you expect? 
 
 I have explained in the preceding paragraphs and will 
 say in the following ones what that reward is. 
 
 The worthiness of that work does not seem sufficient 
 to you ; but you would still remain unwilling to accom- 
 plish it if an angel came down from the sky to tell you 
 how worthy it is. 
 
 15. You see then how Adam atoned for the first sin. 
 But others assert that he was exiled into hell for five 
 thousand five hundred years, and that he suffered there 
 until Christ delivered him. 
 
 But that is certainly an interpretation contrary to the 
 law. And why do people assert what does not agree 
 with the law? It is simply to rid themselves "of those 
 abominable occupations" and live like pomestchiks. 
 But if it is right to think that Adam owed his deliver- 
 ance to manual work, then we also must work diligently. 
 Is it right? 
 
54 TOIL 
 
 1 6. I ask why God did not prescribe for Adam's 
 atonement those virtues which we consider the most 
 highly: fasting, prayer, sacraments, etc., but He pre- 
 scribed to him that work in which the learned will not 
 see or recognize any virtue, which they even look upon 
 as a capital sin.'- Why is it thus? 
 
 17. From all of the developments which precede it 
 results that Adam belonged to our class, to the lower and 
 ignorant class; he knew not how to write, read or talk 
 well. God prescribed to him the occupation which was 
 suitable to his mind. And he, being weak of mind, con- 
 sented. But now God is giving the same orders to the 
 learned through the Scripture and through the voice of 
 conscience; and they retort with thousands of objections 
 to which God himself knows no longer what to answer. 
 
 18. Until now we have only considered Adam's atone- 
 ment; we must now speak of Eve's expiation. Was 
 God not able to create in the beginning several thousand 
 people ? Why did he only create two; the husband and 
 wife, Adam and Eve ? Evidently it was because, in hu- 
 man life, there are two principal duties, two duties of the 
 same importance: the first is to give birth to men; the 
 second, |o work with the sweat of your brow. God said 
 to Eve: ''I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your 
 conception; (what a terrible sentence); you will give 
 birth to children in sorrov^" 
 
 And he said to Adam: *^You will knead your bread 
 with the sweat of your brow and you will return to the 
 earth whence you came. " 
 
 19. Now I ask why, in woman's atonement, there is 
 no hidden meaning, no allegory, and everything is ac- 
 complished literally as God said it. The woman who 
 lives in a poor hut and the czarina who sits on a throne 
 and wears a crown on her head, have the same destiny: 
 * ' Their children come to them with pain. " No difference 
 
TOIi. 55 
 
 h 
 between them. No; and it is so true that they both re- 
 main half dead and sometimes die entirely. 
 Is it true ? 
 
 20. But the women of the higher class might say: 
 *' I have no time to be delivered of a child, I have press- 
 ing state business to attend to; whereas by childbirth I 
 would cause the state more loss than profit. And 
 then is it right for me to be the equal of the lowest peas- 
 ant, of the moujitchka? It is better for me to hire some 
 other woman who will give birth to a child in my place, 
 or to buy a child that is already born and which I will 
 have for my own as if I had carried it in my bosom." 
 Could she speak thus and accomplish what she says? 
 
 21. No, that cannot be done, the order estabHshed 
 by God cannot be changed. 
 
 ^^Scrape together all of the wealth of the world and give 
 it for a child. It will not be your's. It did not belong to 
 you an hour before; it will not belong to you any more 
 afterwards. To whom does it belong then? To the 
 mother who bore it. 
 
 *With bread it is just as with the child. Man can 
 avoid the work of the bread, buy with money a pound of 
 bread; but that bread belongs to another and always 
 will. ' It belongs to him who made it by his work.i^ 
 
 For, just as God decided that woman cannot avoid 
 childbirth with money or any other means, likewise also 
 must man, by the work of his hands, procure the bread 
 necessary for his food, for that of his wife and of his chil- 
 dren. He cannot avoid that obligation, neither with 
 money or any other means, whatever may be his rank or 
 his worth. 
 
 22. No animals, neither the birds nor the reptiles, 
 nothing that lives in the air or on the earth, can avoid 
 the destiny which Go^ set before it; but you, man, the 
 most intelligent and the most learned of beings, why do 
 
56 TOIL 
 
 you alone cast it off? What will you answer to that? 
 Will you again seek refuge in your lie: ''I work more 
 than the laborer, and I buy bread with the money which 
 I have earned by my work?" Leave that answer aside 
 for nothing is more false. For everything that exists in 
 the world you can buy it with money, everything except 
 bread. 
 
 23. I ask it once more, why is there no hidden mean- 
 ing in the atonement inflicted upon woman; why, when 
 it is a question of woman, is everything accomplished 
 literally as God said it, while man's expiation is entirely 
 allegorical? What exx:uses, what lies, what pretexts can 
 you give that will not be as many defeats? ''That com- 
 mandment," will say the intelligent and learned man, 
 ''does not necessarily mean that one must work in the 
 fields with a scythe, a rake or a flail. I eat my bread 
 with the sweat of my brow, it is enough." And the sim- 
 ple, the ignorant man like myself will think that the in- 
 telligent man is right and perfect. But, for the third 
 time, I ask for an answer to this question: why is every- 
 thing literal in the atonement of the woman, while there 
 is nothing but a symbol and an allegory in that of man? 
 24. God said again to woman, according to Scripture: 
 "I increase, I will increase your pain and your wailings." 
 It is plain, there is no hidden meaning. The suffering 
 of a mother is so great that it can not be described, and 
 the heart alone can understand it. "Your desires will 
 all be in regard to your husband and he will dominate 
 over you." And everything happens as it is said in the 
 Scripture. Why is it then that the duty of the laborer's 
 wife being literal, your's, that of the learned class, is 
 allegorical? 
 
 25. How I regret that I am not eloquent! I feel all 
 the truth and strength of what I say, and not being elo- 
 quent, I can not express what I feel, and my thought 
 
TOIL 57 
 
 grows dim and weak. But one hope encourages me, it 
 is this, that if gold can be seen in the midst of mud, so 
 can bread also, for it is better known, more appropriate 
 and more dear than gold. 
 
 26. God said to woman: ''You will not work to earn 
 your food, but your children will come to you with pain." 
 Why do our women work? Reader, while waiting for 
 you to find the answer, I will answer myself. 
 
 You who eat the bread of our work, ycu are in Russia 
 about thirty millions; but if our women did not work, ac- 
 cording to the commandment, what would happen? One 
 thing only: everybody would die of hunger. 
 
 That shows plainly and evidently that our women 
 work for you and fulfill your duties: you eat the result 
 of their work. I can not be sufficiently surprised that 
 you do not fear the justice of God. But I was forget- 
 ting that you buy your bread with money. 
 
 Do you think that that excuses you? 
 
 27. I have heard that certain women took a poison 
 that they might not have children, or that they killed 
 them after having given birth to them. I ask what 
 punishment those women deserve for having broken 
 and disdained the commandment of God. 
 
 Is it not the very same punishment that should be 
 inflicted on the men who have broken and disdained 
 the commandment of God? What does it mean, ex- 
 cept that they should not eat, since they have not 
 worked? But no, they eat several times a day, other- 
 wise they could not live. 
 
 / j^^. ^^ But the woman who has killed the fruit of her 
 womb, spends her whole life in atonement; from the 
 bottom of her soul she sighs and prays to God for for- 
 giveness ; until her last day she fasts and prays. Thus, 
 it seems, she will win from God the forgiveness of the 
 
SS TOIL 
 
 sin she committed, of the violation of the commandment 
 that concerned her. ) j 
 
 But you, reader, do you repent, you who have, all 
 your life, eaten the bread made by others? Are you 
 asking God and man to forgive you? No; but on the 
 contrary, you are not even thinking of it, you rely sole- 
 ly on your money, you live a merry life and think your- 
 self equal with God. 
 
 *2g. Woman being weaker than man, God gave her 
 an unavoidable duty; thus we, the lower classes, being 
 weaker in mind than you, we have also an unavoid- 
 able duty. 
 
 But you, being more intelligent and learned than we, 
 it is willfully that you act as you do : if you wish 
 it, you can accomplish this work; if you wish it, you 
 do not do it, because you can make others do it for you. 
 
 Since you know how to avoid the work of the bread, 
 and who to oblige to do it, then you can be judged un- 
 mercifully, for you do not sin unwittingly. Whereas I, 
 who, during my whole life, have eaten my own bread 
 and fed others with my work, I may not have shown 
 much intelligence, but I have deserved the smile of 
 God. , 
 
 30. Why is it that the real meaning of that com- 
 mandment which is above all other commandments, is 
 ignored by men? 
 
 I do not see any other cause than the following : 
 * If laborers were giving the explanation of the law, 
 they would show it with its full meaning and power, 
 then all of the czars and all of the kings and all of the 
 princes of this world would recognize that the first and 
 most holy duty is to work with one's hands. Then the 
 lower class could breathe, it can not now, and each one 
 would carry on his heart the key of the entire law : 
 "Never desire anything that belongs to your brother.,, 
 
TOIL 59 
 
 31. Because it is those people who hardly know 
 where and how the wheat grows, because they have ex- 
 plained and explain the law ; how is it that they have 
 entirely misunderstood and forgotten it. '1 
 
 Because before that commandment all of the religious 
 customs easily executed and requiring no work, would 
 lose their strength and be cast aside; 
 
 Lastly, because the most important is that he who 
 teaches and explains the law, should show everywhere 
 the example and put his own hand to the work, while 
 generally his hands are very white and unable to do any 
 work of that kind ; 
 
 For all of those reasons the commandment has been 
 abandoned, half extinct, I should say that it has been 
 buried alive and will never resurrect for you or you for 
 it until the end of the centuries. 
 
 32. If that commandment, the first one that God 
 gave, from which comes every virtue and which gives 
 birth to eternal happiness, both terrestrial and heav- 
 enly, if. it was accepted and understood, the affection for 
 wheat would be so great that fathers would be telling 
 their sons : "When I am about to die, carry me to the 
 wheat field that my soul may there part from my body, 
 and bury my remains in that very field. " 
 
 But what is happening now? 
 
 Those who work expect no reward from God; those 
 who live from the work of others expect no punishment. 
 
 33. If tnat commandment, I repeat it, was accepted 
 and understood, what help would not be given to the 
 farmers for the work of the wheat ; it would be so great 
 that one acre would produce more than five do now. 
 
 But how can we make you accept that law? If we do 
 not follow the commandment you have the right to ob- 
 lige us to, but if you do not follow the commandment, 
 
6o TOIL 
 
 or rather, the one who gave It, like the prodigal son 
 leaving his father, what can oblige you to return? 
 
 Before you we are but naughts without units, as we 
 have been called.* 
 
 And why do you lower us to such a degree? Simply 
 because we are feeding you. 
 
 54. God could certainly have found another way of 
 rendering the earth fertile and making it produce wheat, 
 but he has made of that work the atonement of our sins. 
 In other words, man not being able to live without sin- 
 ning and without working for his food, he allowed us to 
 atone for our sins by that work. 
 
 But you, neglecting such a precious remedy, and, as 
 we have said, burying it in a tomb that none of the in- 
 habitants of the earth might find it, you have decided 
 that man can be saved by the sole belief in God. 
 
 Satan also believes that there is but one God and obeys 
 him, as we see in the book of Job, II, 1-3. 
 
 You class the work of the bread with the secondary 
 virtues and even that you do not always dare to do; of 
 the head you have made the tail, and even that has not 
 satisfied you. 
 
 Therefore you will be severely punished by God, and 
 He will be unmerciful to you, because for thousands of 
 years you have hidden that commandment, and of a live 
 being you have made a corpse. 
 
 Read all of the books of the world and you will find in 
 none that the work of the bread and the farmer are re- 
 spected: they are looked upon as less than nothing. 
 
 * It might be thought that we are inventing and that no one calls 
 us thus. But it is an epithet we have heard several times and from 
 different people. Here is how we can answer: 
 
 You all, you are I (the unit) and we are O, but as we are bound to 
 you the two terms must be brought together, making ten : which show 
 that we are nine to one. 
 
TOIL 6i 
 
 People do not think that it is to the farmer that they go 
 to buy their bread and that everything depends upon his 
 willingness. Now think it over. 
 
 35. All of the crimes that are committed on this 
 earth, such as robbery, murder, plundering, etc., all of 
 that results from the fact that the commandment is hid- 
 den from men. 
 
 The rich use every way to avoid that odious occupa- 
 tion, and the poor to shake it off. 
 
 But explain to man the importance and the virtue of 
 that commandment, all crime will stop immediately and 
 forever, and mankind will be delivered from poverty and 
 suffering because each man will do his best to fulfill the 
 commandment of God. 
 
 Fifty years ago, I remember it well, the tax in money 
 was of four roubles per person, the custom-house duties 
 were small, and the treasury was satisfied. 
 
 To-day the tax in money is of thirty-five roubles per 
 person, and, in general, they have increased ten times 
 over on everything; the number of tax-payers is more 
 than double; and still they are complaining that it is not 
 enough, that the taxes are not high enough. That 
 makes one suppose that in fifty years more you will in- 
 crease the tax to one hundred roubles and ruin the peo- 
 ple. 
 
 And why? because everybody wants to dress stylishly, 
 but without working. Where must all that be taken? 
 Evidently from those who can say and do nothing to 
 protect themselves. In every way, from above and be- 
 low, from outside and inside, you outrage us intolerably. 
 That is why the people have become scheming and art- 
 ful; they love to deceive: and thus, not having a kopek 
 coming from the treasury they will prove that they have 
 not five thousand, but ten thousand, and they will get 
 them. Is it not so? 
 
62 TOIL 
 
 During the last days of March, 1883, I heard that phys- 
 ical punishment was re-established. I trembled on hear- 
 ing the news. As the butcher cuts meat with a dull 
 hatchet, thus strikes the executioner. It is a thousand 
 times preferable to be killed than to endure such torture. 
 
 And then I resigned myself to it for a while, wonder- 
 ing by what deed the executioner had better begin his 
 action. By none, I answered myself. 
 
 If there is no other way — if there is no other possibility 
 of obliging men to do right, then must we submitjto see- 
 ing the blood flow. 
 
 But there is a way, a decisive remedy against crimes. 
 It is the oldest law which God has given to us. It is 
 not in vain that God gave us no duty to accomplish be- 
 fore our work, and that he orders us to avoid no other 
 vice than idleness. 
 
 That shows that work includes every virtue, while 
 laziness and idleness, on the contrary, have produced 
 every sin. If, therefore, there is a criminal amongst the 
 farmers, it is simply because he does not observe that 
 law. We must not forget, however, that other work is 
 meritorious, but only after the bread; that is, after we 
 have eaten the bread earned by our own hands. 
 
 You have allowed the executioners to whip men, but 
 what men ? We are evidently the only ones. The exe- 
 cutioner does not touch the rich who have to protect 
 themselves: ist, friends, 2nd, eloquence, 3rd, cunning, 
 and 4th, money. We have nothing of all that. 
 
 Of course nothing will prevent the rich man from aton- 
 ing for his crime if the superior authorities hear of it. 
 But otherwise the matter is hushed up immediately. 
 And it is said in the Deuteronomy that ''presents dazzle 
 the eyes of judges.^' 
 
 Among all of the requests which I have to make, this 
 is the one I care the most for; Do not fleece the poor 
 
TOIL 63 
 
 while sparing the rich. And if you do fleece, begin at 
 least with the head and not with the tail. I could not 
 express my request more plainly, but remember my argu- 
 ment against your habit of spilling human blood. ■* It is 
 not the law, but the lack of laws that defends him 
 who protects you against crimes. , The executioner 
 should disappear, his name even should be forgotten in 
 the universe. 
 
 36. But then what will say the lower classes? There 
 is so and so who can live on the work of others, why 
 should not I also live in the same way? 
 
 I also will kill, rob and be violent; I want to have my 
 turn in living as a pomestchik, with my pockets full; I 
 want to order and obey no longer. It is not through 
 honest work that you will succeed in having stone houses. 
 * 'Honest work will not make you rich, but round- 
 shouldered; if you do not sell your soul to the devil you 
 will not grow rich, etc.," (Russian proverbs). 
 
 And it is yourself who come to judge him and exile 
 him to Siberia, when you are the only cause of all evil. 
 
 37. You see, reader, how much harm there is in that 
 evil, the aversion to the work of the bread. You see 
 what white hands do and what good dirty hands draw 
 from the earth. And lastly you see the good that would 
 result from the revelation of the commandment. 
 
 Have good writers given themselves a great deal of 
 trouble to explain it and teach it? Perhaps they have, 
 but it would have been far better to show how useful it 
 would be to observe it, how wicked it is to cast it aside; 
 they should have spread it in books, in their sermons 
 and in religious ceremonies, exhorting every one to 
 accomplish the work of the bread. It would have been 
 a thousand times better than to establish a religion on 
 the works and merits of Christ, and avoiding the work 
 that was prescribed for them by God, all that was sim- 
 
64 TOIL 
 
 pie and easy, but it would have been necessary for the 
 writer or the preacher to set to work himself and give 
 the example; but how can you oblige people to work 
 when it tires them already to carry their hand to their 
 mouth? 
 
 38. If I were a man who had avoided work, who had 
 never seen how it is done, and if, in spite of that, I had 
 begun to teach such ideas as these, everybody would 
 have had the right, for answer, to spit in my face and 
 walk away in disgust. And if until then I had been 
 looked upon as a reputable man, from that time on 
 I would have been rightly despised. 
 
 That is why, up to the present day, the writers have 
 said nothing; that is why they say and will say nothing 
 of that commandment until the end of centuries. 
 
 Adam committed a crime; God punished him accord- 
 ing to the extent of his crime, as we see in the Holy 
 Scripture; he is then equal to God. Why then does 
 tradition wish him to have been exiled into hell for 
 five thousand five hundred years? 
 
 Does the New Testament allude to that exile? Whence 
 comes that legend? If that was true, by imposing on 
 him the atonement of work God would have deceived 
 Adam by a promise that was never to be realized, God 
 would have lied. For, if that work was useless to Adam, 
 if, having endured fatigue during his whole life, his only 
 reward after death is the torture of hell, all will exclaim: 
 ''Is that the way in which God will reward our work 
 also?" If it is true, what must be done? How can we 
 live? By robbing and killing? 
 
 That is why you are inventing laws, that you need an 
 executioner, that you brand men with a red-hot iron, 
 that you send them into exile, that women remain wid- 
 ows and that you turn the orphans you have made into 
 victims of vice and crime. 
 
TOIL 65 
 
 But whose fault is it? 
 
 It evidently incumbs to him who hid and who is hid- 
 ing the law of work. 
 
 39. If there were a man in the world capable of hav- 
 ing over you the power you have over us, he might al- 
 low you, though it is doubtful, not to make your own 
 bread. But you are envied by the laborers, and, spread- 
 ing out the idleness of your life, you take the strength 
 away from the hands that try to accomplish that work. 
 Far from helping them, the sight of your idleness keeps 
 them from progressing in their work and even induces 
 them to commit crimes. You can not be thanked for 
 such an influence as that, is it not so? 
 
 What a shame that there is not such a man! That is 
 why you hear them cry: ^'God is in heaven and the czar 
 is far away." 
 
 40. It can be seen from what precedes and from 
 what will follow that the man who eats the bread of his 
 work is happy in this life and will be blessed in the fu- 
 ture. 
 
 But the contrary always happens to him who eats the 
 bread of others. No other virtue can help him, because 
 he has mutilated the law of God, or, in other words, 
 because he disobeyed the principal commandment and 
 the obedience to the others can bring no remedy. 
 
 41. Every object, every product which is on earth is 
 bought and sold at it's price, neither higher nor lower 
 than right, and to each merit is attributed its reward. 
 All remain even and no one owes anything to any one 
 else. But still our work, meaning our bread, is taken 
 from us for nothing; we are neither paid nor rewarded. 
 Why is our work not paid for? you will ask, reader. 
 Must I repeat the same thing over ten times? 
 
 42. In the name of God, I beg of you, tell me truly 
 if you would work for your bread during thirty days at 
 
66 TOIL 
 
 various times of the year. Why does it seem impossible 
 to you? Is it because you can not, or because you will 
 not? Answer me truly: can you not do it, or will you 
 not? 
 
 43. The work of the bread is a sacred duty for each 
 one of us, and we must give ourselves no excuse in order 
 to avoid it. The more learned a man is, the more neces- 
 sary that he should give the example of that work, never 
 pretext any hindrance, and never avoid it. 
 
 44. Must I give theological proofs, because I wish to 
 save you? No; but for the reason that theology alone 
 gives me arguments in favor of that work. 
 
 And, in the second place, because the people of my 
 class believe firmly in God, in the future life and in the 
 Holy Scripture. Hearing these words they will repeat 
 them, and like people dying of hunger or of thirst, they 
 will rush towards this work and towards all other kinds 
 01 labor. 
 
 45. Then the dark night will become for them a 
 dazzling bright day; the clouds will disappear, leaving 
 a blue sky; the cold will change into warmth, and im- 
 potent old age into strong youth. 
 
 That is why I take from the Scripture the arguments 
 I can find ; but it is not to you that I am speaking. 
 
 But who will read them these articles? for you have 
 no right to read them. Must the laborers be advised 
 to read them themselves? It is impossible, it would 
 be a great fault. 
 
 46. According to the proverb, every day is not a hol- 
 iday; but it is every day lent. In other terms, we 
 must always teach and advise others to be pleasing God 
 and useful to society. But our turn has come to stop 
 teaching and advising others, and to simply ask our- 
 selves this question : Why are you teaching others 
 when you can not teach yourslves? It is also said in 
 
TOIL 67 
 
 the same thought : "You bind up heavy bundles and 
 load them onto the shoulders of men, but you yourself, 
 you do not want to lift your finger." One must begin 
 by setting the example of virtue, and then advise others 
 to follow it, otherwise the scythe in cutting the grass is 
 broken on a stone. 
 
 47. O you who belong to the high classes of so- 
 ciety, think of this : ^ If all of the farmers of the differ- 
 ent parts of the world avoided, as you do, the work of 
 the bread, then the whole universe would soon die of 
 hunger. Would you admit that we should give for our 
 conduct the same explanation that you do for yours? 
 
 We never go to bed, you will say, we are continually 
 working. We do not eat free bread, but we buy it with 
 the money earned by our work, and we pay the farmer 
 the price he asks for it. We eat our own bread by the 
 sweat of our brows. 
 
 But if we all work where will the poor get their 
 money? We give them money and they give us bread. 
 Therefore the hand washes the hand and both become 
 white. We live through them and they live through 
 us. We can not at the same time govern others and 
 guide them and work with our hands. 
 
 The commandment given to Adam applies not only 
 to the work of the bread, but also to every other occu- 
 pation. One can not live without bread but one can 
 not live either without the things with which we are 
 busy. When God created the world He wanted some 
 to work at one thing and others at another. Man only 
 accumulates money in order to be rid of that ungrateful 
 work. And then it is impossible for me to divide my- 
 self up and do several things at once. 
 
 I have no rest ; night and day I am busy and I 
 hardly have time to eat bread already prepared. If we 
 all worked at the bread, the universe would suffer. 
 
6S TOIL 
 
 I have a great deal of money and I make a great deal 
 without working, and you want me to go into the fields 
 and torture myself for thirty kopeks a day ! People 
 would think I am a fool. I prefer to work with my 
 money here at home. 
 
 But if ever5^body must work, let them begin who are 
 a hundred times more rich than I ! etc. 
 
 48. Such are the pretexts and objections which you 
 oppose to the law, those are the reasons for which you, 
 who belong to the upper classes, avoid the work of the 
 bread. If all of the men of my class began to abandon 
 the work for the same reasons that you give, woilld you 
 admit them as a justification, coming from us? 
 
 No; but, thanks to the power you have, you would 
 stifle us and all of our arguments. 
 But I ask why you recognize your excuses as legitimate? 
 
 Assemble a group of the men who think of nothing 
 but the vanities of this world, and ask them what an- 
 swer you should make to that question. 
 
 49. Bread can not be bought or sold. One can not, 
 with the bread, accumulate wealth, for it's price is be- 
 yond the limits of the human mind. It is only in cer- 
 tain cases, and very legitimate ones then, that it must 
 be given free: for instance to the hospitals, to the orphan 
 asylums, to prisoners, to countries ruined by bad crops, 
 to people left helpless after a fire, to widows, to orphans, 
 to the deformed, to the aged and to those who have no 
 home. 
 
 50. This commandment is not followed by the world, 
 as we have seen and as we will see hereafter. It might 
 have been placed amongst the virtues of slight impor- 
 tance, and brought thus at the tail end; but even that 
 honor was not given to it. 
 
 Nature itself advises the farmer to cultivate the good 
 of all goods, the bread. 
 
TOIL 69 
 
 But if not satisfied with seeing what is the greatest of 
 all blessings, he could penetrate the deep mysteries of 
 nature, then would be realized all that has been exposed 
 in the preceding article. People would not ask of each 
 other: ''Give me some bread;" but they would say: 
 ''Take part of my bread;" and I do not believe that 
 there would be a man in the world who would like to 
 eat the bread reaped and prepared by others. 
 
 But what can be done now ? You have hidden away 
 that commandment as a stone is cast into the sea, so that 
 its name even exists no longer and its recollection has 
 vanished from the surface of the globe. But God judges 
 between you and us. 
 
 51. Here are the objections made to us by a wealty 
 man: "How can you assert that it is forbidden to buy 
 and sell bread, to traffic with it and make a fortune with 
 it ? Besides what the historians tell us, we see in the 
 Scripture that in ancient times bread was bought and 
 sold, and that it was not a sin against God. You say 
 also that bread cannot be exchanged for money and that 
 we must absolutely submit to manual labor; it is evi- 
 dently absurd. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other an- 
 cestors of mankind were rich and had both male and fe- 
 male slaves. We must conclude that they did not work 
 themselves but that they ate the bread made by others; 
 and still they are not guilty in the eyes of God. 
 
 52. And what proves still better how false your asser- 
 tions are, is that the two great legislators, Moses and 
 Jesus Christ, have not spoken of that commandment. 
 When Moses wrote: 'Knead your bread with the sweat 
 of your brow, ' he meant by the words all kinds of occu- 
 pations. Such must be the meaning of those words if 
 one remembers that Moses himself lived for forty years 
 at the court of Egypt, without working. During the 
 forty years that followed he watched the sheep of Jethro, 
 
70 TOIL 
 
 his father-in-law, in the country of Midian; but he did 
 not work the bread. During forty other years he led the 
 Israelites in the desert; therefore he never worked. Still 
 God received him, loved him and placed him a,bove all 
 of the other prophets; but, according to you, Moses was 
 a parasite. 
 
 53. It is the same with Jesus Christ. He is the real 
 God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and He alone 
 judged Adam in the Paradise; but instead of saying: 
 * 'Knead your bread with the sweat of your brow," He 
 says in the Gospel: 'Look at the birds of the sky; they 
 neither sow nor reap, they do not accumulate wheat in 
 the lofts; but God feeds them.' 
 
 In truth, does it not seem from those words that the 
 work of the bread gives no good result, and has no real 
 usefulness in this life? In short, it is the most useless 
 work, and God gave it to the idle. 
 
 54. Even more, name a single farmer whom God has 
 admitted to heaven for this work. We do not know 
 whether the prophets were rich, but, we are not sure 
 either that they were poor. But, as their books have 
 been approved of, we should conclude that they were 
 rich, because the book of a poor man is never approved 
 of, however good it may be. 
 
 That is what says Sirach, man inspired by God, when 
 he remarks: 'The rich man has said an absurdity, and 
 every one is silent, and his words are extolled to heaven. 
 But the poor man has spoken reasonably, and, far from 
 approving of it, they ask him who he is.' * 
 
 * If the rich man has been deceived, several assist him; if he 
 speaks insolently (if he unveils what is sacred) he is justified. 
 
 But if the poor man has been deceived, he is even blaimed; if he 
 speaks wisely no one will listen. 
 
 When the rich man speaks, every one is silent and his words are 
 extolled unto the skies. 
 
 When the poor man speaks they say: "Who is that one." (They 
 
TOIL 71 
 
 Yes, Jesus Christ called the poor 'his friends,' but 
 he only wanted to encourage them, for fear that they 
 would become desperate in their grief. What proves it 
 is that he always went into the houses of the rich, and 
 never into those of the poor." 
 
 55. My adversary continues and says: " When Noah 
 came into the world, his father Lamack cried: 'This 
 one will relieve us of our toil, and of the irksome labor 
 of our hands on the earth cursed by the Eternal.' 
 
 * And that is how he delivered us from that cursed work; 
 but he did not deliver you, the laborers, because you are 
 cursed whereas we are not; and it is to be hoped that 
 God will not be unmerciful to you because our class has 
 trampled you under foot. Is that a sin in the eyes of 
 God? No, for God admitted that it might be thus. 
 
 56. It is again said in the Scripture: 
 
 You will be cursed in the town and you will be cursed 
 in the fields; 
 
 Your basket will be cursed and your kneading-trough; 
 
 The fruit of your body will be cursed, and the fruit of 
 the earth, the calves and the sheep of your flock; 
 
 You will be cursed when you come and cursed when 
 you go. 
 
 The Eternal will send down on you his curse, fright 
 and ruin. 
 
 The adjective cursed means unhappy. I ask," ex- 
 claimed the rich man, "to whom those words were ap- 
 plied: To the rich man or to the poor? It is certainly 
 to the poor laborer," said he. ''Do you see now, Bon- 
 dareff, how many anathemas God has cast upon the poor 
 laborer, on his goods, on the fruit even of his body, and 
 on all of his future generation? " 
 
 blame him for his poverty and oblige him to be silent) and if he slips 
 they push him. — Ecclesiastics xiii: 26. Translated by Sacy. 
 
72 TOIL 
 
 Such are the laws on which is based the society of the 
 weahhy. 
 
 57. ''Am I saying the truth?'* he asked. '' Yes," I 
 answered. 
 
 Should I have contradicted him? No, it would have 
 been useless; could arguments shake his belief? 
 
 I simply thought to myself: you are lying, sir! You 
 are not as intelligent as you think; and I am not as 
 stupid as you think. In both cases you are greatly mis- 
 taken. 
 
 There are many well known people who will not de- 
 spise my poverty; those will judge righteously between 
 you and me. 
 
 58. ** You see," said the rich man, -'if a man of your 
 inferior class should acquire a certain instruction, he 
 would find how and by what occupation he could dis- 
 pense with that work. So that if you had all studied, 
 you would work no longer and you would imitate us." 
 
 '*But what would we eat then? " I asked. 
 
 ''We would all live assays the commandment of 
 Christ: Look at the birds of the sky; they do not 
 sow neither do they reap ; they do not accumulate 
 wheat in the lofts ; but God feeds them. " That is what 
 he answered. 
 
 All of those arguments are entirely in opposition to 
 the primitive commandment, as well as to the natural 
 law. 
 
 I asked him : "Which is the most immovable law? 
 Is it the theological law which has been written by man 
 on paper, or is it the natural law which God wrote 
 Himself in our soul?" Certainly neither one can be de- 
 nied, but I prefer the second, the natural law, and I 
 hope that you agree with me, reader. 
 
 59. "Very well, Bondareff, I warn you that if you pre- 
 sent your ideas to the government, and if you place 
 
TOIL 73 
 
 mine by the side of them, my arguments are the ones 
 that will be approved, they will be recognized as true 
 and praised, while yours will be contradicted." 
 
 60. You see now, reader, how unreasonably loyal I 
 have been. 
 
 I should have hidden the objections that contradict 
 my arguments ; but I did not wish to alter the truth, 
 first because I have told my age, and second because 
 it is not admissible that one should speak of the sacred 
 duty called the work of the bread, and mar it by hiding 
 the truth and disguising it under ignoble flattery. 
 
 But, on the other hand, if you find in my answer any 
 cutting remark which seems intolerable, clench your 
 teeth and say nothing ; do not quarrel with me I beg of 
 you. 
 
 You have been so accustomed in your life to listening 
 to flatterers, that my out-spoken ways may seem intol- 
 erable ! 
 
 61. Let us return now to our question. How many 
 thousands of measures of wheat or of grain, how 
 many roubles are taken from us each year in taxes and 
 assessments! 
 
 Besides that income, the lords, the pomestchiks, the 
 corporation of merchants and all of the wealthy own un- 
 speakable millions. But money is not given free, and 
 it must be earned with our arms of flesh and bone -ac- 
 cording to the commandment I have given, and not with 
 the tongue or the pen. 
 
 62. Your ways of life are a cruel offense for us, and a 
 shame for you. I know that you are a hundred times 
 more intelligent and learned than I, and that is why 
 you take my money and my bread. But, since you are 
 intelligent, you must pity me, I am so weak. It is said: 
 *'Love your brothers like yourself," and I am your 
 brother and you are mine. 
 
74 TOIL 
 
 Why are we poor and common? Because we eat the 
 bread of our work and feed ourselves. Have we time to 
 study and become learned? Bread, like intelligence, you 
 have taken it all by skill or by violence: you have sin- 
 fully taken everything. 
 
 That is so, reader, whether you wish it or not. It is 
 not my fault if the truth is so bitter. 
 
 63. The firenzy of need impels you to pray to God for 
 the healthiness of the air and the abundance of terres- 
 trial fruits: it is well. But to what hands do you owe 
 that abundance? Who must plow the earth? Is it you or 
 some one else? 
 
 ''But it is impossible that it should be I, who have 
 white hands, you will answer." ''It is to you, laborers, 
 that the work belongs by right. " I would rather starve 
 to death than to pick up a straw or a grain of wheat!'* 
 
 64. You should, before your meal, ask for a benedic- 
 tion, not from God, but from us, the laborers, and, after 
 the meal, thank, not God, but us. 
 
 If God sent you manna from heaven as he did to the 
 Israelites in the desert, you should then thank him, but 
 since it is from our hands that you receive the manna, 
 you should thank us, because we feed you as we would 
 feed little children or invalids. 
 
 65. When I had written all of the preceding articles, 
 several laborers said to me: "What you are doing is use- 
 less. Do you think that you can make the wealthy come 
 and work the bread? If the prophets and the masters 
 of wisdom were all behind you, they would not listen. 
 Let God himself cry in their ears with the judgment 
 trumpet: 'You are going to die and you will appear be- 
 fore Me to be judged, and your disobedience to My com- 
 mandment will draw upon you a relentless sentence/ 
 even then the wealthy man will remain immovable be- 
 
TOIL 
 
 75 
 
 cause he will prefer wealth to all things divine. And 
 the work of the bread is in his eyes more horrible than 
 torture. But you, who are you? You are only the dust 
 under the rich man's feet and you wish, by expressing 
 your convictions, to oblige them to work?" 
 
 66. *'I know," I answered, ''that it is impossible." 
 But they may possibly approve of our arguments, 
 
 since they are taken from the principal divine laws; and 
 they may spread them amongst all of the laborers. For 
 that single action God will grant them a great reward. 
 Soon we would see men, like people exhausted with 
 hunger and thirst, hasten to execute this work. It will 
 only be later that they will take up other occupations, 
 because they all result from the work of the bread. Then 
 the darkest night will become for them a dazzling day, 
 and everything will seem easy to them. That is why, 
 in the midst of the cares and troubles of life, I undertook 
 this work. 
 
 67. And besides that, the upper classes will see that 
 we are deserving (they never noticed it or heard of it). 
 They will feel guilty both before God and before man; 
 they will no longer count as much on us; they will not 
 crush us as they are doing now. (They buy from us at 
 half price and sell us for twice what the goods are worth. 
 That is what happens far from towns and commercial 
 centers, in the poor countries where there is a rich man; 
 there is no one else there to sell to or buy from.) At 
 each mouthfull of bread they will think, in spite of them- 
 selves, what are the hands that made the bread that we 
 are eating ? And the conscience! Money cannot pro- 
 tect them against that; it will oblige them to improve in 
 spite of themselves. That is the reason that made me 
 undertake the work. 
 
 68. And even if that commandment only makes a 
 slight impression on your mind, O you, people of the 
 
76 TOIL 
 
 learned class, you would still make a great effort to eat 
 only the bread of your own work, for you would reason 
 thus: Amongst the poor people, amongst the laborers, not 
 only the strong suffer in reaping the wheat, but even 
 the women on the point of being delivered are obliged to 
 work also. It is thus that the child, while yet in its 
 mother's womb suffers already for the bread which it has 
 not tasted. The little babies, in their cradle, suffer from 
 the wind and the insects, and all their body is burned by 
 the sun. The children of seven years work also accord- 
 ing to their strength; the old men of seventy who can 
 not stoop down are obliged to get onto their knees to 
 reap. It is thus at times, even now, but before, during 
 the days of slavery it was a great deal worse. All of 
 those families draw their life from the earth and die with 
 it, according to the precept: "You are dust and you will 
 return to the dust." In a word, parasites are unknown 
 to them. Think that over a little, learned men. 
 
 69 But with us, you will say then, a man of thirty, 
 enjoying excellent health, remains constantly, even in 
 summer whistling with his hands in his pockets, waiting 
 for the poor martyrs to put the bread between his teeth. 
 
 With us, with the laborers, on the contrary, not only 
 in summer, but even in midwinter, our shirts are often 
 soaked with sweat. 
 
 Throughout Christianity the first and most important 
 of the sacraments is baptism. But, tell me, which 
 washes off sin the most effectively? Is it the water of 
 baptism, or the sweat that flows from our brow during 
 our entire life devoted to the work of the bread? 
 
 Here is a proverb which you often hear quoted: " The 
 frock of the moujik is grey, but the devil has not eaten 
 his reason." The proverb is not correct, for I am cer- 
 tain that I will never have an answer to any of my ques- 
 tions, and still I am always questioning. You see there- 
 
TOIL 77 
 
 fore the devil has eaten my reason. — It is certain that 
 with our narrow mind we can not penetrate the secret of 
 impulsion which God gives the world, but we must be- 
 lieve as much as we can that you were washed once at 
 your birth in baptismal water, but since then no work 
 ever made you perspire. 
 
 As to myself, I was never washed by the baptismal 
 water; that is why I must, during my whole life be 
 bathed in sweat. And still which of us two is the more 
 clean? Is it you, who are baptized, or I, who am not? ^ 
 
 Do you see now what falseness can do? At every 
 word, at every step it obliges you to bend down before 
 me, who am naught but a feeble man. It is possible 
 that you may overcome me, but it will only be by your 
 power to which I cannot resist; but to destroy these argu- 
 ments by proving their falseness you will never be able. 
 
 During 6,884 years we have been silent before you, 
 but now we have pronouced a word which you had 
 never heard even in dreams. I do not count on you but 
 on your conscience. I hope that it will come to my 
 help. 
 
 70. There are in the world many inventions that sur- 
 prise the mind. To produce an object, however small it 
 may be, machines have been invented* A work that 
 required several men, a machine does it now far better 
 than any man's hand. 
 
 But bread labor is still at the point where the 
 peasants found it in ancient times. 
 
 71. It would be easy for an inventor to say these 
 simple words: '^Do this or do that," and men and 
 beasts would be delivered from the irksome toil. 
 
 But no. He does not wish to go near to the work 
 which he abhors, nor to those who accomplish it. He 
 has no pity for the poor martyrs — I mean the laborers — 
 he has no pity either for the animals, while several times 
 
78 TOIL 
 
 a day he eats the bread, or rather the blood and tears of 
 the poor and of the beasts. 
 
 That is how, O you, the high society, you insult us, 
 and how, at the same time you disobey the command- 
 ment and God who gave it. 
 
 Does your conduct not show plainly the hatred you 
 have for God and for your brothers ? Well, what have 
 you to say? You cannot justify yourself before the 
 moujik, and you have no excuse to give. 
 
 72. Here are other facts that prove that you lower and 
 trample on everything. When some one makes a little 
 discovery, you honor him with a medal bearing the in- 
 scription: "Honor to work and to arts." Has it ever 
 happened that a reward has been given for the work and 
 the art of making bread ? No. But if anyone received 
 one it would be some land owner, who sows a thousand 
 acres with the hands of others, and who never goes near 
 the shameful work or those who accomplish it. Those 
 are the ones who have received and always will receive 
 the rewards! 
 
 73. What happens in the dwellings of the poor ? The 
 husband and wife must not only feed themselves, but 
 also a dozen children and their old parents. They 
 sell you part of their bread, or rather they give it to you. 
 
 Well, although there have been several million of them 
 in each century, has one of them ever received a re- 
 ward of any kind? Never. But what am I saying? 
 Far from receiving rewards, they have received the 
 name of moujik, which means "stupid." 
 
 That must be enough for you, peasants ! 
 
 It is easy to see that there is not a worse work on 
 the face of the earth than bread labor ; and that is 
 due to society. Was I not right in saying that you 
 love neither God nor your brothers, but only your- 
 selves? 
 
TOIL 79 
 
 It is annoying to see that the millionaire has received 
 for a few small things a number of medals, and walks 
 around with his hands in his pockets, as if to say^ 
 "Look at me !" 
 
 But what is his merit compared with ours? Nothing 
 but ashes scattered by the wind. What can be done? 
 "God is in heaven and the Czar is afar!" But if I can 
 I will note down all of my complaints and hand them 
 to the Czar myself, and, having lost or won everything, 
 we will only have the choice between life and death. 
 I have started on the right road. I will continue to 
 follow it until my death; for I have no reason for de- 
 ceiving myself. I have one foot on earth and the other 
 in the grave, and I am over sixty. 
 
 74. When my works will be read to a laborer know- 
 ing neither a nor b, how well he will understand them ! 
 How well the words will penetrate into his soul ! How 
 grateful he will be for having been taught the law of sal- 
 vation ! How hurriedly he will promise to work more 
 than ever ! 
 
 But he who avoids work is, on the contrary, like the 
 dog that chews the stone you throw at him. He criti- 
 cises every reflection, and he hates me, me who wrote 
 them. Lastly he threatens me with suffering for the 
 future. 
 
 Why is there such a difference between those two 
 men? Because from the laborer to his superiors the 
 distance is such that their opinions will never be the 
 same. 
 
 But what did God wish to make me? 
 
 He gave us the law, that is, bread labor. The work 
 is not difficult, but easy and useful; it is no long, but 
 short and easily understood. How could we help being 
 grateful to him? 
 
8o TOIL 
 
 But what has happened in the world? One half of 
 the men run towards that work, while the other half 
 avoid it, like a deadly poison, and hide away in solitary 
 spots that they may not see it. Who are those who 
 fly and hide? The ignorant, perhaps? No, the most 
 learned and intelligent. Those who do not believe in 
 God, perhaps? No, the true believers. 
 
 75. Your principal objection against bread labor is : 
 Whatever may be the occupation of a man, whataver 
 his work, he obeys this commandment : "You will 
 knead your bread with the sweat of your brow." 
 That explanation can suit neither God nor man. 
 
 It has been said : "Your earth will be cursed in its 
 products." Is there any allusion there to your occupa- 
 tion? No. 
 
 And again: "Be in affliction every day of your life." 
 In these words bread labor is not plainly spoken 
 of. And again : "You will cultivate the thistles and 
 the briars. Is there any allusion there to your constant 
 occupations? And again: "You will eat the grass of 
 the fields." Is there, I ask it once more, the slightest 
 allusion to your occupations? No. 
 
 Lastly: ''You will knead your bread with the sweat of 
 your brow, you are dust and you will return to dust." 
 
 Well, the learned find another subterfuge and pretend 
 that it is not only to the plow that the words are applied 
 but also to their pen and they give strong reasons for it. 
 
 76. But is it possible that God has given to us alone 
 that irksome duty of working the earth, while he would 
 have ordered you to avoid it with the help of your 
 money? 
 
 '*In my house," says the rich man, ''the money works 
 for the bread." 
 
 It is not so. ^loney has not sinned against God. That 
 commandment was never pronounced against money. 
 
TOIL 8i 
 
 And then money does not eat bread; it is therefore not 
 obliged to work. ''How can you say then, money works 
 in my hpuse!" Do you think yourself perfectly pure in 
 the eyes of God that you need no commandment? But 
 were you even more saintly than the Saint of Saints, 
 you do eat nevertheless the bread made by others. 
 
 Really, you must not hope to escape alive from the 
 hands of an adversary such as me. 
 
 Here is another excuse you offer: *'If everybody were 
 occupied with agriculture, all of 'the manufactories 
 must stop and the universe will die." Nothing is more 
 false. There will be, for a fact, eighty hoUidays during 
 which all occupations will be interrupted and efery man 
 will spend eighty other days in idleness. Do you think 
 that because a husband and his wife work an acre for 
 thirty days at various times of the year, do you think 
 that the world will come to an end? Why should it be? 
 
 ''In all large cities, especially in Moscow, where there 
 is a large number of manufactories, there is about a 
 million of inhabitants. Where would the ground be 
 found if every one was to cultivate the ground?" 
 
 That is another excuse of those who avoid work. 
 
 I will say in answer to that objection that the manu- 
 facturers went of their own accord or were obliged to go 
 to the towns. But could the factories not .be established 
 in open ground, where some could perform bread labor 
 and others work in the factory, make money, and where 
 they could change about? All that could be easily done if 
 you wished to help the lower classes. But you think 
 only of yourselves and those like you. 
 
 You leave the said bread labor because there is not 
 much earth and because if every one began to work 
 there would not be space enough? If you ever did b^- 
 gin to work you would plow up all of the earth. 
 
82 TOIL 
 
 As to myself, I have ten acres of wheat, but if the revo- 
 lution took place, I would be satisfied with five; and the 
 other five, it is you, my friend, who would plow them 
 up with those white hands of yours in spite of the heat 
 or the frost, in bad weather or in the srtow, even if you 
 were shaking with fever and your hands were like spider's 
 claws. 
 
 Is it admissible that we alone should endure all of 
 that trouble? 
 
 79. If you are so thoroughly convinced that we eat 
 the bread of your work, why do you sell it to us? We do 
 not oblige you to. You come and ask us to buy it. 
 Is it our fault? 
 
 If all the laborers were familiar with the primitive law, 
 they would not sell their bread and would only give it in 
 certain admissible cases, as many of them do already. 
 But where would they get their money? They will 
 know how to find it. 
 
 The lazy man, like the door on its hinges, remains all 
 his life lying on the down of his bed. He has never seen 
 how bread is worked. That is why, by the time he has 
 read ten articles of my book, he pushes it away saying, 
 " That is vitriol! " The verdict seems deep and well 
 deserved. 
 
 He is not the one who found that word; Providence 
 was speaking through his mouth, because for him the 
 bread of his own work is vitriol, while the bread of the 
 work of others is sweeter than honey. 
 
 You see, readers, how much falseness loves itself. 
 And if it did not find itself amiable, to whom would it 
 seem pleasant and virtuous? 
 
 80. ''Why is falseness called by the name of false- 
 ness?" I said one day to myself, thinking about the capi- 
 talist. It should have been better named, for it is more 
 truthful t])an truth itself; it uj^yeils and betrays itself, 
 
TOIL 83 
 
 It has been said: ^ ' The voice of your brother's blood 
 cries towards me from the earth." Thus God spoke to 
 Cain, to the voice of falseness. If it cried towards God, 
 why did it remain silent towards the world? ''And God 
 marked Cain with the sign of criminals." Does he not, 
 even now, mark all the wicked men with that sign, and, 
 with them, the lazy man who has become my best teach- 
 er and to whom I will be eternally grateful? 
 
 81. You do not answer. You must agree with me, 
 then. 
 
 Here is, however, the answer you could present and 
 the objection you could make, in reality, against bread 
 labor: ''I can not do several things at once. If I am 
 busy with agriculture, I will not have time to think of 
 anything else." 
 
 But I will answer in my turn: ''I have, outside of the 
 bread, many things to do. How is it that I who am an 
 ignorant moujik, I can handle it all, make decisions and 
 execute them rapidly? If I were as intelligent as you, I 
 would handle several thousands of matters. Why then, 
 being so infinitely bright, can you think of but a single 
 matter? " 
 
 82. When you are avoiding bread labor, or when your 
 conscience is tormenting you, you say to yourself: ''If 
 we were all performing bread labor — where would the 
 poor people get their money, who live by their labor? 
 They give us bread, but in exchange, we give them money, 
 and thus the peasants live, thanks to us, and we, thanks 
 to them. The hand washes the hand and they are both 
 white." 
 
 No, your argument does not disconcert us. We are 
 not as stupid as you think, and you, yourself, you are 
 not as intelligent as you believe. Do not forget that the 
 man you are speaking to is the one who remains on the 
 threshold of your palace (like Lazarus), 
 
84 TOIL 
 
 One half of the living beings does not perform bread 
 labor and knows where to get the money; the other half, 
 working it and not selling it, can hardly suffice to its own 
 needs. And still it knows where to find money. During 
 a bad crop there are entire districts which do not sell, 
 but buy; and they know where to find money. But why 
 should the second half not learn where to find money, 
 if everybody performed bread labor? 
 
 Far from being useful, the sale of bread is injurious. 
 This year the crop is good and the farmer sells his wheat 
 to the rich man for hfty kopeks the measure. He thinks 
 that what wheat he has left will be sufficient for his 
 needs. But let us suppose that the crop is bad the next 
 year, and there is a famine. He will buy his wheat back 
 from the same man for a rouble and fifty kopeks per 
 measure and if he has not enough money to pay for it, he 
 will give him his cattle at half price. Thus he has not 
 sufficient for his own needs, he has sold his wheat, he has, 
 lost his cattle, and, all told, he is reduced to beggary 
 forever. That is the way in which many ruin themselves 
 by selling their wheat. How can you then say that the 
 peasants can only live with the sale of their wheat and 
 that without it, they would starve to death? The real 
 conclusion is, that you are living on others. Your money 
 is the money of our work, and whatever you have be- 
 longs to us. 
 
 Plow, according to the commandment, a single acre of 
 wheat, and everything will belong to you. 
 
 83. It happens to me not to have a single cent, some- 
 times for two months. However, when I am tired from 
 working all day, I make my tura (bread crumbled into 
 kvass): I eat well; the tura tastes better to me than your 
 delicate food; then I sing as I return to work. 
 
 But you, if you remained two months without my 
 bread, what songs would you sing? 
 
TOIL «5 
 
 Now examine well, reader, which of us two lives the 
 more on the other. Is it you or I? It is you 
 
 In that case why do you count yourself as one of my 
 friends? Which of us two should occupy the first seat 
 at table? I should most certainly. But why have you 
 taken it ? Who showed you the seat and did you the 
 honor ? 
 
 Protect yourself with reasonable answers, or else do 
 not eat our bread. Or, if you consent to, plow with your 
 hands a single acre of ground and sit down. Otherwise 
 begone. 
 
 84. It seems to me that your answers will be the same 
 as those of the rich man who said: I would like to work, 
 but I know not how. Once only in my life have I held 
 a scythe in my hand; I swung it as hard as I could, but 
 it only bent the grass over. Then I went still harder, 
 and it cut into the ground. After that I took a sickle, 
 and after a long torture, I had hardly reaped half a sheaf, 
 but I had cut my hand. That is what happened to me 
 one day when I was in the fields. And then if I was go- 
 ing to work in earnest, all of my companions would look 
 at me and laugh at the strange sight. 
 
 But why do you know how to eat ? I asked. Before 
 you were two years old you could eat already, and now 
 you are old and do not know how to work yet! 
 
 And I said besides: Is it from lack of strength or 
 from lack of will that you do not know how to work ? 
 
 85. The rich man gave me besides the following ex- 
 cuses: I. I would work the bread, according to the 
 commandment; but I am ashamed; I would be pointed 
 at. 2. Is it right for a rich man like myself to work 
 with the poor? 3. All intelligent and learned men 
 would exclude me from their society. 4. By working 
 the bread I could earn but thirty kopeks, while at home 
 with my pen I could earn ten roubles. 
 
86 TOIL 
 
 Such are the reasons for which the learned class has 
 rejected the work in which it sees nothing but losses 
 and humilation. 
 
 86. But, they add, will we be guilty in the eyes of 
 God? No, for Jesus-Christ told us, while he was dying 
 for us, not to sin ana not to fulfill the commandment, 
 which means not to work for the bread; for he said: 
 ''Look at the birds of the sky, etc.," That is why we 
 do not work the bread and never will do it. 
 
 87. But if you are redeemed,- I answered, why do 
 you eat the fruit of the work of others? Can it be possi- 
 ble that God has redeemed you without redeeming us? 
 If he had redeemed mankind, he should have ordered the 
 wheat to grow ready kneaded and cooked to suit the 
 taste of each one, or else he should have sent us manna 
 from heaven, as he sent it to the Israelites in the desert. 
 
 It is evident that he has not redeemed man neither 
 from the sin, nor from the commandment which is the 
 bread labor. But each one of us must redeem 
 himself by his actions, and not count on the merit of 
 others, I mean of Christ. 
 
 88. We sin, we disobey the divine precepts and we 
 incur consequently the curses given in the Deuter- 
 onomy. According to your view it is not thus. You 
 seem to think that Jesus Christ takes on himself all of 
 our sins and curses. What a fine invention! And how 
 exact your idea is! No, each one must redeem himself by 
 adhering to the primitive commandment: ''Eat the 
 bread of your work." There is no greater virtue, and 
 to disdain it is the most dangerous of crimes. 
 
 89. If you are rich, live in luxury as much as you 
 can, be as proud as you wish, have as fine a, table as 
 you can desire, but do not avoid the bread labor, 
 do better even and hasten to accomplish it. 
 
TOIL 87 
 
 90. Between the rich and the poor there is always 
 a great and implacable enmity. But when they meet 
 face to face, they dissimulate. Whence comes that 
 hatred? Are the rich or the poor to be blamed for it? 
 According to Sirach : "What can there be in common 
 between a saint and a dog (impious, a sinner)? And 
 what can bind a rich man to a poor? 
 
 "Just as humility is abominated by the proud, so has 
 the rich a horror for the poor." 
 
 Whose fault is it, that of the rich and not of the poor 
 laborers? 
 
 I have asked it before and I ask it again : do not 
 forget that I who remain on the threshold of rich pal- 
 aces like Lazarus I am speaking in the name of the 
 laborers, to you of the high classes, and not to you 
 alone, reader. 
 
 91. It will be said: So and so works ten times 
 more than the laborer; can he be called lazy? 
 
 On holidays the former works and the latter remains 
 in bed, useful neither to himself, to his brothers nor to 
 God. It is said that in that case the lazy man does 
 his duty, while the laborer commits a crime by break- 
 ing the fourteenth commandment. Is that case not the 
 same as that which we are considering? 
 
 During three hundred and thirty days of the year, do 
 whateX^er you please, but during thirty-five days, at 
 various times of the year, every man should work at 
 the bread. 
 
 92. But why am I so long when a few words should 
 be enough? It is because it is necessary to throw a 
 strong obstacle in the way of the subterfuges behind 
 which you intrench yourself, and, for that, I need to 
 make a long answer to your numerous arguments. 
 
 Since there is for God neither past nor future, and 
 that everything appears as present, is it possible that 
 
88 TOIL 
 
 He has not understood that if man must always eat 
 bread, he must also continue to work? If He was 
 prescribing an atonement for your sins and said : ** Take 
 this stone of a hundred pounds and carry it," you would 
 answer: ^' My God, I cannot, for you have not given 
 me strength enough." Or else if He said : '' Fly through 
 the air like a bird," you would answer : " You have given 
 me no wings and it is impossible for me to do what you 
 order." Your excuse would be legitimate. 
 
 But why can you not work the bread ? *' In truth, " you 
 will answer, ** it is simply owing to my situation, I have 
 white and delicate hands and the straw would prick my 
 skin." 
 
 94. You avoid again the work of bread labor because, 
 you say, by keeping occupied with any work, one is 
 obeying the commandment : "Knead your bread with 
 the sweat of your brow. " 
 
 One says : "I have written to-day nine hundred and 
 ninety-one lines, therefore I have eaten my bread with 
 the sweat of my brow." Another : "I have given to-day 
 a few orders to my people, I watched to see that they 
 worked well for me, therefore I eat my bread with the 
 sweat of my brow." A third : *' I took a drive to-day in 
 town in a handsome carriage ; I therefore eat my bread 
 with the sweat of my brow." A fourth: "I sold to-day 
 some spoiled goods, and I cheated a greenhorn ; I am 
 eating my bread with the sweat of my brow. " 
 
 And the thief says in his turn: 
 
 ** I did not sleep all night, I worked with my hands; 
 I am eating my bread, more than any of you, with the 
 sweat of my brow." 
 
 If it is not by truth, it will at least be by eloquence and 
 skill that they all gain their cause, as says Kriloff, * ^*The 
 
 * Kriloff (Ivan Andreievitch), fabulist, born in a little village of 
 Orenburg in 1768, died at Saint Petersburg in 1864. Attracted by the 
 
TOIL S9 
 
 animals who are armed with claws or teeth are all inno- 
 cent; they are almost saints, but the timid ox is accused. 
 The tigers and the wolves cry against him; they smother 
 and then sacrifice him. 
 
 It seems as if Kriloff describes in the animals the 'lab- 
 orers and that the ox is the timid rich man. What do 
 you think of it, reader? 
 
 95. You who eat the bread of our work, you are in 
 Russia about thirty millions, including the Jews and the 
 Gypsies. How could we feed you all, give you hand- 
 some clothes, allow you to sleep in a good bed with a 
 warm blanket over you? 
 
 Still it is to do that that we work night and day, and 
 that we endure all kinds of privations. 
 
 Is it not unjust? Is it not criminal on your part? 
 
 96. And, as if you had not heard what I have said, 
 you answer: '*0f what injustice are you the victims and 
 what crime have we committed? We do not take your 
 
 theatre from his youth, he composed a play called the "Coffee-pot," 
 (1783), and several comedies and tragedies, of which the most impor- 
 tant are "Cleopatra" and "Philomelee. ' 
 
 But that was not his real vocation. In 18400, following the advice of 
 one of his friends, who seemed to have had a presentiment of his real 
 talent, he translated two fables of Lafontaine; the "Daughter, " and 
 the "Oak and the Willow"; his translation drew a great deal of atten- 
 tion by its originality and its picturesque character. 
 
 Published in the " Spectator of Moscow," they had a great success. 
 From that time on Kriloff devoted all of his time to the composition 
 of fables and became the Lafontaine of Russia, imitating the French 
 Lafontaine. 
 
 However in the hands of Kriloff all of the subjects become Russian. 
 
 He differs also from Lafontaine and Lessing by his cutting jokes 
 and even by his cynicism, so highly appreciated in Moscow. His com- 
 plete fables form a large book. 
 
 The fable quoted by Bondareff is an imitation of ' • The Animals 
 Suffering With The Pest" of Lafontaine. 
 
90 TOIL 
 
 bread for nothing, but we buy it with the money we earn 
 by our work." 
 
 '* And where did you take that money?" 
 
 ''learned it by working according^ to the command- 
 ment." 
 
 " But does not our money come from our work? 
 Money is not given for nothing, it must be earned by the 
 body of flesh and bone." And then can you redeem sin 
 with money? Can you buy God's law with money?" 
 
 Your excuse condemns you still more. You can buy 
 whatever you please with money, but bread you can buy 
 it at no price. 
 
 97. Do you think yourself saved by the blessed 
 bread which you receive in church from the hands of 
 the priest? ''But," you will answer, "it is not the bread 
 that saves me, it is my belief in Christ whom I receive 
 under the shape of bread. " No, the belief without the 
 good actions, without the commandment, is dead. You 
 go to church and return with two, because you have 
 eaten the bread of the work of others. "Where?" you 
 
 will ask. "In church." 
 
 98. Not only, O rich people, you live on the 
 work of others, but you even hope that in future life you 
 will enjoy eternal happiness, thanks to the merits of 
 another — of Christ. That is why you think that you 
 have no duty to accomplish and believe that you have 
 nothing to do but to enjoy the goods of this world. You 
 are walking on a wide road, but where will it lead you 
 to? You know it as well I do. 
 
 99. Amongst you one can often find men who, when 
 fortune turns against them and takes away their wealth, 
 when the circumstances oblige them to work the bread 
 themselves, are overcome by despair, become thieves 
 and drunkards, and head all kinds of criminal under- 
 takings. And, usually, they die a violent death in 
 
TOIL 
 
 91 
 
 order to escape the bread labor. But resurrect 
 that commandment of which you only see the reality 
 when you come to die, and then the millionare, being in 
 the same situation as you, will not avoid the work but 
 will accomplish the work willingly. 
 
 100. Let us speak now, reader, of the three kinds of 
 men: Of the Jew, the Gypsy, and of the learned Euro- 
 pean, who, like the first two, eats the bread of the work 
 of others. Which is the one who displeases the most 
 God and the living beings? 
 
 It is certainly the European, for there is nothing to be 
 said of the Gypsy who is half wild. As to the Jew, he 
 was once the master of the world, and obliged all others 
 to do bread labor; but now that time is no longer. 
 To-day the Jew has become the tail from the 
 head that he was, and, like the first two, he eats the 
 the bread of the work of others. 
 
 I ask which of those three men seems the most intol- 
 erable God and to man. 
 
 1 01. I know that the reader will answer this: "Can 
 I be compared to the Jew and the Gypsy. I live on 
 truth and they on lies and duplicity." *'Yes, if you had 
 the body of an angel and not that of a man. But when 
 yoti eat the bread of the work of others, there is not in 
 that food a single atom of truth. It has been about two 
 hours since you have eaten, and you are already think- 
 ing of holding out your hand towards the same tree of 
 life, towards the bread which you are really not allowed 
 to taste. How can you then pride yourself on saying 
 the truth?" 
 
 102. From all of the arguments that precede it is 
 easy to conclude that there is nothing more infamous 
 than the bread of other people's work. On the contrary, 
 there is nothing more sacred, nothing more wholesome, 
 than the bread of one's own work. That is not a suppo- 
 
92 
 
 TOIL 
 
 sition I am making, but an assertion which I draw from 
 from the fundamental laws of God, with which our 
 natural law is in perfect accord, 
 
 103. I have said that, according to your view, the 
 lazy and idle life was the one indicated by the law of sal- 
 vation. I did not give at the time proofs enough. But 
 now I will prove it unquestionably. (We will not speak 
 of those who live day by day, taking things as they come.) 
 
 To win eternal happiness, the servants of God retire 
 to monasteries, deserts, mountains or islands, where they 
 lead a wandering life. 
 
 What are they looking for in those spots, those who 
 trample under foot the divine law, who eat the bread of 
 the work of others? 
 
 Can one not be virtuous while accomplishing the work 
 blessed by God? 
 
 104. When the crop is bad the poor is sad; the rich, 
 on the contrary, is happy because the famine will help 
 him to increase his wealth. That is why he calls the 
 famine ''the mercy," and the good crop ''the punishment" 
 of God. And if he takes part on the complaints of the 
 poor, do not believe him, the hypocrite, he is lying. 
 
 105. And you say that the two classes are not each 
 other's enemies! 
 
 The rich will immediately offer this excuse: "What 
 does my wealth amount to? There are people who are 
 a hundred times more wealthy than I am; it is to them 
 that you must attribute all of the misfortunes which you 
 accuse me of causing." 
 
 To that I will answer: Wealth must not be measured 
 by its amount, but by the number of peasants who sur- 
 round the rich, for, in the country those who have five 
 thousand roubles are more wealthy than the millionaire 
 of Moscow. 
 
TOIL 93 
 
 But if you could see, reader of the city, the misfor- 
 tunes which the rich man heaps onto the poor in the coun- 
 try, you would think more of my arguments. Otherwise 
 you will never believe me. 
 
 io6. The poor, the laborer, thinks day and night, 
 during his whole life, of the best way of preparing his 
 field for the wheat, of his cattle and his instruments. 
 From their childhood he accustomed his children to the 
 same work. His efforts are crowned with success. On 
 the contrary, the rich man thinks day and night of the 
 way of buying from the poor at half price and selling back 
 to him for twice what the goods are worth, and he accus- 
 toms his sons, from their childhood to those speculations. 
 
 The first and the last of the laws imposed by God con- 
 cern work, the principal of which is bread labor; 
 but the intelligent and learned people have en- 
 deavored to avoid work, and live with their hands in 
 their pockets like pomestchiks. They have loaded ev- 
 ery thing onto the poor and the weak; but the latter do 
 not lose their coolness; they rob, kill, burn and deceive 
 each other. 
 
 It is really well done. As says the proverb, the boss 
 is for his bread (meaning his interest), and the workman 
 is as cunning as his boss; for, if intelligent people hide 
 away the light, there is no reason why wei should leave 
 it there. Act then as best you can, laborer. 
 
 107. Still the poor is very humble before you, O rich 
 man. And if, besides that you are deceitful with him, 
 he falls alive into your hands. 
 
 It is thus that the poor goes to the rich and returns 
 half naked. Sirach says rightly : "The lion is the 
 game of the savages in the desert ; likewise the poor 
 are the food of the rich." 
 
 Here is what happens generally in the poor regions 
 where a rich man has taken root. The poor must buy 
 
94 TOIL 
 
 everything from him and sell everything to him. 
 
 And the rich man says besides : "The business which 
 I am doing is honest and loyal. Every sale is an under- 
 standing on both sides. Do you or do you not wish to 
 buy from me and sell to me? Trade is not a sin. I 
 have neither false weights nor false measures ; I never 
 deceive in the accounts. And really it is only right to say 
 that I eat my bread by the sweat of my brow." 
 
 How can one argue with him ! All that he says is 
 very insulting for us. He does not understand the 
 meaning ot the commandment, otherwise his conscience 
 would begin to speak in him. 
 
 log. And again the rich give the following excuse : 
 "I give men money to have them work for me. My 
 interest would be to give them no work, but I do just 
 the same. And therefore I hope to be rewarded by 
 God. And then if it were not for me, where would 
 they find the money that they need?" I answer: "You 
 should make a better use of the wealth you have ac- 
 cumulated by working, by obeying the commandment I 
 have spoken of; you should wash yourself with clean 
 and not with dirty water. But you pretend to help 
 men with the result of their work. And who earned 
 the money that you give them? Is it your money? 
 No, it belongs to those workmen. What do you then 
 hope to be rewarded for? 
 
 no. It is said in the law: "Such the workman, 
 such the work; such the earth, such the fruits: "in 
 other words, if we are, according to you, ignorant 
 moujiks and useless factors in society, why do you like 
 our work, the bread? Believe me, reader, if I were as 
 intelligent and as learned as you, I would never eat 
 bread, but I would always eat money, and, with gold, I — 
 
 III. Each one of you will say: "I love and respect 
 the workman and bread labor, I have nothing but 
 
TOIL 95 
 
 hatred and contempt for idleness." To those as- 
 sertions I will answer by the proverb ; "1 hear the voice 
 of Jacob and I go unto Esau." 
 
 112. We should not give a single grain of wheat. 
 "Why so?" the reader will ask. Because one half of 
 humanity will not go near the work of the earth, and 
 the other half only works in spite of itself, not knowing 
 where to seek refuge, so full is the world of laziness. 
 Where three or four men would suffice, ten or fifteen 
 arrive, and not having eaten for a day or two, crowd 
 one on top of the other. If one is repulsed he becomes 
 the most terrible of robbers and criminals. 
 
 113. I repeat that we should not give a single grain 
 of wheat. Let us except only the women who fulfil 
 exactly the commandment of God which we quoted, 
 also the aged men who have worked before, but who 
 have lost their strength, the crippled and the children 
 who will work in the future. Oh, heaven, listen to my 
 prayer ! Give us for them an abundance of the fruits 
 of the earth. 
 
 114. "Do not do unto others what you do not wish 
 to have done unto yourself." That is the law. It is 
 well, and, as for myself, I do not believe there are any 
 other virtues. But, let me ask, the question, if you 
 do not wish to have the others eat the bread of your 
 work, why do you eat the bread of their work ; in other 
 words, why do you do to others what you would not 
 have done to yourself? 
 
 "I buy my bread with money." 
 
 "Very well then ; you have always the same song on 
 your lips, and it sets my teeth on edge. " 
 
 115. Have I not said before that bread can not be 
 bought at any price, that it can be bought only by 
 work, for its price can not be settled by the human 
 mind. In certain legitimate cases it must be given and 
 
96 TOIL 
 
 taken. But you have arrived at this result that in cer- 
 tain towns of Russia, a measure of bread costs no more 
 than a measure of dry muck. 
 
 How ignominious ! At the sole recollection of that in- 
 sult which we endured, I feel a cold shiver run through 
 me. 
 
 But for you, rich people, nothing is cheaper than the 
 bread. Everything is as it should be. That is what 
 you call law. 
 
 1 1 6. Have pity on us, O you of the high classes! 
 Do not annihilate my words. If they are illegal, only 
 crush my own person ; but allow my work to remain in 
 the archives where you leave the most important State 
 papers. There may be found in the future generation 
 some man sufficiently just to publish all that. Let me 
 die alone, if only the millions of laborers who live after 
 me can have a great joy and find some relief in their toil. 
 
 117. In spite of the studying you have done from 
 your childhood until old age, consider how large the 
 distance is that separates you from a good, ignorant la- 
 borer : One step ! A man of the higher class, but of 
 inferior degree, a public functionary and a man of our 
 class, the starckina, (the magistrate of a canton) unite 
 to make an inquiry in view of a proposed lawsuit. The 
 canton gives the functionary a few cases of wine and 
 he consents to arrange everything. He changes the 
 facts and hands a false report to his superior who no- 
 tices nothing uncommon, and signs the papers. Thus 
 the innocent man has become the guilty and vice versa ; 
 and that through the complicity of the superior with 
 the inferior. 
 
 118. But why was he deceived ? Because not only he 
 does not work the bread, but he does not even know 
 how it is done. But if besides science he was familiar 
 with bread labor, his intelligence would be so 
 
TOIL 
 
 97 
 
 enlightened that he could not be deceived. You see 
 how niany faults and mistakes are caused by idleness. 
 
 119. Here is what the talented writers do: If they 
 have to criticise a superior they soften their words and 
 tell him the fable of the geese of Kriloff : "I might 
 have insisted more on the fable," he says, "but I did 
 not want to irritate the geese." 
 
 In other words, he has not told him the truth out 
 and out, but he has beaten around the bush- 
 But I, whether it be through clumsiness or through 
 love of the truth, I irritate the geese. What do you 
 think of it, reader? 
 
 They will strike me with their beaks until they kill 
 me. What does it matter : whatever it may cost me, 
 I can not remain silent, I will not draw the veil of 
 hypocrisy over my thought. But since I have started 
 on the right road, I will continue to follow it until 
 my death. I will wander neither to the right nor to 
 the left. 
 
 There is a book called Civil Marriage. I have never 
 read it, but I know that in it the pomestchik Ko- 
 vosseslky complains of a peasant before his wife: 
 ''Just imagine," says he, ''that villainous servant put 
 a cold shirt on me! " (I can not help laughing as I copy 
 this complaint) "I scold him and he answers: ' I al- 
 ways put a cold shirt on your father the general." 
 
 That trait astounded me. Laziness has overpowered 
 man to such an extent that he finds intolerable the obli- 
 gation of putting on his own shirt. 
 
 We must conclude that if he were shown the everlast- 
 ing fire in which he will burn eternally with his descend- 
 ants, as says the Christian tradition, he would prefer to 
 be plunged into it rather than pick up a straw or a grain 
 of wheat. 
 
 Toil-7 
 
gS TOIL 
 
 Into what are men cast by laziness, idleness and lux- 
 ury? But speak to the wealthy of the divine command- 
 ment, and he will eloquently oppose to you a hundred 
 arguments to prove that he eats his bread with the sweat 
 of his brow. 
 
 121. I would like to ask (but I know not who to turn 
 to) if it is possible that the pomestchiks have had their 
 shirts put on them. *' Nothing is more true," I hear on 
 all sides! ''they have even had their drawers drawn on 
 as if they were dead. " But what are they doing with 
 their hands meanwhile? 
 
 That is an instance of laziness one could never have 
 imagined if it had not been true. 
 
 122. How they have suffered, the slave-peasants! 
 The recollection alone of their sorrows is painful to me. 
 "When I think of it, it makes me shudder. It would 
 have been far better for them never to have been born. 
 Even had I several tongues and tried my best to say 
 everything, it would be impossible for me to expose all 
 the calamities which befell them, all the tortures which 
 those martyrs endured. 
 
 Human lips can not express their suffering. But I 
 will tell you the outrage that we are enduring. It may 
 be that you, who are reading me, are a pomestchik 
 yourself. But I shall tell the truth nevertheless, that no 
 one can accuse me of falsehood. And then I have been 
 myself a laborer wi th a pomestchik on the Don. 
 
 123. Three days a week the peasant works for him- 
 self; on the three other days he works with all of his 
 family for the pomestchik. His wife, his children hard- 
 ly twelve years old, old people of sixty even worked for 
 their own existence and for the keeping of the animals. 
 The instruments of labor, the plow, the wagon, the har- 
 rows, the scythes, the axes, etc., all of that must be 
 bought by the peasant. 
 
TOIL 99 
 
 If he had done any involuntary damage while working 
 for the pomestchik, he must have everything repaired 
 at his own cost. He must thrash the wheat in a field 
 far from all houses, and it is there that, in spite of the 
 cold, he must work all day for the pomestchik. Many 
 worked half naked and tortured by hunger; but what 
 did it matter, they had to work for the pomestchik. 
 Was it not a torture? Add to that that those people 
 have no protector. 
 
 124. Three days for yourself and three days for the 
 pomestchik; a year for yourself and a year for the 
 pomestchik; such is the life of the peasant. But of the 
 year during which he works for himself there must first 
 be deducted eighty days that are holidays, for those 
 people are very religious, then eighty other days of rest 
 caused by accidents in the work. And then the peasant 
 is not a stone that it may happen to him to be ill, if it 
 is only fifty days in two years. There only remains, 
 then, one hundred and fifty-five days of work for him- 
 self. 
 
 125. I want to know whether, in that case, he can, in 
 a hundred and fifty -five days of work, supply his numer- 
 ous needs for two years, during the present year and the 
 following one, during which he will work for the po- 
 mestchik. Remember that he must besides scrape to- 
 gether some money to pay the yearly tax, the cost of 
 recruits and the personal assessment. If the husband 
 or wife happen to die, there remain about a dozen young 
 children; to-day he has the funeral, and to-morrow he 
 must go back to work for the pomestchik. 
 
 126. Besides that the pomestchik sends to the peas- 
 ants for various things: chickens, geese, eggs, butter, 
 etc. He notes what is given to him and those who do 
 not give are tormented; and there is not a soul to whom 
 they can complain. Try to speak to him of the com- 
 
luo TOIL 
 
 mandment. Before you have said two words he will 
 interrupt you with a shower of arguments and prove to 
 you that, according to the commandment, he eats his 
 bread with the sweat of his brow, and that, on the con- 
 trary, the peasants are idlers and parasites. 
 
 There may be good pomestchiks in the world, but I 
 can assert that on the banks of the Don they are all like 
 the one I have just described. 
 
 127. "Is it allowable," you will say, "to insult thus 
 the benefactors who feed you, or, in other words to re- 
 turn evil for good, hatred for love?" 
 
 But how can you always praise yourselves, and pro- 
 claim that no one is more just and merciful than you are. 
 
 128. It will be said to me: "The pomestchik can be 
 a virtuous man." 
 
 Of course he can, if he only accomplishes himself 
 the work of his bread. But it has never been known to 
 happen, and never will be. 
 
 In the eyes of the real believer, the principal way of 
 redeeming one's sins is to receive the holy communion. 
 But, from the primitive commandment of God, the ab- 
 solution which consists in doing personally bread 
 labor is a thousand times better. But the million- 
 aire has paid twenty kopeks for a pound of wheat and he 
 has obeyed the commandment! 
 
 129. It has been said and is still said that the lot of 
 the peasant slaves of the pomestchiks is preferable to 
 that of the peasant of the state. 
 
 That is simply said because we are not believed, 
 although there are thousands of us and each one can 
 prove the contrary a thousand times. 
 
 But the pomestchik is alone and he will only have to 
 say that the peasants placed under his protection are 
 more happy than those of the state, and his words will 
 be believed. 
 
TOIL loi 
 
 130. All that is over, slavery is suppressed, but the 
 pain which the sight of those infamies caused me has 
 not yet disappeared and will long leave traces in my 
 soul. 
 
 Up to the age of sixty the peasant worked for the 
 pomestchik; deduct the thirteen years of childhood 
 and there remain forty-seven years, of which twenty-four 
 were devoted to working for the pomestchik and the 
 remaining twenty-three for himself. 
 
 Try, now, to hire a peasant of the state and tell him: 
 "Work a year for me with your wife, your children and 
 your beasts; life, clothes, implements, etc., everything 
 will be at your own cost; if you injure anything while 
 working for me, you will be held accountable for it." 
 For what price will that peasant consent to work for a 
 year? 
 
 He will ask at least five hundred rubles, which would 
 make, for twenty-four years, eleven thousand, five hun- 
 dred rubles. 
 
 Such is the amount which the pomestchik has stolen, 
 if not in money, at least in work, from the peasant who 
 has lived all his life in his service. 
 
 And that money, the pomestchik has lost it at cards 
 or used it to satisfy various fancies of the same kind. 
 
 Tell me why he has taken that money? Did the peas- 
 ant owe it to him! No. He might have had some rea- 
 son for acting thus? No, none. Then why did he take 
 such a large amount from him? For nothing. 
 
 131. Throughout the universe complaints are aris- 
 ing against God. If God's kmdness is infinite, why all 
 the persecution that is inflicted on the poor? 
 
 If God governs the world righteously, whence comes 
 the inequality between men? Why is sin happy and 
 virtue unhappy? 
 
102 TOIL 
 
 But is it the fault of the mirror if our face is ugly; in 
 other words, is it God's fault if we have rejected his 
 law, the respect for which would re-establish equality 
 amongst all mortals? 
 
 132 Impose the law that no one shall eat the bread 
 of the work of others, unless it be for legitimate reasons, 
 and, from then on, men will not be equal, but they would 
 at least be nearer to each other. The work of the bread 
 will clip the wings of those who try to soar too high. 
 
 We are poor through your wealth, and you are rich 
 through our poverty. 
 
 133. Our great-grandfathers, our grandfathers, our 
 fathers, our ancestors in a word, have worked, and we 
 also, you see it, work until old age. All that they have 
 earned by their work they have left to their childrenaand 
 the latter to theirs. 
 
 But why am I not rich then, even if I had laid noth- 
 ing aside? I own as little as owned my great-grand- 
 father, less perhaps. 
 
 134. Has our family been composed of idlers and 
 drunkards? "No, never," said my grandfather. Per- 
 haps all of my possessions have been destroyed by a 
 fire or a flood? No, not that either. Nothing of all 
 that has happened. 
 
 135. But then, I will ask, what has become of all 
 of our work? What thief has stolen all of our fortune? 
 But where does all of your wealth come from, O rich 
 man? Answer me loyally 
 
 136. If only the injury done us was but momentary, 
 but it is eternal! Just like the past generations, the 
 present ones must suffer from privation. It will never 
 have a protector. But all of that happens only because 
 we have nailed up in his coffin, our father, the com- 
 mandment. 
 
TOIL 103 
 
 137. That is only what I caught a glimpse of during 
 all of my life, and what I see clearly to-day, after hav- 
 ing meditated for years on the meaning of the first 
 commandment : throughout the universe the peasantry 
 go to the fields and do bread-labor, helped by the 
 youngest of their children. The babies who are 
 not weaned yet, and have not yet tasted the bread, are 
 suffering also for the bread. Would not the sight of all 
 those people remind one of bees, swarming through the 
 fields and gathering the honey on their way? 
 
 And on seeing the people of the high classes, I have 
 compared them to the drones who buzz, who do not 
 work, and only know how to eat the work of others. 
 
 Many thieves are arrested in the world ; they are 
 not thieves, but rather mischievous people, whereas I 
 have found a thief, a true thief! He has stolen God 
 and the church ; he has robbed us of the primitive law, 
 that which belonged to all of us laborers. But I want to 
 show you that thief himself. He who does not work 
 his own bread and eats the bread of the work of others, 
 he is the thief; arrest him and judge him. He has 
 carefully buried the commandment of God, and in seven 
 thousand three hundred and ninety years no one has 
 been able to discover it. He has stolen innumerable 
 millions from the poor people, and he abandoned them 
 with their children half naked and famished, while he 
 elevated himself by that means higher than the sky. 
 
 138. The honey bees cut the wings of the bumble 
 bees, to prevent them from eating the honey of their 
 work. Your turn has arrived, parasites, and we cut 
 your wings that you might not eat the bread of our 
 work. I know very well that you will continue to eat 
 it, but when you carry the bread to your lips, conscience 
 will clutch your throat and nothing can deliver you 
 from its grasp. If bread could be had by cunning, as 
 
104 TOIL 
 
 all else, it would be hidden and left in some safe place, 
 and all would be for the best. But bread can not be 
 hidden : it must be eaten immediately. 
 
 That is worth thinking of. 
 
 139. Now you of the rich classes, you who elevate 
 yourselves unto the skies, remember that you impris- 
 oned yourselves in the bonds of impiety which you have 
 not the strength to cast aside, you see yourselves cast 
 into a gulf from which you can not escape, unless 
 God draws out of you the tyrant Laziness and his 
 friend Luxury. 
 
 We therefore beg that you restore to us the treas- 
 ure which God created especially for us, and which is 
 the fundamental law of humanity; in other words, de- 
 clare it everywhere. Then we will enrich you, we will 
 load you down with gold, because hoping as we will for 
 salvation, not only the bread labor, but every other 
 work will seem easy to us. 
 
 -The most weak-minded men and the children them- 
 selves, hearing the text of that law, will understand that 
 it is the first one given by God to the first men and 
 that it is more important than all of the other virtues, 
 than all of the other commandments. They will then 
 say to themselves : "I must work still more than be- 
 fore, therefore I will willingly spend my life in the fields 
 that I may deserve happiness in the other world." 
 
 Return to us then, O wealthy people, the treasure 
 which you, or rather your ancestors, have stolen and 
 hidden, restore to us the most sacred of our possessions, 
 the gift which we have from God. 
 
 Before my eyes were opened, all of the prescriptions, 
 all of the laws transmitted to us by tradition seemed 
 important to me. But to-day they seem insignificant 
 because this single commandment : "Knead your 
 
TOIL 105 
 
 bread," etc., has taken possession of my intelligence 
 and of my heart. 
 
 The result will be that, if it is proclaimed, the clergy 
 will be deprived of bread; for now it eats without 
 working, and no one has any right to blame it for its 
 laziness. But then each one would tell the clergy what 
 he thought of it. 
 
 141. When I laid aside my manuscript after copying 
 the preceding article (for it took me six months to copy 
 my work at my spare moments), they came to ask us to 
 lend some bread to the town of Krasmoiarsk. The in- 
 habitants of our village, veritable Jews, have, by a vote 
 of the county assembly, granted fifty meaures of wheat 
 from the store-house of the Mir. * Why did they give 
 so little? 
 
 ''Because the mare has eaten all of the bread." f 
 Several people congratulated the man who had 
 taken the initiative of the proposition, but many were 
 angry: '^ Fifty measures, fifty measures! but that is but 
 twenty pounds for each house! Why give but twenty 
 pounds for each house, they said to the assembly? It 
 would be better to give nothing. While you are giving 
 you must give at least two or three measures to each 
 house, or even two bags. ' ' 
 
 142. You see, what I predicted has arrived. The 
 bread must not be sold, but in certain admissible cases, 
 it must be given for nothing. And it is being given 
 while you are still hiding the commandment on 
 bread labor. But if that first commandment was 
 made known to all mankind without having it's impor- 
 
 * Store-house in which each family was called upon to pour one 
 tenth of the crop for the poor 
 
 f Russian proverb. It is one of the pretexts given for refusing to 
 give alms. 
 
io6 TOIL 
 
 tance hidden, the burned town of Krasmoiarsk would 
 then receive from our single district of Manoussinsk sev- 
 eral thousand measures ot bread and each one would go 
 to the spot to give the necessary help. It would be the 
 same in every case, for no one would know what might 
 happen to him on the next or even on the same day. 
 
 143. Ask, on the contrary, for money. They will 
 give you none, ist, because the peasant rarely has any; 
 2nd, because the voice of the commandment tells the 
 laborer to give bread rather than anything else. And 
 then money is a dead thing if it be compared to bread; 
 it is worth no more than a stone. No one makes pres- 
 ents in money, the more money a person has, the more 
 they wish to have. Take all of the money and all of the 
 treasures of the world and give it to a single person: will 
 he be satisfied and will his cupidity vanish? No. But 
 what more could he want? Why will he not be satisfied? 
 He will cry: <* Why cannot I hold the entire world in 
 my hands, why can I not hear every man and embrace 
 in a single glance the entire universe. No matter which 
 way I turn, nothing belongs to me." 
 
 144. But, I would answer, to do that one would have 
 to live a thousand years, because, however wide and 
 long you may be, you could never, in such a short time, 
 absorb it all; you would smother. But bread is exactly 
 the opposite of money; they are two enemies, just as 
 the laborer is the enemy of the idler. 
 
 145. It is said that henceforth the taxes will be based 
 upon the earth, meaning that the amount will be propor- 
 tionate to the number of acres that each one owns. Why 
 do you say ** upon the earth? " Why not admit immedi- 
 ately that the laborers will be the only ones paying taxes. 
 But here is some ground that is not cultivated; are you 
 going to take from that the money and bread that you 
 need? ** According to the sentence of Him who created 
 
TOIL 107 
 
 me, that earth will say to you, I am waiting for some 
 one to come and work me; if you come for aught else, 
 begone, parasite." 
 
 Allow me to ask you why you want taxes from those 
 who feed you with their bread, while those who never 
 accomplish the work of the bread do not have to pay a 
 single kopek? If at least the earth were free! But the 
 state has taken it from us to give it to the pomestchiks, 
 and they require from us ten times as much as it is 
 worth. Whether the wheat grows or not, give us the 
 money; but where shall we take it? 
 
 Although it has been said in the law: <<Hold out your 
 cheek to him who strikes, in view of the great injustices 
 of which you are guilty towards us, I refuse you ( and 
 by I, I mean all of our class of laborers, young and old, 
 children at the breast and, in general, all of those who 
 suffer before being born, since their mothers work accor- 
 ding to the primitive commandment while they are still 
 in their wombs,) I refuse you, I say, the right of speak- 
 ing, of wrangling about the bread and about the earth 
 that produced it; be satisfied with talking of the stone 
 and of the ground where grows nothing but the bitter 
 absinthe. 
 
 If you really wanted to work and were not able, for 
 various reasons, you would be excusable; but it is 
 through laziness that you avoid work. In that case, 
 why should you be forgiven? I know that you can not 
 answer all of these questions. You say that you will 
 have recourse to violence to procure your food. But 
 will you be able to live, could you swallow -a single 
 mouthful of the bread you owed to your strength? No, 
 no, that mouthful would smother you, body and 
 soul, without paying any attention to your rank. 
 
 Have pity on us; since how many thousands of years 
 have you been galloping on our backs like a horse! Look: 
 
io8 TOIL 
 
 long since j^ou have taken all of the flesh from the bone. 
 The bread you eat is in reality our body; and the 
 wine you drink is in reality our blood. 
 
 146. When I understood the first commandment, 
 here is what I did : in spite of my sixty-five years, in 
 spite of my weakness and my thin arms, I worked the 
 earth during the whole year (1881). Without any help 
 I harrowed eight acres of fallow-land ; I led the first 
 horse of the plow ; I worked the same earth over again 
 and, though working in the fields all day, I took care of 
 the horses at night. And in spite of all that I felt no 
 fatigue. Lastly I brought in the wheat and the hay 
 with my son and my daughter-in-law. 
 
 147. You see the result which that commandment can 
 produce. Thanks to that law the old man becomes 
 young, the weak is strong, the lazy diligent, the drunk- 
 ard sober and the poor rich. Would I have done all 
 that, would I have plowed so much earth, had I not 
 known that I was digging up the spot where you hid 
 the divine commandment? If people were aware of 
 their own strength they would not stand such outrages. 
 Would not man cast from him the horrible poverty that 
 holds him now in its grasp? 
 
 148. If God sends an abundant crop to the eight 
 acres of land which I plowed, we will have enough to 
 satisfy us, my family and myself. Listen to this more, 
 idle men, that I could still feed thirty men with the re- 
 sult of my work. 
 
 149. If you reallj. wanted to work and were not able 
 to for good reasons, you would be excusable before 
 God and before man ; but it is through laziness that 
 you do not work: is it then possible to respect you? 
 Never in any way. Before that a superior appeared to 
 me a great personage, but now he is in my eyes the 
 
TOIL log 
 
 least of men; I would like to put that idea from me, 
 but I cannot, it returns in spite of me. 
 
 I often hear that it is wished to reconcile all of hu- 
 manity in a single religion. Is it so? I know not. 
 But if it be true, I assert that instead of uniting them, 
 it will divide them into as many different sects as to- 
 day, and consequently your action would be more injur- 
 ious than beneficial. It was easy to unite men in an- 
 cient times, while the race was still wild ; it could be 
 led by a thread without fear of breaking it. But now- 
 adays you might tie them together with a triple cord, 
 you would not move them, in the first place on ac- 
 count of their habits, and also on account of the pride 
 that prevents them from listening to each other. 
 
 But if you start a religion on the basis of the single 
 primitive law, without giving any other rules, you will 
 soon have the universe united. It is impossible to reach 
 by any other means the union of which you dream. 
 
 150. From poverty to wealth there is but one step, 
 and, the other way, the distance is still smaller. It is 
 the same from the general to the soldier. Man does 
 not know when and where his chariot will upset; in 
 other words, it may happen that to-day he owns a mil- 
 lion and that to-morrow he is as poor as we, that to- 
 day he is a general and to-morrow our equal. 
 
 151. This is then the line of conduct we must adopt. 
 Hasten to teach the child, however noble its family 
 
 may be, the first commandment. When he has grown, 
 teach him by your example bread labor. After that 
 if misfortune ever falls to his lot, he will not even sigh, 
 he will rush impetuously towards bread labor. 
 
 "For many years," he will cry, "I have wished to 
 busy myself with this work, but I had not the strength 
 to withstand fortune. To-day I thank God for having 
 withdrawn from me the heavy weight that was dragging 
 
110 TOIL 
 
 me down into the abyss of sin." Turning up his 
 sleeves and the tail of his coat, he will take the plow 
 with which he is familiar and sing as he goes to work. 
 
 152. But what do we see now? When fortune 
 abandons man and need obliges him to earn his living 
 with his own hands, he grows discouraged, and not 
 only he dishonors himself, but he draws misfortune 
 onto all of mankind. Whose fault is it? Yours, be- 
 cause you have hidden and are hiding yet the divine 
 commandment. The government, not the individuals, 
 should be sentenced to the penitentiary. Why so? they 
 ask. Because you should not hide the law of God. Let 
 the responsibility of the crime fall onto the clergy and 
 the Jewish Rabbi, but do not blame the civil and mil- 
 itary authority, for it is not in the least guilty ! 
 
 153. You see it now, reader; all of your books are 
 insignificant by the side of mine. Your eloquent excuses 
 are empty by the side of this simple language. All of 
 your precious works, which you pay each other so gener- 
 ously for, are ignorant by the side of our work. The 
 treasures that fill your houses have no value compared 
 to the bread which we have in our lofts. All of your 
 broad intelligence is weak by the side of our small 
 mind. Your millions are nothing but horrible poverty 
 by the side of our small possessions. 
 
 154. During entire centuries people have ts^ked of 
 the rich and of the poor; but no one ever found the dif- 
 ference between those two classes of men, because one 
 owns a small capital, another a capital twice as large, a 
 third a capital three times as large, etc. ; and each one 
 pointed to the other. ''Do you take me for a rich man? 
 Look at so and so, there is a man who is rich." 
 
 It is exactly of such rich men as those that Jesus 
 Christ said: *' It is easier for a camel to pass through the 
 eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the 
 
TOIL III 
 
 kingdom of God." (S. Mark, X, 25.) 
 
 But I have seen that there is between the rich and the 
 poor the same distance that there is between heaven and 
 earth, between east and west. Between us and you 
 there is, it is said, an immense gulf: we can not go to 
 you; you can not come to us. Js it not so? 
 
 155. If, for instance, I should give to a rich or to a 
 learned man the following advice: *'You see that on 
 your side there is nothing but vileness; come to ours. 
 Do tiot work the bread since you have never done it; 
 but the single fact that you come to us will spare you 
 the intolerable stinging of your conscience." *'I can 
 not do it," he would answer, *' I would rather die than 
 join you. " 
 
 156 Would it not be the same on the day of the 
 judgment, as the Scriptures assert it? In His mercy 
 God will receive you; but in your shame you will move 
 away from Him. But still God will not move away from 
 you because you disdained the work of the 
 bread which he prescribed for you, and which you have 
 trampled under foot as well as those who observed it. 
 
 157. Your reign has lasted for 7,382 years while we 
 were oblige to work. In 1882 will begin our reign and 
 your period of work, if this commandment is understood 
 by every peasant. What a triumph, what a joy it will 
 be for this, the lower class! 
 
 158. If you have then a chance to spend a few days 
 in the country, you would have to borrow the eyes of an 
 animal, for with the eyes of a man, you could not remain. 
 As we will be elevated, so will you be lowered. No one 
 however will blame you openly; you will be fed, but the 
 blame that will arise behind you will touch you more bit- 
 terly than if it was spoken to your face. 
 
 159. If you earned your bread by working with your 
 hands, and not with money, your reign would be still 
 
iia TOIL 
 
 more bright. We are now your inferiors. We would be 
 still lower then for we work by constraint, urged on by 
 need, whereas you would work simply to obey the first 
 commandment. You would deserve more respect than 
 ever. 
 
 1 60. You are now occupying our seat at table, in 
 spite of us; and we remain so humbly before you that 
 your conscience suffers as well as ours. But then the 
 real justice would arise triumphant:, it will spare you, but 
 it will not injure us. You will not always have the "seat 
 of honor and we will not remain eternally at the end of 
 the table. • 
 
 161. The lazy say to me: <'If you had found a way 
 of being rich and happy without working every one 
 would have thanked you. But when you advise us to 
 undertake an irksome and humiliating work, who will 
 take any notice of your words? You wish to convince 
 the government that the primitive law is based on 
 bread labor. But many very learned people can 
 see in the law but a message that is far from plain. And 
 then must we trouble ourselves about the bread? What 
 is the use of writing on a subject that is not worth while? 
 What is the use of even speaking of it, since we can 
 have bread at the rate of twenty or thirty kopeks a 
 measure? 
 
 "Lastly if that work was going to lead us to salvation 
 all of the learned and especially the clergy, would has- 
 ten to accomplish it. But they disdain it and prefer an 
 easy life: it must be then that it contains nothing that 
 can contribute to our salvation. What you are saying 
 is but a fairy tale." 
 
 162. The principal curse of our class, that of the la- 
 borers, that which casts us in spite of ourselves into mis- 
 ery, abjection and various other misfortunes, is, it will 
 be said, the division of wealth between brothers. It is 
 
TOIL 113 
 
 impossible to speak of that evil in two words. The 
 cause of that is still the same: the world has been kept 
 ignorant of the law of work. If that law had been pub- 
 lished, a hundred men could live together. The one 
 who commands would have no occasion to be proud, and 
 the ones who obey could not be offended. If, in the 
 midst of that group, a father otjsi mouther happened to 
 die, the children -would remain in that surrounding full 
 of cordiality and harmony, and the shock would not be 
 so hard for the one who was bereaved. The orphans 
 would find there mothers and fathers, brothers and sis- 
 ters, in a word, a host of protectors. 
 
 Women are generally tender-hearted: they would take 
 care of the orphans in preference to their own children. 
 In a word, every virtue results from that law and it is 
 opposed to all vices. It is not in vain that God said in 
 creating the world: '' Let light be, since it is good."* 
 You have hidden that gift of God from the sight of man> 
 and you were whispering to each other: ''There are fools 
 who feed us well, give us fine clothes, and all that for 
 nothing. We give them orders and they obey us." 
 
 163. If a man speaks of a crime before a numerous 
 society, he names no one as being the author of it, for he 
 can not read in the consciences: he speaks of the crime 
 in a legal way and wounds no one. But if we explain 
 the primitive law: ''Knead your bread with the sweat of 
 your brow;" we can not hide the name of the criminal, 
 for he carries on himself, so to say, the brand of Cain. 
 
 To disobey that commandment is, in truth, the greatest 
 of crimes, and, if it was committed by a man of the lower 
 class, it might not be noticed; but as the commandment 
 
 * Allusion to the text of Genesis: "God created the sun, God put 
 the stars in the firmament to give light to the earth — and god saw 
 
 THAT THAT WAS GOOD," 
 Toil— 8 
 
114 TOIL 
 
 speaks to those who elevate themselves unto the sky, 
 everyone notices those who break it. 
 
 164. God gave two commandments to our ancestors 
 Adam and Eve, the first : "Grow and multiply, fill the 
 earth;" the second: "With the sweat of your brow, 
 knead your bread." Why, I will ask of you first of 
 all, do you hasten to execute the first commandment of 
 God with such eagerness and gluttony, that you try 
 even to multiply the race of your neighbor? Why, I 
 will ask you next, do you disdain the second command- 
 ment of God : "With the sweat of your brow, knead 
 your bread," and do you hide in different corners, say- 
 ing : "I will take a good workman and he will make my 
 bread. " 
 
 Then you should take a good workman to make your 
 children. 
 
 "But that is inadmissible," you will answer. 
 
 If that is inadmissible, then it is also inadmissible to 
 oblige others to make your bread, except in certain ex- 
 cusable cases. Tell me why you. do not disdain the first 
 commandment as much as you disdain the second. If 
 your wives had heard your words they would have said: 
 "We are fulfilling our commandment : our children give 
 us pain and sometimes death ; and you, why do you 
 avoid executing the commandment that concerns you? 
 Give to your children the bread of your work."* 
 You can answer nothing to that, and you will remain 
 like a fish on the sand. 
 
 * Compare these remarks of Bondareff to what Tolstoi exposes in 
 the admirable chapter, "To Women," which ends "What Must Be 
 Done. " 
 
 That woman who willfully became sterile and who seduces man by 
 the beauty of her shoulders and hair, that one is the woman perverted 
 by man, the woman who lowered herself unto him, unto the perverted 
 
TOIL 115 
 
 165. How blind you are, O, savant ! You pore over 
 the holy Scripture, and you do not see the means by 
 which you could unburden of the weight of sin both 
 yourself and the flock which God entrusted to you. You 
 do not see the road that would lead you directly to 
 eternal life. Your blindness is like that of the inhabi- 
 tants of Sodoma who were blinded while looking for the 
 door of Loth-t 
 
 But those have had their blindness, while you, al- 
 though blind, you think that you see everything clearly 
 and plainly, that you know everything without the help 
 of any master, and that no one has the right to advise 
 you. Your blindness is like that of Balaam who, from 
 the donkey on which he was perched, did not see the 
 angel of God armed with a sword of fire, standing on 
 the road before him, while the donkey he was riding 
 saw. It is I who am the donkey, and you are Balaam ; 
 and you have been riding me since my childhood. 
 
 man, who like him, ignores the law, and who, like him, has become 
 blind unto the right meaning of life. 
 
 From that fault results the wonderful foolishness that is called 
 the right of women. Here is the formula of that right of women: 
 
 "Ah! you, man," said the woman, "you have ignored your real 
 work and you wish that we should carry the entire weight of our work. 
 But no! Since such is the case, we also, like you, can do that supposed 
 work which you accomplish in banquets, in public offices, in universi- 
 ties and academies; we wish also, like you, under the pretext of divi- 
 sion of the work, to encroach upon that of others and live only for 
 the satisfaction of our coquetry." 
 
 f Allusion to the Genesis, xixtio. "And they followed that 
 man Loth, with violence, and went up to the door to break it in. 
 Then those men held their hands out and they drew Loth in af- 
 ter them, then they closed the door. As to the people who were out- 
 side, they struck them with blindness, all of them, large and small, 
 ^nd they tired themselves without finding the door." 
 
1x6 TOIL 
 
 1 66. From all that precedes, one can see plainly, as 
 in a mirror, that man learns to read in order to do, 
 not the good, but the evil. It is not without reason 
 that the proverb says: "If the learned people should 
 lose their eyes" (and I Bondareff, probably, like them, ) 
 and if their horses died, the world would but live the 
 better. " 
 
 I did not use to believe in proverbs, but now I see 
 that it is God who gave them to the world. 
 
 167. The world is divided up between a thousand 
 religions, while there should be but one belief, as there 
 is but one God. 
 
 The first. commandment : "With the sweat of your 
 brow, knead your bread" can unite all religions into 
 one. When man has understood the full strength of 
 that commandment, he will press it to his heart, and, 
 in a century or less perhaps, he will unite the world 
 from east to west, from north to south, in a single 
 belief, a single church and a single love. (See article 
 
 35-) 
 
 168. Why do you look at the people who avoid work 
 not only without friendliness, but almost with hatred, 
 I have been asked? Whatever you may have on your 
 heart, you should still speak gently and kindly. 
 
 Here is my answer : Where could one find enough 
 patience and hypocrisy to speak gently and kindly? How 
 many millions of people are there, how many have 
 been since the beginning of the world, and how many 
 will there be yet who have been, who are, who will be 
 ignominiously wronged by you, the masters of this 
 world? In such conditions, I do not say a man, but 
 even an angel could not stand such insults, it would 
 make hair raise on his head. And I who am only a 
 man, I have wrongly endured them. Time and again I 
 have wished to speak gently, but when I begin to write 
 
TOIL 117 
 
 I grow so indignant that I forget all of my resolutions. 
 And I have said to myself that one can die but once. 
 That is why I took the right road and I have now 
 started. 
 
 * 169. I am speaking to you, the upper classes. I 
 do not beg of you, I do not ask, but I order that you 
 should give us back what is ours, that you should teach 
 us the primitive law which God himself gave us, the 
 laborers, when he created heaven and earth. You took 
 it from us either by cunning or by violence, and you 
 have hidden it in the depths of the earth, like the lazy 
 slave of the Gospel who hides his coin in a deep hole. 
 Return it to us now without delay, give it back to us ! 
 ^ We will no longer accept an excuse. 
 
 Those who preceded you were right in keeping that 
 law about them, since they were not asked for it : stran- 
 gers have nothing to do with other people's goods. But 
 now give us back that law, or, in other words, explain 
 it to us ! 
 
 170. You all give us the same excuse. It is not I 
 who am guilty, says one; nor I, says another; nor I, 
 says the third, and there is no end to the not I, but 
 who then will say : It is I who am guilty? If one 
 speaks to the supreme chiefs of the state, they will say 
 also : We are not the guilty ones. In a word the uni- 
 verse has suddenly become a circle in which no one is 
 on the circumference and everybody is in the center. 
 Question this one or that one, they will all answer invar- 
 iably : I am not guilty. 
 
 If it was a question of being proud and elevating 
 one's self unto the sky, of riding on the backs of the 
 poor people, you would all cry out : I ! I ! But it is to 
 hold out your hand to the millions of people who are 
 dying in misery ; not I ! you say immediately. Who 
 then will answer to my question : I ! I ! If our emper- 
 
TOIL 
 
 or Alexander Nicolaievitch has delivered us from slav- 
 ery, it has, according to my view, nothing to do with 
 what we are speaking of : it is another matter. 
 
 171. It is evidently necessary to convince people by 
 good advice and by various other warnings, but never 
 by strength. To print that ad vice in the alphabets and 
 prayer books, to bring the clergy of all nations and all 
 religions, by gentle ways and not by violence, to bring 
 them to preachthat doctrine, to be continually remind- 
 ing their flock of the qualities that are vested, before 
 God and before man, in him who adheres carefully to 
 ijhe primitive law of God, of the faults that characterize 
 on the contrary him who avoids the execution of that 
 commandment : Such are the ways by which, I believe, 
 we should oblige men to work, but not by violence. 
 
 But, unless it be the government, who has the power 
 to do what I have said? Nobody. 
 
 172. If that advice was inserted in every daily and 
 monthly paper, and in other publications, under differ- 
 ent shapes, we might wait as many thousands of years 
 as there are days in a century, it would give no result. 
 (See art. 36.) 
 
 173. Implore, O, my soul, (and by my soul I mean 
 the souls of all of the laborers, ) implore the government 
 as much as you wish, shed as many tears as you can, 
 raise your voice to its highest pitch, bend your knees 
 as much as you wish, not a soul will be moved by your 
 prayers, no one will notice your tears. I am certain 
 now that my double demand remains useless. If I had 
 but been answered yes or no, I would have been satis- 
 fied, but not a word has been said !* 
 
 O, Eternal Father, deign to glance down upon the 
 earth ! 
 
 * Compare these reflections of Bondareff to those of the celebrated 
 sectarian Soutaief. "If the Czar knew! " says Soutaief with a host of 
 
TOIL iiQ 
 
 See ! there is but one man who, with a single word, 
 can oppress millions of men !f 
 
 others. One day he starts for Petersburg; he wishes to warn the 
 Czar. * Useless trouble; he is not allowed to approach. The unfor- 
 tunate reformer obliged to return to his village accusing himself of 
 having sinned through lack of perseverance, 
 f Probably an allusion to the czar. 
 
APPENDICES 
 
 m 
 
APPENDICES 
 
 To THE WORK OF BONDAREFF 
 
 TOIL AND LOVE— WILL OF BONDAREFF 
 
 The love of our brothers, that is the principle of 
 the commandments, the commandment of command- 
 ments, the law of laws, the virtue of virtues. There is 
 no virtue that is like it either in heaven or on earth. 
 No other has the hundredth part of its perfection ; and 
 in speaking thus, I have not the slightest intention of 
 violating the laws and commandments that exist : I 
 simply wish to appreciate love at its true wort 
 
124 TOIL 
 
 II 
 
 And now, I ask you, which is the most useful to man 
 and the most agreeable to God, work or love? It is 
 evidently work. But there is only one work more use- 
 ful than love, it is that which is accomplished accord- 
 ing to the commandment : "With the sweat of your 
 brow, knead your bread. ' That is the only work that 
 is more useful and more agreeable to God than love. 
 Outside of that one, all of the others are useless and 
 sometimes even injurious. 
 
 Ill 
 
 But it has never happened to any one to work on ac- 
 count of that law, or that commandment, I mean by 
 that not to satisfy the need of food, but to obey the' 
 law (for that is howl, Bondareff, explain the expression 
 of the Genesis;) therefore no one knows the joys that 
 result from that work, and, consequently, not one of 
 
TOIL 125 
 
 yoUj O my readers, can ratify my assertion when I say 
 that work is more useful to mankind than love. 
 
 IV 
 
 Here is the proof : I find continually, and in all 
 books, songs of praise in the honor of brotherly love. 
 It is praised by every nation, even by the savages 
 themselves, in every language and in every dialect. It 
 is honored in the proverbs and the sayings; it is made 
 the basis of every religion and civil law. The preach- 
 ers are tired of singing the praise of love. But, I ask 
 you, have those sermons and praises had any result, 
 given rise to any virtuous actions? Not in the least. 
 It is not solely with love that you can quench the thirst 
 of him who is thirsty, clothe the poor, give alms to the 
 beggars, help the widows and the orphans, etc., etc. 
 
 If only people helped each other ; if they took pity 
 on the misfortunes of others ; but no, they steal, they 
 kill, they burn, they destroy, they deceive, hate and 
 
126 TOIL 
 
 wish each other every possible misfortune; they lay 
 traps and plan ambushes, and, all told, if they did not 
 fear the authority, and there was in the world nothing 
 but sermons, the men would eat each other alive. Such 
 are the actions given rise to by that praise, those ser- 
 mons on love, and if a man happens to do the good to 
 his brother, it is due to the instinct that binds us to- 
 gether and not to love. 
 
 VI 
 
 Why is brotherly love not appreciated? My answer 
 will be short : in the first place, love is an excellent 
 virtue, but it is narrow, and, besides that, real work 
 contains love, while love does not imply work. We 
 can add that work was created by God in the Paradise, 
 while love came into this world four thousand years 
 later with Moses. It is now evident why work is the 
 first of all virtues and the basis of every law. Love 
 without work is like a man without a head, it is dead, 
 and is therefore a narrow (derivated) virtue. 
 
 VII 
 
 To prove still better what I assert, I propose to you 
 to make the following trial : suppress, cross out all of 
 
TOIL 127 
 
 the texts of the holy Scripture that rest on brotherly 
 love and put in their stead the explanation of this law : 
 "With the sweat of your brow, knead your bread, " and 
 do not speak of love. Spread around those modified 
 texts, and soon, before the end of the day, men will all 
 be induced in spite of themselves, to love their broth- 
 ers. It is in the bread and in the field work that we 
 must look for brotherly love. And the laborer must en- 
 deavor to show the strength of that law, otherwise he 
 is lazy. Idleness, luxury, such are, on the contrary, the 
 principle enemies of social love. But you who have 
 never worked, you have never tasted the delights which 
 are given by the accomplishment of the law and of the 
 work which it demands ; that is why not one of you 
 will believe my words. But it is my duty to say them. 
 It rests with you to believe or discard them. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Therefore I request of you, readers, remember these 
 words and imbed them in your heart : the work done 
 according to the primitive law is the necessary accom- 
 paniment of brotherly love. Work is strong without 
 the help of love ; it can, unaided, give man the highest 
 prize he can aspire to before God, while love without 
 the help of work is not able to, because, as we have 
 said before, true love, deprived of all hypocritical veil, 
 is hidden in work, but without work love is dead. 
 Love your brothers, respect them, you say to us, but 
 
I2S TOIL 
 
 before that, O you who preach love, are you not eating 
 the bread of his work? Once more, the preachers have 
 exhausted their strength, dried their throats, tired their 
 tongues in preaching love, and what result have they 
 drawn from it? Love exists nowhere. 
 
 IX 
 
 If love reigned in the world, would the actual state 
 of things exist? In creating heaven and earth, God gave 
 for the eternity to us, the laborers, and not to the lazy 
 who have white hands, an inviolable law, expressed as 
 follows : "With the sweat of your brow, knead your 
 bread." In that law God included both temporal and 
 eternal happiness. 
 
 Since the beginning of the centuries the supreme mas- 
 ters of the laws have taken away from us, either by 
 violence or by cunning, that precious treasure. After 
 having robbed us of it, they probably hid it deep in the 
 earth, like the lazy slave of the Gospel, who buried his 
 coin. During centuries we laborers did not notice our 
 loss. In the midst of the innumerable cares of life we 
 forgot it and it is only to-day that we think of it. The 
 thief is now discovered ; we have found the guilty one 
 and unveiled his crimes before the eyes of the universe. 
 But what, you will say to me. Give back the treasure 
 which God gave you. No, I will not. The prey which 
 the wolf hides between his teeth, says the proverb, it is 
 George who gave it to him. What ! You preach 
 
TOIL 129 
 
 brotherly love in every key, and you commit such 
 crimes ! Why is it ? My question deserves an answer. 
 
 If love reigned in the world, would 2,400,0000! men 
 have been placed under the authority of the lords, as 
 it could be seen in our country not long ago? If love 
 reigned in the world, would the rich always receive a 
 fertile soil, while men and even children are every day 
 in danger of death, through lack of food? But the 
 lords, masters of the soil which they have appropriated 
 since the creation of the world (that is the origin of the 
 word "property,)" sell it to others at a very high price, 
 then gamble with the money or spend it on I know not 
 what fancies. That shows how deep is brotherly love. 
 
 XI 
 
 On the sixth day God said : "See, I give you all of 
 the plants bearing seed : feed yourself and sow. " Most 
 men do not wish to submit to that commandment, they 
 refuse to sow, and load that irksome work onto the 
 
I30 TOIL 
 
 back of the defenseless poor : as to themselves, they walk 
 around folding their arms and whistling. If at least 
 they had give him but the work of the bread alone; 
 but they loaded onto him every irksome toil, and he 
 even pays to accomplish it ! I am not speaking of the 
 taxes, but of the contributions of all kinds which he has 
 to make. That is what they impose upon us in the 
 name of the law. Not satisfied with those wrongs, 
 which they have inflicted upon us, they were careful 
 to take the soil away from him. They have made an 
 eternal deposit of it in the hands of those who avoid 
 work, and call by the name of "their property" the 
 soil which they never plowed 
 
 Such is the brotherly love which you advise but do 
 not practice. 
 
 XII 
 
 Time and again I have resolved to show you more 
 affection in my words ; but when I notice your false- 
 ness, I forget all of my oaths. 
 
 It is easy to remark between the primitive law of 
 work and the civil and religious laws the eternal enmity 
 that exists between the serpent and the woman. Even 
 between the two classes of men, the laborers on one side 
 and those who avoid work on the other, here exists an 
 enmity created by God himself and not by man. It is 
 said that between the primitive law and the posterior 
 ones there is this difference that the primitive law was 
 
TOIL 131 
 
 given by God to man as an atonement for his sins; 
 and each one knows that God did not give us other 
 merits or other virtues to redeem our sins. But, if it 
 is thus, why is work not prescribed by the laws or the 
 traditions as indispensable for the salvation? That 
 would nearly give us the thought that that decision of 
 God is not just. That is why I said that there was en- 
 mity between those two kinds of laws. And, besides 
 that, millions of laborers have lived between Adam's 
 time and our epoch ; has there not been amongst us a 
 single virtuous man, agreeable to God? 
 
 The question is important. But instead of resolving 
 it, the writers, more competent than we are^ speak of 
 the progress of work and of laziness without naming any 
 one. It is thus that they have neglected, and always 
 will neglect, until the end of centuries, to speak of the 
 question of work and laziness. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Here is another argument that proves that work ac- 
 complished according to the primitive law is more use- 
 ful than brotherly love. Speak of that love to an igno- 
 rant or a badly educated man, he will not listen to you. 
 You can see it in his eyes and by the expression of his 
 face : he is half asleep, he yawns and is bored. He 
 endeavors to bring the conversation onto another topic, 
 or else he tells you that he is in a hurry, he prepares 
 
i3a TOIL 
 
 to leave, and all that has been said to him he either 
 will not or cannot understand it. It was therefore use- 
 less to start that conversation. I have tried the experi- 
 ment myself, I am not inventing. 
 
 XIV 
 
 When, reading to such a man a few short texts from 
 the Genesis, you arrive at the words : "With the sweat 
 of your brow, knead your bread," explain to him that 
 that atonement was inflicted by God for their original 
 sin and for our actual ones. Add that God, in creating 
 heaven and earth, gave us no other means of redeem- 
 ing our crimes, etc., etc. You will see him look up at 
 you astounded ; he will forget his drowsiness and en- 
 nui, he will even forget that he is expected at home. 
 Then he will look down, troubled by those truths 
 which he never heard of, and of the use he made of 
 his youth, without thinking of the trouble God might 
 have in store for him. 
 
 I know, rfeaders, that you will not believe my words. 
 But, I swear it before God, I have said the truth. 
 
 XV 
 
 He will then look up and show by that that the argu- 
 ment has done its work. Then he will ask questions 
 
TOIL 
 
 133 
 
 and continually bring the conversation back to that 
 topic. Lastly, he will tell his friends what he has 
 learned, they will tell it to theirs, and so on. Why 
 would he not listen when you spoke of love? There is 
 something mysterious there. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Note, however, that the workingmen alone, the labor- 
 ers, will approve of your words. As to those who avoid 
 work, and they are numerous in your surroundings, they 
 will discuss your arguments word by word, and contra- 
 dict them ; and, as main argument in the discussion that 
 is so repulsive to them, they will show you the money 
 which they take from the poor peasants and which they 
 pretend to use to help them. You know very well, 
 readers, that the rich is always triumphant in every 
 discussion. It has always been so in the history of hu- 
 manity, and it always will be until the end of the cen- 
 turies, as asserts Sidrach, that man inspired by God : 
 "When the rich man speaks all are silent, and they extol 
 his words unto the sky. But the poor man speaks, and 
 they say, "who is that one?'" 
 
 XVII 
 
 Have I not proved irrefutably that love without work 
 is dead and that work accomplished according to the law, 
 
134 TOIL 
 
 unaided by love, is alone alive? Because love is hid- 
 den in the work : the work is the house in which 
 love dwells. Love without work is a body without a 
 soul. The law is living only when its power is profit- 
 able to man, otherwise it is dead. And then that law 
 lives, but only for those who accomplish it willingly, 
 and not for those who refuse to submit their entire soul 
 to it, who refuse to work. Last of all, the lazy, real 
 criminals, are dead to the law, just as it is dead to 
 them. 
 
 As to brotherly love, we have not to speak of it here. 
 
 It is impossible to explain to the world the law of 
 work which I taught myself without any outside help. 
 I have felt its truth all through my being. You are not 
 aware, and you never will be, that it is so powerful that 
 it can, in a few days, chain up all mankind in one be- 
 lief, in one church, in one love, because it is the prin- 
 ciple of all virtues. It would be well for you, O you 
 of the upper classes, if you held in your hands the head 
 of virtue, but you hold its tail, and it is "love" that I 
 mean when I say "tail." Love gives you words and 
 not actions. Why is it? Because gold has blinded 
 you and you cannot tell the head from the tail. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Can you believe, readers, that he who has welcomed 
 the law of wprk with as much delight as I have just 
 shown you, would do to others what he would not have 
 
TOIL 
 
 135 
 
 done to him? Would he take, by any means, the goods 
 of others? Can one suppose that, having decided to 
 eat the bread work by his own hands and to lead an 
 honest life, he could keep about him what he has ac- 
 quired dishonestly? No, it is too inconsequent to be 
 conceived of. 
 
 Do you think that a man whose conscience is so pure 
 could prevent himself from holding out a helping hand 
 to his brothers, or, in other words, see a hungry man 
 and not feed him, see a thirsty man and not quench his 
 thirst, see a tired traveler and not call him into his 
 house, etc., etc. ? A pure conscience has the eyes of an 
 angel and not those of a man : nothing escapes them. 
 
 XIX 
 
 For him who has not tasted the delight of the work 
 accomplished according to the primitive law which God 
 himself gave us on creating heaven and earth, it is hard, 
 very hard, even to believe what I have said. But in 
 saying that the work blessed by God is a hundred times 
 more useful than love, I am only making use of the 
 right which belongs to me. It is for you to approve or 
 blame my opinions. And as to judging which of us is 
 right, God alone and the ozar have that right. 
 
 XX 
 
 My readers must say or at least think: "How is 
 that? The entire universe and the highest authority 
 
136 TOIL 
 
 are based on brotherly love, like a mountain on the 
 rocks for the world knows of no virtue that is higher 
 than love. But alas ! the edifice is suddenly crumbling, 
 for its foundations have been sapped there and there ; in 
 a word, brotherly love is dead. Love is the last and 
 not the first of virtues. If we eat other people's bread 
 without having a good reason for it, if in that we dis- 
 obey the primitive law, love is then a useless virtue. 
 "But," some readers will say, "we had vested our hope 
 in mouey, as in God, supposing that we would find in 
 that the temporal and eternal salvation ; but that Bon- 
 dareff does not respect money and demands personal 
 work. Shall we tell him that he lies? But we have 
 no solid basis for the assertion." The inconstant fortune 
 of man rests always on a tottering throne, and it knows 
 not on which side it wij fall. When the time comes, 
 at which your fortune disappears, my readers will say 
 that the proverb is right : "Thunder does not always 
 come from clouds, but often from a heap of refuse." 
 
 XXI 
 
 Just as the universe cannot live without God, like- 
 wise it cannot live without bread and without laborers. 
 It is evident that the laborer takes the third place 
 after God and the bread : it is on that triple founda- 
 tion that rests the world, as we will shoM plainly in 
 the following articles : 
 
TOIL 
 
 137 
 
 XXII 
 
 God is a ubiquitous spirit, in heaven, on the earth, 
 and under the earth. But which is his principal dwell- 
 ing? Question which has not been solved up to our 
 time. But now it is evident that no reasonable man 
 is in doubt as to the main dwelling of God, which is 
 the bread and the laborer. Deduct one of those three 
 terms, God, the bread or the laborer, and soon the uni- 
 verse will disappear. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Can we not assert now that this second trinity saves 
 really our souls from death? We would not even com- 
 mit a sin in calling it the first trinity because the 
 first trinity formed by the Father, the Son and the 
 Holy Ghost, is open to criticism O.ne half of the 
 universe recognizes it, while the other does not, and 
 sees in God a single person. If the whole universe 
 had ecrognized this trinity of which I have just 
 spoken, and which is composed of God, the bread and 
 
138 TOIL 
 
 the laborer, it would probably be admitted that those 
 three persons are contained in God. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 And now, readers, what do you think of what would 
 happen if all of the laborers understood my words? 
 They would not fly away above the clouds, they would 
 not hasten to take to themselves other work and other 
 virtues. By the work of the soil they would enrich 
 themselves, and, moreover, they would enrich you. 
 You certainly know that all of your delights depend 
 upon our work : without it you would not be happy. 
 But what can be done to make those men continue 
 their work? It is impossible to keep them where they 
 are. Ah ! pity the misfortune of that laborer who sows 
 good seed on a sterile soil and has nothing to reap] I 
 am that laborer; the good seed is the first command- 
 ment of God with its consequences ; the sterile soil is 
 your heart which, in the midst of the comforts of this 
 world, turns away in disgust from the work which God 
 imposed upon all of us. 
 
 XXV 
 
 I return to what I was saying. If God is especially 
 present in the bread and in the laborer, it seems to me 
 
TOIL 139 
 
 that there would be a good reason for honoring the 
 bread as the true God, and the laborer as one of the 
 most precious of the creatures of heaven and earth. (I 
 am not speaking for myself; at my age a man has ou-t 
 grown ambition. ) To-day the price of the bread is of 
 one rouble and fort)^ kopeks a measure, while no price 
 can be assigned to it by the human mind ! Once more, 
 it should not be sold, but given in extraordinary circum- 
 stances. Bread is valued at one rouble and forty ko- 
 peks, and the laborer is valued still less than that. He 
 is an naught And still he is one of the three persons of 
 that indivisible trinity that saves us from death. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 God might, I admit it, feed man without needing the 
 bread and laborer ;but to do that he would be obliged 
 to change the whole order of nature, and to withdraw 
 the word which he pronounced in creating heaven and 
 earth : -"Let heaven and earth be." He would have to 
 destroy all that in order to modify his laws. But for 
 whom should he change the order of the world ? For the 
 lazy? No, no. I repeat it: God, the bread and the 
 laborer, that is the real and indivisible trinity, that 
 which saves us from death. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 It is for me to ask whether a thing is useful or not 
 for the good of all ; it is for you to answer or not answer. 
 
140 TOIL 
 
 Why then is the laborer called a fool and an idiot, he 
 who eats the bread of his work and prevents the other 
 men and the animals from starving to death ; why is his 
 merit ignored to such an extent? We are fools; I admit 
 it, fools in all the strength of the word. But listen : 
 the more one learns the more one progresses; but it is 
 impossible to reach the limit of progress — perfection. 
 As long as his life lasts, man does not reach the end of 
 his science, and it is only after death that he reaches 
 perfection with a single step. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 Besides that, the more you learn, the better you can 
 see your intellectual faults. Since then you lower, as 
 much as you can, that man who feeds himself with his 
 work and feeds his brothers at the same time, as well 
 as the animals, what name will you apply then to the 
 one who, far from feeding the others, lives lazily on the 
 result of their work, and, what is worse still, sucks the 
 blood of the poor in order to get money? What will 
 you call hinv? A brigand ? No ; a brigand comes un- 
 der the scope of the law, while that one is respected 
 and honored. All of the humiliating epithets you have 
 applied them to us, which is the one then that can be 
 applied to the lazy? But what is the use of question- 
 ing you? A stone might answer me, but you, readers, 
 you will not. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 If a great famine rages for a year only in Russia, every 
 one will die of hunger. But where is the wheat that 
 
TOIL 141 
 
 had been left over from the preceding years and which 
 the "fools" had accumulated? "The intelligent people 
 have eaten it, "you will answer. Can one believe that 
 an intelligent man dared to commit such a crime? Eat 
 the bread that belongs to the ignorant, trample broth- 
 erly love under foot as well as the primitive command- 
 ment; it is almost incredible. 
 
 XXX 
 
 The love of bread is the strongest instinct of man, 
 and still what he disdains the most is the bread-labor. 
 There are actually in Russia millions of children vdio 
 are being taught to read, that they may more easily 
 set that work aside and eat bread for nothing, that they 
 may ride on the backs of the laborers. If that was not 
 their intention, they would never consent to learn and 
 their parents would not send them to school. To wish 
 not to live without doing anything, that would be a 
 crime, a suicide ! He will therefore not work, that 
 condition is too shameful. 
 
 Whence comes that state of things? From the fact 
 that the divine law : "With the sweat of your brow, 
 knead your bread," has not been explained to. the young 
 and intelligent souls, and from the fact that no place 
 has been reserved for it in the books of science. For 
 that is how men would have understood from their 
 very youth that they must try to eat the bread of their 
 own work and live honestly. 
 
142 TOIL 
 
 XXXI 
 
 Work, the virtue of virtues, is mentioned neither in 
 the alphabets nor in the books of high science. The 
 teachers never allude to it, because they lead them- 
 selves an idle life. The child can therefore learn noth- 
 ing good in the schools. He will be like the earthen- 
 ware that always retains the odor of the first liquid that 
 was put into it. How many examples prove it ! The 
 historians tell that the Roman emperor, Caligula, was 
 so cruel, that, not satisfied with taking the life of those 
 who displeased him, he would even drink the blood of 
 his victims. The daughter of Darius liked nothing bet- 
 ter than snake. How can one explain those facts? 
 Caligula had been brought up by a cruel woman; the 
 daughter of Darius had had for nurse a woman whose 
 favorite food was snake. 
 
 XXXH 
 
 The theologians pretend that God offers the milk of 
 wisdom as food for children and that the devil offers 
 them the milk of impiety. If, through the fault of the 
 parents, the child drinks the milk of the devil, no other 
 
TOIL 143 
 
 food will please him afterwards, just as Caligula liked 
 blood and the daughter of Darius was fond of snakes. 
 
 In that case what can the laborers hope for? Let us 
 always expect the worst. But if the men learn to read 
 and write, who will feed them? That is an important 
 problem which nobody is willing to solve. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 I request you, readers, not to forget that I asked 
 to you humbly with bowed head, standing sadly on the 
 threshold of your door. But you are occupying the 
 seat of honor at the table covered with the results of 
 our work. You will not answer me ? Why is it, unless 
 because you see that you are in every way guilty before 
 God, before man and before yourself, which means your 
 conscience. If you tried to justify yourself you would 
 fall still deeper into sin ; if you tried to contradict me, 
 your obstinacy would be an outrage, not against me, but 
 against God, against bread and against your conscience. 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 You see now, upper classes, that the laborer is your 
 second father, we can even say, without fear of sinning. 
 
144 TOIL 
 
 that he is your first father. Remember that all you eat 
 at table results from our work. In a word, we feed 
 you as a father feeds his children. 
 
 Nothing more contrary to the law than the excuse 
 you give by saying: "I pay for the bread."* But 
 where did you get the money? That money which you 
 keep near you, is it not the fruit of our labor ? You 
 could only win our forgiveness by a willing consent to 
 eat the bread of your own work. "It is impossible," 
 you will answer again, "how could all men do the same 
 work?" 
 
 XXXV 
 
 The law of work is incomprehensible if it is com- 
 pared with love, because the single word Love suffices 
 alone to explain all of the mysteries, while it takes 
 numerous developments to render perfectly plain the 
 meaning of the primitive law. I have already written 
 nearly 300 articles to discuss it, and I doubt whether I 
 have entirely convinced my readers of the necessity of 
 the work. How can one present in a few words the 
 virtue which is attached to the law which God gave 
 when he created heaven and earth ! And then the 
 greatest of curses, the obstacle that takes all of its 
 
 * I mean by "I" all of our class, men, women and children. I am 
 not speaking in my own name, but in the name of all of my compan- 
 ions. 
 
 ToU-W 
 
TOIL 145 
 
 strength from that law, is money. It is money that 
 blinds man and makes him insane. Listen to them an- 
 swer simply : "I pay for the bread, I pay for the 
 bread." That is their only answer. Is it then possi- 
 ble to discuss with them? 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 It is time to end my discourse or rather my sermon. 
 
 At the time at which I am writing the government 
 has not yet thought of the law of work. No rescript 
 has explained its strength ; it has not preached to its 
 subjects the love of work in spite of the pressing re- 
 quests which I addressed to it and which it has not 
 noticed. How I pity its blindness ! God is witness that 
 I am telling the truth. The individual is excusable if 
 he is not aware of certain things : but is it admissible 
 that the government should hide from the people the 
 greatest happiness that exists in heaven and on earth? 
 [ think not. 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 I have just learned this minute that the censors will 
 not allow the publication of my sermon. Why? ist, 
 
146 TOIL 
 
 Because the authority wishes also to avoid the horrible 
 bread labor; 2nd, Because it hates us who feed it. "Let 
 them suffer with hunger and cold, those sixty millions 
 of laborers, as long as we and our equals are happy ! " 
 And if you speak to them of brotherly love, they will 
 show themselves greater philanthropists than you are; 
 but always words, never actions! 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 The state I have spoken of has existed for five years 
 already. Before one of you we are like sparrows be- 
 fore an eagle. 
 
 With a single word, with a single stroke of liis pen 
 he can crush us ; and he has really crushed and anni- 
 hilated us. What millions of men he has oppressed ! 
 I was saying that, thanks to the government, laziness 
 will blossom and grow everywhere; the work and the 
 bread will be lowered and despised. It is done. You 
 see what truth there is in my predictions and what ex- 
 actitude in my words ! 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 The blood and tears of men have attested to the truth 
 of all of the commandments in the Old and the New 
 
TOIL 147 
 
 Testament. But in favor of the primitive command- 
 ment which is the principal of all others and of brotherly 
 love, no one ever shed a tear or a drop of blood : no one 
 has attested its truth. That is why it has always been 
 looked upon as false ; that is why nobody recognizes 
 it in the universe; that is why it is rejected with an- 
 ger as the censors have just prove. Did Jesus Christ 
 assert it by his death? No. He said in the Gospel: 
 "Look at the birds of the sky, etc. " That shows that 
 Jesus rejected like all others the law of work, because 
 from his very childhood he had seen no virtue in it, 
 and that he considered it even the greatest of misfor- 
 tunes. 
 
 XL 
 
 It is seen form all that precedes that heaven intended 
 me to attest of the truth of that law and prove it with 
 my blood and my tears. My blood dries in my veins 
 at the sight of the corruption of the world ; as to tears, 
 they fall not from my eyes (a too powerful constitution 
 prevents me from weeping,) but they fall from my 
 heart. 
 
 XLI 
 
 I wonder myself why I put such ardor in developing 
 the meaning of the primitive commandment in the 
 
148 TOIL 
 
 midst of all the cares and troubles that surround a 
 peasant such as I am. Will the world be grateful to 
 me for all the pain I have endured? Will I receive 
 for my discovery, which interests the whole world, a 
 reward similar to those distributed to the inventors of 
 trifles? It is useless even to think of it. My greatest 
 reward will be to avoid punishment : for I am making 
 sharp attacks. But against whom are they directed? 
 Think over that important question. Why should 
 those threats trouble me, while I am feeling an invisi- 
 ble and mysterious hand that pushes me forward on the 
 road I am following, and that it is really in spite of 
 myself that I work? 
 
 XLII 
 
 I used to hope that this work would win for me a re- 
 ward from God in the future life, although I have not 
 accomplished it willingly. But now very learned men, 
 knowing the goal I am aiming at, come and say to me : 
 "You have not worked through love for your brothers, 
 but through love for yourself. To love your brothers 
 and love yourself at the same time, it is to offend God 
 and hate your brothers." Their arguments seemed to 
 be the pure and simple truth; one would think that 
 God himself inspired them. 
 
 XLIII 
 
 To avoid all of these difficulties, I see but one way : 
 If my work is divided into ten parts and I am only 
 
TOIL 149 
 
 credited with the tenth part, I will be satisfied. If 
 even that was taken from me, I would not be injured, 
 for I am convinced that in the next life I will not need 
 to be judged by God. My conscience will be my judge, 
 and it will not torture me with remorse, because I have 
 always tried to act righteously. Still, if there are any 
 doubtful cases, I will submit to the appreciation of 
 God. 
 
 XLIV 
 
 The readers will perhaps want to know the sorrows 
 that dried my blood. Here they are : 
 
 1. I am not accustomed to writing, as you can see 
 by my style. I have been obliged to write the same 
 article over several times. One can judge of the work 
 I have had. 
 
 2. I composed this sermon in the midst of the irk- 
 some work of the country : I go to the fields during the 
 day, and, in the evening, I write with difficulty, be- 
 cause I see badly, even with glasses. 
 
 3. If I had been rich, I would have had assistants, 
 preceptors, advisers. But, although I am not entirely 
 poor, my possessions are very modest. That is why I 
 was very badly welcomed every time I spoke of my 
 plan. 
 
 4. IS my family large, in other words, how many 
 people are there who are working in my house ? There 
 
ISO TOIL 
 
 are seven of us : myself, my wife, my eldest son and 
 his wife, and three little children. We are far from 
 being all able to work. 
 
 Our fortune does not allow us to take workmen, and 
 then, as I have just said, we should not eat the bread 
 prepared by the work of others. 
 
 5. For the last four years (we are in December, 
 1886,) I have been addressing requests to the govern- 
 ment in which I express all that I have in my heart. I 
 have asked for permission to publish my sermon. 
 What has been the result ? I must have addressed my- 
 self to blind and deaf people : they did not answer. If 
 at least they had but said "Yes" or "No." 
 
 6. Lastly, what has dried my blood more than all 
 is that sixty millions of Russians are suffering and in 
 misery because they are not aware of the law of the 
 work. Why? In order that some may live in comfort 
 and laziness and enjoy every earthly pleasure, and they 
 are such that I do not want to speak of them before 
 honest people. 
 
 Have I exposed all of my troubles and cares, all the 
 pain and anguish that I suffer? No, for it is impossi- 
 ble to tell all. 
 
 XLV 
 
 Nothing is more true : heaven had designed me to 
 seal with my blood and wash with my tears the truth 
 which I preach. I have sealed it with my blood and 
 washed it with my tears. Perhaps after my death 
 
TOIL 
 
 151 
 
 the commandment which I proclaimed will blossom. 
 No, I cannot believe that it will be otherwise. What 
 is the obstacle that could oppose its way? I have said 
 the truth :my prophecy will not vanish without leaving 
 any traces. Am I trying to acquire glory ? No. I am 
 too old, and what good would it do me? To-day or 
 to-morrow I will fall into my dark tomb, closed to the 
 light of the sun : what good would it do me then to 
 seek for glory? 
 
 XLVI 
 
 My work is now done. I have drawn the primitive 
 law from the hell where men had cast it in the begin- 
 ning of the centuries. I have bathed it with my tears 
 and sealed it with my blood, as I have just said, and I 
 have given it into the hands of the most powerful 
 man in the world ; I have given it to the czar of czars, 
 to the monarch of monarchs, to the king of kings, to 
 the emperor. 
 
 Whatever may happen, I have done my duty. It is 
 for you, O czar, to act according to your power and 
 according to your will. 
 
 XLVII 
 
 One word more, and I am through. During the few 
 days of life that remain for me, I will put myself in the 
 
152 TOIL 
 
 tomb, and I will raise above it a monument in harmony 
 with the primitive law : "With the sweat of your brow, 
 knead your bread." I will build a monument worthy 
 of that precept more precious than all of the earthly 
 treasures. I will expose my design in the following 
 articles. 
 
 XLVIII 
 
 I will make, I, Bondareff, a will, written, and not 
 verbal, in which I will say to my son Daniel : "At my 
 death, when you lay me in the coffin, you will put 
 these papers in my hands. God, who sees everything, 
 the surface of the earth and its depths, will know why 
 I hold these papers in my hands. He may judge of 
 the contents when he will call, on the day of judgment, 
 all of our enemies who, having read my doctrine, made 
 no effort to propagate it. He will also call up the pro- 
 tectors of the law of work, and he will reward them. " I 
 assure you with all my soul that my prophecy will be 
 accomplished. If you offend a man you will certainly 
 be punished. In denying the law of the work you are 
 offending millions of men and their children and all of 
 their descendants. Do you think that your sin will be 
 remitted on account of that blind fortune who protects 
 you? An atheist alone could be in doubt about it. 
 
 XLIX 
 
 With us it is customary for men to carry the dead to 
 the cemetery. But I will order my son to carry my 
 
TOIL 153 
 
 body on a chariot as far as the tomb. Man is too great 
 a hypocrite, he shall not touch my remains. Let one of 
 us try to win during his life the respect of his neigh- 
 bor, he will get nothing but hatred ; the greatest mis- 
 fortunes are called down upon his head and he is dis- 
 dained ; but as soon as he is dead, he has no longer 
 any need for the respect of man, and his enemies carry 
 him to his last resting place, pretending to weep. Ah ! 
 if that man could see what is happening at his funeral, 
 he would hardly be satisfied. Man is a hypocrite. I 
 now hate all of mankind, and that is whyl will not 
 have them touch my coffin after lam dead. 
 
 My criticisms, at times too cutting, were not ad- 
 dressed to individuals who were powerless, but simply 
 simply to the representatives of the supreme govern- 
 ment. These are the worst of our enemies. They are 
 preachers who only feed themselves and allow the flock 
 which God entrusted to them to die of starvation* 
 
 If a man passed from death to life, his neighbor 
 would not even carry him to a chariot ; but when he 
 passes from life to death, he carries him on his arms ! 
 And if there should be an occasion of bringing one 
 from death back to life, it would not be done through 
 brotherly love, but in the hope of winning a reward » 
 consisting either in money or public praise. 
 
154 TOIL 
 
 LI 
 
 I will order my son not to bury me in the cemetery, 
 but in the soil which, worked by my own arms, has 
 given me my daily bread. * I will ask him not to fill 
 my tomb with clay or sand, but with fertile earth ; not 
 to make a mound, but to leave it so that nothing will 
 show the place where I am buried. And lastly I will 
 advise him to continue to sow every year at that spot 
 the wheat I have lived on. Later the ground may be- 
 long to some one else and in that way, until the end of 
 the centuries, the bread of life will be gathered over 
 my tomb. 
 
 It is thus that will be accomplished the prophecy of 
 Job : "You will enter the sepulchre in your old age, 
 like the ripe wheat or like the sheaves are stored away 
 in their time."f Such is the monument which I 
 prefer to your thousands of monuments. From this very 
 minute I choose the spot of my tomb ; I stretch myself 
 out in the ditch. I am alive to-day — but the future 
 does not belong to us. 
 
 * One of the most famous Russian sectarians, the inspirer of Tol- 
 stoi, the moujik Soutaief, promises also to dispense with the ministry 
 of the priest, and to be buried in profane ground, but for other reasons 
 than Bondareff . ' 'A grandson is born to him, he refuses to let it be 
 baptised; another one dies, he wishes to bury it in his garden under 
 the pretext that all earth is holy: and, as he is forbidden to, he hides 
 the body under the floor. He marries his daughter himself, etc. — " 
 
 f The men will tell of my funeral from century to century and 
 many laborers will follow my example. Some of you, O noble, O 
 
TOIL 155 
 
 Here I end my book. 
 
 And now, readers, good-bye, until our next meeting, 
 if not in this world, at least, in the other. But I hope 
 that through your eloquence and skill you will justify 
 yourself better before God than I could do. 
 
 Timothy Michailovitch Bondareff. 
 
 wealthy people, may wish also to be buried in the ground where man 
 sows the bread. 
 
 OFTHE 
 
 UK 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Introduction, by the French Translator 5 
 
 Of what Toil consists 5 
 
 The peasant Bondareff Inspired the Social The- 
 ories of Tolstoi — The Two Laws of Humanity: 
 Manual Labor for Men, Motherhood for Women: 
 Tolstoi^s Critique on Bondareff — The Old Testa- 
 ment and the Gospel 13 
 
 How THE Theory of Manual Labor should be 
 Interpreted — Tilling the Soil, the Social Rem- 
 edy — Extent and Consequences of this Theory. . 16 
 The Book of Bondareff — Remarks on its Transla- 
 tion 17 
 
 TOIL BY LEO TOLSTOI f\ND TIMOTHY BONDAREFF 
 
 PART I 
 Toil and Bondareff 's Theory, by Count Leo Tolstoi 21 
 
 PART II 
 
 Toil, according to the Bible, by the peasant Bond- 
 areff 43 
 
 I. Introduction — Life of Bondareff — Object of 
 his work 45 
 
158 CONTENTS 
 
 11. Toil, according to the Bible 49 
 
 APPENDICES 
 
 Love and Labor 123 
 
 Bondareff 's Will 152 
 
NIVKRSITV t'l (AhlloKMA I.IKKAU'l 
 
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