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KUnatrateli CHabtnrt Titian 
 
 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 
 
 COLLECTED ARTICLES 
 
 By 
 
 Count Lev N. Tolstoy 
 
 Translated from the Original Russian and edited by 
 
 Leo Wiener 
 
 Jlssutant Professor of Slavic Languages at 
 Harvard University 
 
 Boston 
 Dana Estes & Company 
 
 Publishers 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Visiting Their Son. Peasants Come to Town 
 
 (p. 71) . . . . . . . Frontispiece 
 
 From Painting by K. Libedev. 
 Amusements of the Rich 196 
 
 Photogravure from Drawing by Mencina. 
 <' Physical Labour " 300 
 
 From Painting by I. E. Byipin, 
 
 Totatoy, Yol. XVII, 
 
The Complete Works op 
 
 COUNT TOLSTOY 
 
 Volume XVII. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do 
 then? 
 
 He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two 
 coats, let him impaxt to him that hath none ; and he that 
 hath meat, let him do likewise (Luke iii. 10, 11). 
 
 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where 
 moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break 
 through and steal : 
 
 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where 
 neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do 
 not break through nor steal. 
 
 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 
 
 The light of the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye 
 be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. 
 
 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of 
 darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, 
 how great is that darkness ! 
 
 No man can serve two masters : for either he will hate 
 the one, and love the other ; or else he will hold to the one, 
 and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. 
 
 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, 
 what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your 
 body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than 
 meat, and the body than raiment ? 
 
 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat ? 
 or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed ? ) 
 
 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek :) for your 
 heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of all these 
 things. 
 
 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteous- 
 ness, and all these things shall be added unto you (Matt, 
 vi. 19-25, 31-33). 
 
 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, 
 than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God 
 (Matt. xix. 24 : Luke xviii. 26 ; Mark x. 26). 
 3 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 I HAD passed all my life in the country. When, in the 
 year 1881, I moved to Moscow, I was struck by the pov- 
 erty of the city : I knew what the poverty of the village 
 was, but that of the city was new and incomprehensible 
 to me. In Moscow it is impossible to walk through a 
 street without meeting mendicants, of a particular type, 
 such as do not resemble those one sees in the country. 
 These beggars are not mendicants with a wallet and with 
 Christ's name, such as village beggars are imagined to be, 
 but beggars vvithout a wallet and without Christ's name. 
 The beggars of Moscow do not carry a wallet and beg no 
 alms. As a rule, when they meet you or allow you 
 to pass them, they try to catch your eyes, and they beg 
 or not, according to your glance. 
 
 I know one such beggar from the gentry. The old 
 man walks slowly, putting his weight on each foot. 
 When he meets you, he puts his weight on one foot and 
 acts as though he were bowing to you. If you stop, he 
 takes hold of his cockaded cap, bows to you, and begs you 
 for an alms ; if you do not stop, he pretends just to have 
 such a gait, and passes on, bowing with a leaning on his 
 other foot. He is a real, trained Moscow beggar. At 
 first I did not know why the Moscow beggars did not beg 
 outright, but later I came to understand it, though I did 
 not understand their condition. 
 
 One day, as I was walking through Afandsev Lane, I 
 saw a policeman putting a tattered peasant, who was 
 pudgy with the dropsy, into a cab. I asked him why he 
 was doing this. 
 
 The policeman answered me : " For begging alms.** 
 
 " Is that forbidden ? " 
 
 " I guess it is," replied the policeman. 
 
 The dropsical man was taken away in the cab. I took 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 5 
 
 another cab and followed them. I wanted to find out 
 whether it was true that it was prohibited to beg alms, 
 and how this prohibition was carried out. I could not 
 make out how one man could be kept from asking a thing 
 of another, and, besides, I could not make myself believe 
 that there could be a law against begging, since Moscow 
 was full of beggars. I had myself driven to the police 
 station whither they took the beggar. In the station a 
 man with a sword and a pistol was sitting at a table. 
 I asked him : 
 
 " Why was this peasant arrested ? " 
 
 The man with the sword and the pistol looked sternly 
 at me, and said : 
 
 " That is not your business." 
 
 However, as he felt the necessity of explaining some- 
 thing to me, he added : 
 
 " The authorities order such people to be arrested, and 
 so it is right." 
 
 I went away. The policeman who had brought the 
 beggar was sitting in the vestibule on a window-sill, and 
 looking gloomily into a memorandum-book. I asked 
 him : 
 
 "Is it true that beggars are not permitted to beg in 
 Christ's name ? " 
 
 The pohceman was startled. He looked at me, then 
 half frowned, half fell asleep again, and, seating himself 
 back on the window-sill, said : 
 
 " The authorities order it, and so it is right," and started 
 to busy himself once more with his book. 
 
 I went out on the porch to the cabman. 
 
 "Well, how is it? Did they take him?" asked the 
 cabman. 
 
 The cabman was evidently interested in the same 
 thing. 
 
 " They did," I replied. 
 
 The driver shook his head. 
 
b WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 O 
 
 " How is this ? Do they not allow people here in Mos- 
 cow to beg in the name of Christ ? " I asked. 
 
 « Who can make them out ? " said the driver. 
 
 " But how is this ? " I said. " A beggar is Christ's, and 
 they take him to the station." 
 
 "They have stopped it all in these days, — they don't 
 let them." 
 
 After that I saw policemen on several occasions, taking 
 beggars to the station and from there to Yusiipov Work- 
 house. One day I met a crowd of such beggars, about 
 thirty of them, in Myasnitskaya Street. They were 
 preceded and followed by policemen. I asked one of 
 them why they were taken away. 
 
 " For begging alms." 
 
 So it turns out that according to the law alms may not 
 be asked by any of those mendicants of whom one meets 
 several at a time in every street, and rows of whom stand 
 in front of the churches during divine service and espe- 
 cially during funerals. 
 
 But why are some caught and locked up somewhere, 
 while others are let alone ? That I was unable to make 
 out. Or are there among them lawful and unlawful beg- 
 gars ? Or are there so many of them that it is impossible 
 to apprehend all? Or do they take some away, while 
 others take their place ? 
 
 In Moscow there are many beggars of every kind : there 
 are some who make a living in this manner ; others are 
 real beggars, who in one way or another are stranded in 
 Moscow, and really suffer want. 
 
 Among these beggars there are frequently simple peas- 
 ants, men and women, in peasant attire. I have often 
 come across such. Some of these fell sick and came out 
 of hospitals, and are unable to provide food for themselves, 
 or to get out of Moscow. Others again have, in addition, 
 been on sprees (such, no doubt, was that dropsical man) ; 
 others were not convalescents, but men who had lost their 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 7 
 
 property in fire, or old men, or women with children; 
 others again were quite well and able to work. 
 
 These well peasants, who were begging alms, interested 
 me more particularly. These healthy, able-bodied beg- 
 gars interested me also for the reason that ever since 
 my arrival in Moscow I had made it my habit to take my 
 exercise by going out to the Sparrow Hills and working 
 there with two peasants who were sawing wood. These 
 two peasants were just such beggars as those whom I met 
 in the streets. One of them was Peter, a Kaluga peas- 
 ant, the other Semen, from the Government of Vladimir. 
 All they possessed was what they wore on their backs, 
 and their hands. And with these hands they, by work- 
 ing very hard, earned from forty to forty-five kopeks per 
 day, out of which amount they saved up money : the 
 Kaluga peasant, — to buy himself a fur coat, and the 
 Vladimir peasant, — to get enough money with which 
 to return home. For this reason I was particularly 
 interested in such people, when I met them in the streets. 
 
 Why do those work, while these beg ? 
 
 Whenever I met such a peasant, I generally asked him 
 what had brought him into such a plight. One day I met 
 a peasant with his beard streaked gray and with a sound 
 body. He was begging. I asked him who he was and 
 whence he came. He said that he had come from Kaluga 
 to try to earn something. At first he and his friend had 
 found some work to do, — cutting up old lumber for fire- 
 wood. They had finished the job, and had been looking 
 for more work, but could find none. In the meantime 
 his friend had strayed from him, and here he was strug- 
 gling the second week, and had spent everything, and did 
 not have a kopek to buy a saw or an axe with. I gave 
 him money with which to buy a saw, and told him where 
 to come to work. I had already left word with Peter 
 and Sem^n to receive him and find a partner for him. 
 " Be sure and come ! There is lots of work there." 
 
8 WHAT SUALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 " I will, of course I will come. What good," he said, 
 " is there in begging ? I can do a day's work." 
 
 The peasant swore that he would come, and I thought 
 that he was not deceiving me, but fully intended to 
 come. 
 
 On the following day I went to my friends, the peas- 
 ants, to ask them whether he had come. No, he had not. 
 And thus a number of men deceived me. I was also 
 deceived by such as wanted money just for a ticket with 
 which to get home, but whom a week later I met in the 
 street again. Many of these I came to know, just as they 
 knew me ; at times they forgot me and approached me 
 again with the same deception, and at other times they 
 went away the moment they saw me. Thus I saw that 
 among the number of these people there were also many 
 cheats ; but even these cheats were very pitiful : they were 
 all half-naked, poverty-stricken, emaciated, sickly people ; 
 they were of that class who really freeze to death and 
 hang themselves, as we know from the newspapers. 
 
IL 
 
 Whenever I spoke of this urban wretchedness to city 
 people, I was always told : " Oh that is nothing ! You 
 have not seen everything : you must go to Khitrov Market 
 and to the doss-houses thereabout. There you will see 
 the genuine crack company." One jester told me that it 
 was no longer a company, but a crack regiment, for there 
 were so many of them. The jester was right, but he 
 would have been still more in the right if he had said that 
 there was, not a company, and not a regiment, but a whole 
 army of them in Moscow : I think there are fifty thousand 
 of them. Old citizens, in speaking to me of the urban 
 wretchedness, always spoke with a certain degree of pleas- 
 ure, as though they were proud to know it. I remember, 
 when I was in London, the natives seemed to speak 
 boastfully of the London poverty, as much as to say: 
 " That's the way we do things." 
 
 I wanted to see the wretchedness of which I was told. 
 I started several times to go to Khitrov Market, but I felt 
 every time uncomfortable and ashamed. 
 
 " Why should I go to see the sufferings of men whom I 
 am unable to help ? " one voice said. 
 
 " No, if you live here and see all the joys of city life, 
 go and see this also," another voice said. 
 
 And so, in the month of December of the third year, on 
 a cold and stormy day, I started for this centre of city 
 wretchedness, for Khitrov Market. It was a week-day, 
 about four o'clock in the afternoon. As I was going down 
 the Soly^nka, I began to notice more and more people in 
 strange apparel, evidently not their own, and in still 
 
 9 
 
10 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 stranger footgear, — people with an unusually sickly com- 
 plexion and, above all, with a special expression of indif- 
 ference to the surroundings, which was common to them 
 all. Though wearing the strangest kinds of garments, of 
 most unseemly patterns, these people wa\ked along freely, 
 evidently devoid of all thought as to how they might 
 strike other people. All these were walking in the same 
 direction. 
 
 I did not ask for the road, though I did not know it, 
 but followed them, and came out on Khitrov Market. In 
 the market-place just such women, young and old, in tat- 
 tered capes, cloaks, jackets, boots, and overshoes, acting 
 with just as little constraint, in spite of the monstrosity 
 of their attire, were sitting and hawking something, or 
 walking about and cursing. There were few people in 
 the market-place. Apparently it was past market-time, 
 and the majority of people were going up-hill, past the 
 market and across it, aU of them in the same direction. 
 I followed them. The farther I went, the greater was 
 the throng of people walking in the same direction. 
 After I had passed the market I walked up the street, 
 falling in with two women, one of them old, the other 
 young. Both wore torn gray clothes. They were walking 
 and talking about something. 
 
 After every necessary word they uttered one or two 
 unnecessary, extremely improper words. They were not 
 drunk, but were agitated by something; the men who 
 were walking toward them, and preceding or following 
 them, did not pay the slightest attention to their strange 
 expressions. In these places evidently all people spoke 
 in the same way. 
 
 On the left were private lodging-houses, and a few 
 stopped here, while others walked on. After ascending 
 tUe hill, we came to a large corner house. The majority 
 of those who were walking with me stopped at this house. 
 On the whole sidewalk in front of this house just such 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 11 
 
 people walked about or sat down on the walk or in the 
 snow of the street. On the right hand of the entrance 
 door were women, and on the left — men. I walked past 
 the women, and then past the men (there were several 
 hundreds of them), and stopped where their file came to an 
 end. The house, in front of which these people were 
 stopping, was the free Lyapinski lodging-house. The 
 crowd of people were waiting to be admitted for a night's 
 lodging. The doors are opened at five o'clock, when the 
 people are admitted. It was to this place that the major- 
 ity of people past whom I had walked were trying to 
 get. 
 
 I stopped where the file of men came to an end. The 
 people nearest to me began to look at me and attracted 
 me with their glances. The remnants of the garments 
 that covered their bodies were quite varied; but the 
 expression of all the glances that these people directed at 
 me was absolutely the same. In all their glances one 
 could read the question, " Why did you, a man from 
 another world, stop here by the side of us ? Who are 
 you? Are you a self-satisfied rich man, who is trying 
 to take delight out of our misery, to distract yourself in 
 your ennui, and to torture us ? Or are you — what does 
 not happen and cannot be — a man who pities us ? " 
 
 This question was on all the faces. A man would 
 glance at me, meet my glance, and turn away again. I 
 felt like starting up a conversation with some one, but for 
 a long time I could not make up my mind to do so. But 
 while we were silent, our glances were bringing us closer 
 together. No matter how much life separated us, we felt 
 after the exchange of two or three glances that we were 
 all men, and we ceased fearing one another. Nearest to 
 me stood a peasant with a swollen face and a red beard, 
 in a torn caftan and overshoes worn down to the skin. It 
 was eight degrees Eeaumur below zero. Our eyes met 
 for the third or fourth time, and I felt myself so close to 
 
12 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 him that, far from feeling astamed to speak with him, T 
 felt that I should be ashamed if I did not strike up a 
 conversation with him. 
 
 I asked him where he came from. He answered cheer- 
 fully, and began to talk ; others came up to us. He was 
 from Smolensk, and had come to find work with which to 
 earn money for grain and for the taxes. 
 
 " You cannot find any work," he said, " for the soldiers 
 nowadays get all the work away from us. And so I am 
 wandering about. I swear by God I have not had any- 
 thing to eat for two days." 
 
 This he said timidly, with an attempt at a smile. A 
 sbiten ^ peddler, an old soldier, was standing near by. I 
 called him up. He filled up a glass of sbiten. The peas- 
 ant took the hot glass into his hands and, before drinking 
 it, warmed his hands over it, trying not to waste any of 
 the heat. While he was warming his hands he told me 
 liis adventure. The adventures, or the stories of the 
 adventures, are nearly always the same : he had a small 
 job, but it stopped, and his purse with his money and his 
 ticket were stolen in a lodging-house. Now he was un- 
 able to get away from Moscow. He told me that in the 
 daytime he warmed himseK in taverns and fed on free 
 lunches (bits of bread in the taverns) ; at times they let 
 him have a piece, and at times they drove him out ; he 
 passed his nights in the free Ly^pinski House. He was 
 waiting for the police raid which would take him to jail, 
 as he had no passport, and would send him by ^tappe 
 back to his place of residence. " They say the raid will 
 happen on Thursday." (The jail and the ^tappe presented 
 themselves to him as a promised land.) 
 
 While he was telling me this, two or three men from 
 among the crowd confirmed his words, saying that they 
 were in precisely the same condition. A lean, pale, long- 
 
 1 A drink composed of water, honey, and laurel leaves, or sage, 
 used by the masses in the place of tea. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? IS 
 
 nosed young man, with nothing but a shirt over the upper 
 part of his body, with holes above his shoulders, and in a 
 visorless cap, pushed his way toward me sidewise through 
 the crowd. He was trembling all the time with a violent 
 chill, but tried to smile contemptuously at the remarks of 
 the peasants, hoping thus to fall in with my tone, and 
 kept looking at me. I offered him also a glass of sbiten. 
 He, too, took the glass and warmed himself over it, and 
 just as he began to talk he was pushed aside by a tall, 
 swarthy, hook-nosed man, in a chintz shirt and a vest, and 
 without a hat. 
 
 The hook-nosed fellow, too, asked me for some sbiten. 
 Then came a long-legged old man with a wedge-shaped 
 beard, wearing an overcoat with a rope girdle and bast 
 shoes, — he was drunk ; then a little fellow with a 
 swollen face and tearful eyes, who wore a brown nankeen 
 frock coat, and whose bare knees could be seen through 
 the holes of his summer pantaloons, striking one against 
 the other from the cold. He could not hold the glass 
 because of his chill, and spilled its contents over himself. 
 They began to scold him. He only smiled pitifully and 
 trembled. 
 
 Then there came a crooked cripple with rags on his 
 body and on his bare feet, then something that resembled 
 an officer, and something that resembled a clergyman, 
 then something strange and noseless, — all that cold 
 and hungry, imploring and humble mass crowded about 
 me and made for the sbiten. They all drank the sbiten. 
 One of them asked for some money, and I gave it to him. 
 A second, a third, asked for money, and I was besieged by 
 the crowd. The janitor of a neighbouring house shouted 
 to the crowd to clear the sidewalk in front of his house, 
 and the people submissively executed his command. 
 Some men in the crowd took the matter in hand, and 
 offered me their protection : they wanted to take me out 
 of the crush, but the crowd, which before had been 
 
14 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 stretched out along the sidewalk, was now in commotion, 
 pressing close to me. They all looked at me, and begged 
 me for something ; and one face was more pitiful, more 
 emaciated, and more humbled than another. I gave them 
 everything I had. I did not have much money with me, 
 — something hke twenty roubles, — and I entered the 
 lodging-house with the crowd. 
 
 The lodging-house is enormous. It consists of four 
 divisions. In the upper stories are the apartments for 
 men, and in the lower those for women. At first I 
 entered the female division : a large room is here taken 
 up by bunks, resembhng those of third-class railway-cars. 
 The bunks are arranged in two tiers. Strange, ragged 
 women, both old and young, with nothing but the clothes 
 they had on, kept coming in and occupying their places, 
 some below, and others above. Some of them, the older 
 ones, made the sign of the cross and prayed for him 
 who had founded this asylum, while others laughed and 
 cursed. 
 
 I went up-stairs. There the men took up their bunks ; 
 among them I saw one of those to whom I had given 
 money. When I saw him, I suddenly felt dreadfully 
 ashamed, and I hurried to get out. I left this house with 
 the sensation of having committed a crime, and went 
 home. At home I walked over the carpet of the stair- 
 case into an antechamber, the floor of which was covered 
 with cloth, and, having taken off my fur coat, I sat down 
 at a five-course dinner, which was served by two lackeys 
 in dress coats, white ties, and white gloves. 
 
 Thirty years ago I saw in Paris a man decapitated by a 
 guillotine in the presence of a thousand spectators. I 
 knew that this man was a terrible criminal ; I knew all 
 those reflections which men had been writing for so many 
 centuries, in order to justify such acts ; I knew that it 
 was being done intentionally, conscientiously ; but at the 
 moment when the head and the body separated and fell 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 15 
 
 into the box, I groaned, and I understood, not with my 
 mind, not with my heart, but with my whole being, that 
 all the reflections which I had heard about capital punish- 
 ment were a horrible blunder ; that, no matter how many 
 people might come together in order to commit murder, — 
 the worst crime on earth, — and no matter how they 
 might call themselves, murder was murder, and that this 
 sin had been committed in my sight. By my presence 
 and non-interference I approved of this sin, and took part 
 in it. 
 
 Even so now, at the sight of this starvation, cold, and 
 humiliation of thousands of men, I understood, not with 
 my reason, nor with my heart, but with my whole being, 
 that the existence of tens of thousands of such men in 
 Moscow, while I with other thousands gorge myself on 
 fillet and sturgeon, and cover the floors and the horses 
 with stufi's and carpets, — no matter what all the wise 
 men of the world may tell me about its being necessary, 
 — is a crime, which is not committed once, but is being 
 committed all the time, and that I, with my luxury, not 
 only incite to it, but also take part in it. For me the 
 difference of these two impressions consisted in this, that 
 there all I could have done was to have called out to the 
 murderers who were standing near the guillotine and 
 attending to the murder, that they were doing wrong, 
 and to have tried in every way to interfere with them; 
 but in doing so, I might have known that that act of 
 mine would not have prevented the murder. But here I 
 not 6nly was able to give the sbiten and all the miserable 
 httle sum which I had with me, but might have given 
 away my overcoat and everything which I had at home. 
 I did not do so, and so I felt, and feel even now, and 
 shall never stop feeling, that I am a participant in a 
 crime which is taking place all the time, so long as I 
 have superfluous food, and another man has none, and 
 I have two garments, when another has not even one. 
 
m. 
 
 That very evening, upon my return from Ly^pinski 
 House, I told my impressions to a friend of mine. 
 My friend— -a denizen of Moscow — began to tell me, 
 not without pleasure, that this is a very natural urban 
 phenomenon ; that it was only my provincialism which 
 made me see something peculiar in it ; that it had been 
 so all the time and would always be so, and that it was 
 an inevitable condition of civilization. In London it 
 was worse still, — consequently there was nothing bad 
 in this, and there was no reason for being dissatisfied 
 with it. 
 
 I began to retort to my friend, but did this with so 
 much excitement and vim that my wife came running in 
 from the other room, to ask what had happened. It was 
 discovered that, without knowing it myself, I had been 
 shouting with tears in my voice and waving my arms in 
 my friend's face. I yelled, " It is impossible, it is impos- 
 sible to hve in such a way, impossible ! " I was put to 
 shame for my excessive excitement, and I was told that 
 I could not speak calmly about anything and that I 
 became unpleasantly irritated, and, above all else, it was 
 proved to me that the existence of such unfortunates 
 could by no means be a cause for poisoning the life of 
 one's family. 
 
 I felt that that was quite true, and I grew silent ; but 
 in the depth of my soul I felt that I was right, and I 
 could not calm myself. 
 
 The city life, which had been strange and alien to me 
 before, now disgusted me so much that all those joys of a 
 
 16 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 17 
 
 luxurious life, which heretofore had appeared as joys to 
 me, now became a torment for me. No matter how 
 much I tried to find in my soul some kind of a justifica- 
 tion of our life, I could not without irritation look either 
 at my own drawing-room or at that of another person, 
 nor at a cleanly, elegantly set table, nor at a carriage, nor 
 at a fat coachman and his horses, nor at shops, theatres, 
 or assembhes. I could not help but see side by side with 
 them the cold, hungry, and humiliated inmates of Lya- 
 pinski House. I could not rid myself of the idea that 
 these two things were connected and that one grew out 
 of the other. I remember how the feeliag of guilt re- 
 mained in me the same it had appeared in the first 
 moment ; but very soon another sentiment mingled with 
 this and overshadowed it. 
 
 When I spoke of my impression of Lyapinski House to 
 my near friends and acquaintances, all gave me the same 
 answer that was given me by my first friend, to whom I 
 had been yelhng so, but they, in addition to that, ex- 
 pressed their approval of my goodness and sensitiveness, 
 and gave me to understand that this spectacle acted upon 
 me thus only because I, Lev Nikolaevich, was good and 
 kind. I believed -them readily. Before I had a chance 
 to look around, the feeling of resentment and repentance, 
 which I had experienced at first, gave way in me to a 
 feeling of satisfaction with my virtue, and a desire to 
 express it to other people. 
 
 "No doubt," I said to myself, "it is not I who am 
 guilty here with my luxurious Hfe, but the necessary 
 conditions of life. The change of my life could certainly 
 not change the evil which I saw. By changing my hfe 
 I should only make myself and my family unhappy, 
 while those misfortunes will remain what they are. 
 
 " Consequently, my task does not consist in changing 
 my life, as I had thought at first, but in contributing, as 
 much as it lies in my power, to the improvement of the 
 
18 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 condition of those unfortunates who have called forth my 
 compassion. The whole matter is that I am a very good 
 and kindly man and wish to do my neighbours some 
 good." 
 
 And so I began to consider a plan of philanthropic 
 activity in which I should have a chance to give expres- 
 sion to my virtue. I must, however, say that, while 
 reflecting on this philanthropic activity, I, in the depth 
 of my soul, felt that it was not the right thing, but, as 
 frequently happens, the activity of my mind and of my 
 imagination drowned in me this voice of my conscience. 
 
 Just then they were taking the census. This seemed 
 to me to be a chance for the exercise of that philanthropy 
 in which I wanted to express my virtue. I knew of 
 many charitable institutions and societies that existed in 
 Moscow, but their activity seemed to me to be falsely 
 directed and insignificant in comparison with what I 
 wanted to do. And so I hit on the following jj I would 
 call forth in the rich a sympathy for the city's wretched- 
 ness ; would collect money and bring together men who 
 would be willing to cooperate in this matter ; would visit 
 with the census-takers all the purlieus of poverty and, 
 besides the work of taking the census; would enter into 
 communion with the unfortunates ; would find out the 
 details of their needs and aid them with money, with 
 work, with sending them out of Moscow and locating the 
 children in schools and the old people in homes and poor- 
 houses. More than this : I thought that out of those 
 people who would busy themselves with this there would 
 be formed a permanent organization, which, dividing up 
 among themselves the wards of Moscow, would see to 
 it that the poverty and misery should not become infec- 
 tious; would always destroy the infection, at its incep- 
 tion ; would attend not so much to the duty of curing as 
 to the hygiene of the urban poverty. I imagined that, 
 not to speak of the mendicants, there would not be any 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 19 
 
 merely needy people in the city ; and that it would be I 
 who would do all this; and that we, the rich people, 
 would after that sit quietly in our drawing-rooms, and 
 eat five-course dinners, and travel in carriages to theatres 
 and assemblies, no longer troubled by such sights as I 
 had seen near Lyapinski House. 
 
 Having formed this plan, I wrote an article about it, 
 and, before sending it to be printed, called on acquaint- 
 ances whose cooperation I hoped to get. To all whom I 
 saw during that day (I turned mainly to the rich) I re- 
 peated the same words, almost what I had written in the 
 article : I proposed to make use of. the census for the pur- 
 pose of discovering all about the poverty in Moscow, and 
 helping it with works and with money, and seeing to it 
 that there should be no poor in Moscow, so that we, the 
 rich people, might with a calm conscience enjoy the bene- 
 fits of life to which we were accustomed. All listened to 
 me attentively and seriously, but precisely the same thing 
 took place with every one of them. The moment my 
 hearers understood what it was all about, they seemed to 
 feel uncomfortable and a little conscience-stricken. They 
 felt embarrassed, mainly for my sake, because I was talk- 
 ing such foohsh things, and yet such that it was impos- 
 sible to say outright that they were foolish. It was as 
 though some external cause compelled the hearers to nod 
 consent to this my foolishness. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! Of course. It would be so nice," they 
 said to me. " It goes without saying that we must sym- 
 pathize with that. I thought so myself, but our people 
 are in general so indifferent that it is scarcely possible to 
 count on much success — However, I on my part am, 
 of course, prepared to cooperate." 
 
 All told me very nearly the same. All consented, but 
 they did so, as I thought, not in consequence of my con- 
 viction and not in consequence of their own desire, but in 
 consequence of some external cause which made it impos- 
 
20 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 sible for them not to agree. This I noticed from the fact 
 that not one of those who offered me their cooperation by- 
 contributing money himself defined the sum which he 
 intended to give, so that I was compelled to determine it 
 by asking, " So I may count on you to the extent of 300, 
 or 200, or 100, or 125 roubles?" and not one of them 
 gave the money. I mention this, because when people 
 contribute money for something they sympathize with, 
 they are generally in a hurry to give the money. For 
 a box at Sarah Bernhardt's performance people pay out 
 the money at once, in order to secure the matter ; but here, 
 not one of all those who agreed to contribute, and who 
 expressed their sympathy, offered to pay the money at 
 once; they only acquiesced in the sum which I de- 
 termined for them. 
 
 In the last house in which I happened to be on that 
 evening, I accidentally met a large company. The hostess 
 of this house had for some years been busying herself with 
 philanthropy. At the entrance stood several carnages, 
 and in the antechamber sat a number of lackeys in costly 
 liveries. In the large drawing-room married and unmar- 
 ried ladies, wearing expensive garments, were seated at 
 twp tables with lamps, dressing small dolls, and near 
 them were also a few young men. The dolls which 
 were being fixed up by these ladies were to be raffled off 
 for the benefit of the poor. 
 
 The sight of this drawing-room and of the men who 
 were gathered in it struck me very disagreeably. Not to 
 mention the fact that the fortunes of the people gathered 
 there were equal to several millions ; that the mere inter- 
 est of the capital which was expended here on garments, 
 lace, bronzes, brooches, carriages, horses, liveries, lackeys, 
 would be a hundred times greater than what these ladies 
 were manufacturing here, — not to mention aU that, the 
 expenses incurred by the ladies and gentlemen in coming 
 out here, — their gloves, their linen, their travelling, the 
 
I 
 
 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN ? 21 
 
 candles, tea, sugar, and cake furnished by the hostess 
 amounted to a hundred times the sum they would reahze 
 from their work. I saw all this, and so I ought to have 
 known that there I should not find any sympathy for the 
 business which brought me there ; but I had come to 
 make my proposition, and, no matter how hard this was 
 for me, I told them what I wanted (I repeated almost 
 word for word what I had written in my article). 
 
 One of the ladies present offered me money, saying that 
 she did not feel strong enough on account of her nerves to 
 visit the poor, but that she would give money ; how much 
 she would give, and when she would furnish it, she did 
 not say. Another lady and a young man offered their 
 services in making the round of the poor ; but I did not 
 avail myself of their offer. The chief person to whom I 
 addressed myself told me that it would not be possible to 
 do much, because the means were insignificant. The means 
 were not sufficient because all the rich people of Moscow 
 were already booked for other charities, and everything 
 that possibly could be obtained from them had been 
 extorted from them ; that all these philanthropists had 
 already received their ranks, medals, and other honours ; 
 that in order to secure a financial success it would be 
 necessary to obtain the grant of new honours from the 
 authorities, and that this was the one effective means, but 
 that it was hard to obtain it. 
 
 When I returned home that night, I lay down to sleep, 
 not only with the presentiment that nothing would come 
 of my idea, but also with shame and with the conscious- 
 ness that I had done something very contemptible and 
 disgraceful on that whole day. But I did not throw up 
 the matter. In the first place, the matter had been set 
 a-going, and a false shame kept me from giving it up ; in 
 the second place, not only the success of this matter, but 
 my every occupation with it, made it possible for me to 
 continue life in those conditions in which I was living. 
 
22 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 while its failure subjected me to the necessity of renounc- 
 ing my life and of seeking new paths of hfe. Of this I 
 was unconsciously afraid. I did not believe my inner 
 voice, and continued what I had begun. 
 
 I sent my article ^ to the printer, and read it in proof 
 to the City Council. As I read it, I blushed to tears and 
 faltered in speech, for I felt so uncomfortable. Appar- 
 ently all my hearers felt as uncomfortable as I. In reply 
 to my question, which I put at the end of my reading, 
 whether the managers of the census accepted my propo- 
 sition, which was that they should stay in their places in 
 order that they might be mediators between society and 
 the needy, there ensued an awkward silence. Then two 
 orators delivered speeches. These seemed to mend the 
 awkwardness of my proposition : they expressed sympa- 
 thy for me, but pointed out the inapplicability of my 
 idea, which was approved by all of them. They felt a 
 relief. 
 
 But when I later none the less -tried to gain my point, 
 and asked the managers privately whether they consented 
 at the census to investigate the needs of the poor, and to 
 remain in their posts for the purpose of serving as media- 
 tors between the poor and the rich, they again felt ill at 
 ease. They seemed to be saying to me with their glances : 
 " Here we haye^ out of respect for you, whitewashed your 
 stupid V break, and you annoy us once more with it." Such 
 was the expression of their faces, but in words they told 
 me that they agreed with me ; two of them, each one 
 separately, as though having plotted together, told me in 
 the same words : " We consider ourselves morally obliged 
 to do so." 
 
 The same impression was produced by my communica- 
 tion on the student census-takers, when I told them that 
 in taking the census we should not only pursue the aims 
 of the census itself, but also those of philanthropy. I 
 1 " On the Census in Moscow," given in this present volume. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 23 
 
 noticed that, while I was speaking to them of it, they 
 looked with embarrassment into my eyes, just as one is 
 embarrassed to look into the eyes of a good man who 
 is talking some nonsense. The same effect was produced 
 on the editor of the newspaper, by my article, when I 
 handed it to him, and on my son, on my wife, and on 
 people of every description. All for some reason felt 
 ill at ease, but all of them considered it necessary to 
 approve of the idea itself, and immediately after such an 
 approval began to express their doubts as to the success, 
 and for some reason (all of them without exception) to 
 condemn the evident indifference and coldness of .our 
 society and of all men, except of themselves. 
 
 In the depth of my heart I continued to feel that I was 
 not doing the right thing, and that nothing would come 
 of it; but the article was printed, and I began to take 
 part in the census : I had set the matter a-going, and it 
 drew me along. 
 
IV. 
 
 At my request they assigned to me a district of the 
 Khamovnicheski Ward, near Smolensk Market, along Pro- 
 tochny Lane, between Beregovoy Passage and Nikolski 
 Lane. In this district are the houses which are collect- 
 ively called Ezhanov House, or Rzh^nov Fort. These 
 houses at one time belonged to Merchant Ezhanov, but 
 now belong to the Zimins. I had long ago heard of this 
 place as the purlieus of the most terrible misery and 
 debauch, and so had asked the managers of the census to 
 assign me to this district. My wish was fulfilled. 
 
 After receiving the instructions from the City Council, 
 and a few days before the taking of the census, I started 
 on a round of my district. From the plan which was 
 given to me I immediately found Rzhdnov Fort. 
 
 I entered by Nikolski Lane. Nikolski Lane ends on 
 the left with a gloomy house, which has no gate fac- 
 ing this side; I guessed from the aspect of the house 
 that this was Ezhdnov Fort. 
 
 As I descended Nikolski Street, I came abreast of some 
 boys from ten to fourteen years of age, dressed in jabkets 
 and paltry overcoats, who were sliding down-hill or 
 skating on one skate along the frozen incline of the side- 
 walk in front of this house. The boys were all in rags, 
 and, like all city boys, bold and daring. I stopped to 
 take a look at them. A tattered old woman, with sallow, 
 flabby cheeks, came around the corner. She was walking 
 toward the city, in the direction of Smolensk Market, and 
 wheezing terribly, like an asthmatic horse, at every step 
 she was taking. When she came abreast with me, she 
 
 24 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 25 
 
 stopped to draw a snarling breath. In any other place 
 this woman would have asked me for some money, but 
 here she only struck up a conversation with me. 
 
 " You see," she said, pointing to the skating boys, " they 
 are wasting time ! They will be just such Ezhanovians 
 as their fathers." 
 
 One of the boys in an overcoat and vizorless cap heard 
 her words and stopped. 
 
 " Don't scold ! " he shouted to the old woman. " You 
 are yourself a Ezhanov viper ! " 
 
 I asked the boy : " Do you live here ? " 
 
 " Yes, and she does, too. She has stolen a boot-leg ! " 
 shouted the boy, and, raising his foot, he skated past 
 me. 
 
 The old woman discharged a lot of curses, which were 
 interrupted by her cough. Just then a ragged old man 
 with snow-white hair came down the middle of the street, 
 swaying his arms (in one of them he carried a bundle 
 with a white loaf and some cracknels). The old man 
 looked as though he had just braced himself with a dram. 
 Evidently he had heard the old woman's curses, and he 
 took her part. 
 
 " Just let me catch you, little devils ! " he shouted to 
 the boys, pretending to make for them. After passing me 
 he stepped on the sidewalk. On the Arbdt this old man 
 startles people by his decrepitude, old age, and wretched- 
 ness ; here he was a merry labourer returning from his 
 daily labour. 
 
 I followed the old man. He turned a corner to the 
 left, into Protochny Lane, and, after passing the whole 
 house and the gate, disappeared in the door of a restau- 
 rant. 
 
 Two gates and several doors front on Protdchny Lane : 
 they are those of a restaurant, a tavern, and a few gro- 
 ceries and other shops. This, indeed, is Ezhanov Fort. 
 Everything is here gray, diriy, and stinking, — the build- 
 
26 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 ings, the shops, the yards, the people. The majority of the 
 people whom I met here were tattered and half-dressed. 
 Some were passing by, while others ran from door to door. 
 Two of them were haggling about a piece of some rag. I 
 walked all around the building from the side of Protdchny 
 Lane and Beregovdy Passage, and, upon returning, stopped 
 at the gate of one of the houses. I wanted to go in and 
 see what they were doing there, inside, but I felt ill at 
 ease at what I should say if they asked me what I 
 wanted. Still, after some hesitation, I entered. 
 
 The moment I entered the courtyard I was struck by a 
 disgusting stench. The yard was terribly dirty. I 
 turned around a comer, and that very moment heard 
 to the left of me, in an upper wooden gallery, the tramp 
 of men running, at first along the deals of the gallery, 
 and then over the steps of the staircase. First there 
 came running out a lean woman with sleeves rolled up, in 
 a faded pink dress and with shoes on her bare feet. 
 After her came a shaggy-haired man in a red shirt and 
 pantaloons which were as wide as a petticoat, and in 
 galoshes. 
 
 At the foot of the stairs the man caught the woman. 
 
 " You will not get away from me," he said, laughing. 
 
 "You cross-eyed devil," began the woman, apparently 
 flattered by this persecution ; but, upon seeing me, she 
 shouted : " Whom do you want ? " 
 
 As I did not want anybody, I felt embarrassed and 
 went away. There was nothing remarkable about it, but 
 after what I had seen outside the yard, — the cursing 
 woman, the merry old man, and the skating boys, — this 
 incident suddenly showed me my undertaking from an 
 entirely new side. I had undertaken to benefit these 
 people with the aid of the Moscow rich. Now I undeF- 
 stood for the first time that all these unfortunates, whom 
 I wanted to benefit, had not only a time when, suffering 
 from hunger and cold, they waited to be admitted to the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 27 
 
 house, but also a time which they used to some purpose ; 
 that they had twenty-four hours each day and a whole life, 
 which I had never thought before. I now understood for 
 the first time that all these people had not only the 
 desire to protect themselves against the cold and to get, 
 something to eat, but also must Hve somehow those 
 twenty-four hours of each day, which they had to live 
 like any other being. I understood that these men 
 had also to be angry, and feel weary, and brace them- 
 selves, and have their brown studies, and make merry. 
 However strange this may sound, I now clearly under- 
 stood for the first time that what I had undertaken could 
 not consist merely ia feeding and clothing a thousand 
 people, — like feeding and putting under a roof a thou- 
 sand sheep, — but that it ought to consist in doing people 
 good. When I understood that each of these thousand 
 people was just such a man as I was, with just such 
 a past, just such passions, temptations, and delusions, just 
 such thoughts, just such questions, my undertaking sud- 
 denly appeared so dijfficult to me that I felt my impo- 
 tence. But the thing was begun, and I continued it. 
 
 # 
 
V. 
 
 On the first appointed day the student census-takers 
 started in the morning, but I, the benefactor, did not get 
 to them before noon. I could not have come earher, 
 because I arose at ten, then drank coffee and smoked, 
 waiting for my digestion to take place. I arrived at noon 
 at the gate of Kzh^nov House. 
 
 A policeman showed me a restaurant on Beregovoy 
 Passage, where the census-takers asked those to come who 
 wanted to see them. I entered the restaurant. It was 
 a dark, stinking, dirty place. In front was the counter, 
 on the left, a small room with tables that were covered 
 with dirty napkins ; on the right, a large room with 
 columns, and similar tables at the windows, along the 
 walls. At some of the tables, drinking tea, sat tattered 
 and decently dressed men, such as workmen and small 
 traders, and a few women. The restaurant was very dirty, 
 but apparently it did a good business. The facial expres- 
 sion of the clerk behind the counter was businesslike, and 
 the waiters were quick and attentive: I had barely 
 entered, when a waiter got ready to take off my overcoat 
 and receive my order. Obviously they were here in the 
 habit of doing prompt and exact work. 
 
 I asked about the census-takers. 
 
 "Vdnya!" shouted a small man, dressed in German 
 fashion, who was putting something into a cupboard 
 behind the counter ; he was the proprietor of the restau- 
 rant, a Kaluga peasant, Ivdn Feddtych, who rented half 
 the apartments of the Zlmin houses, in order to sublet 
 them to other people. A waiter, a boy of about eighteen 
 
 28 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 29* 
 
 years of age, lean, hook-nosed, sallow-faced, ran up to 
 him. " Take the gentleman to the census-takers : they 
 have gone to the main wing, above the well." 
 
 The lad threw down the napkin, put on an overcoat 
 over his white shirt and white trousers, and a cap with 
 a large vizor, and, rapidly moving his white legs, led me 
 through a back door which shut with a block. In the 
 nasty, stinking kitchen in the vestibule we met an old 
 woman who was cautiously carrying terribly malodorous 
 guts that were wrapped in a rag. From the vestibule we 
 went down into an inclined yard, which was all filled up 
 with frame buildings on lower stone stories. The stench 
 in this yard was very great. The centre of this stench 
 was a privy, near .which there was always a crowd, no 
 matter how often I passed there. The privy itself was 
 not a place of defecations, but it served as an indication 
 of the place near which it was customary to defecate. It 
 was impossible not to notice this place, whenever one 
 crossed the yard; it was oppressive to enter into the 
 pungent atmosphere of the stench which rose from it. 
 
 The lad cautiously guarded his white pantaloons, care- 
 fully led me past this spot over the frozen impurities, and 
 walked in the direction of one of the buildings. The 
 men who were crossing the yard and the galleries stopped 
 to take a look at me. Apparently a neatly dressed man 
 was a rarity in these places. 
 
 The lad asked a woman whether she had not seen 
 where the census-takers were, and three men at once 
 answered this question ; some said that they were above 
 the well ; others said that they had gone from there, and 
 were now with Nikita Ivanovich. An old man in a shirt, 
 who was fixing himself near the privy, said that they 
 were in Number 30. The lad decided that this informa- 
 tion was the most reliable, and so led me to Number 30, 
 under the cover of a basement story, into darkness and into 
 a stench which was different from the one in the yard. We 
 
30 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 descended lower and walked along an earth floor of a 
 dark corridor. As we were walking along the corridor, 
 a door was opened with a start, and a drunken old man 
 in a shirt, who was evidently not a peasant, rushed out 
 from the room. A washerwoman, with sleeves rolled up, 
 and soapy hands, was driving and pushing this man with 
 a piercing shriek. Vdnya, my guide, pushed the drunken 
 man aside and rebuked him. 
 
 " It will not do to make such a racket," he said, " and 
 you ,are an officer, too." 
 
 Then we arrived at the door of Number 30. Vanya 
 pulled the door: it smacked, having been stuck, and 
 opened, and we were surrounded by vapours of soap-suds 
 and by the pungent odour of bad victuals and of tobacco, 
 and entered into complete darkness. The windows were 
 on the opposite side, while nearer to us were board 
 corridors on the right and on the left, and little doors at 
 all kinds of angles, leading into rooms that were unevenly 
 partitioned off by shingles that were painted white with 
 a watery paint. In a dark room on the left could be 
 seen a woman washing something in a trough. Through 
 a door on the right an old woman could be seen. 
 Through another open door I saw a bearded, red-faced 
 peasant in bast shoes, who was sitting on a bed bench ; 
 he was holding his hands on his knees, swaying his bast 
 shoe covered feet, and looking gloomily at them. 
 
 At the end of the corridor there was a little door which 
 led into the room where the census-takers were. This 
 was the room of the landlady of the whole of Number 30. 
 She rented the whole number from Ivdn Fedotych, and 
 let it out to permanent renters and to night lodgers. In 
 this tiny room a student census-taker, with his cards, was 
 sitting under a foil image and, like an investigating mag- 
 istrate, examining a man in a shirt and vest. This was 
 the landlady's friend, who was answering the questions for 
 her. Here was also the landlady — an old woman — 
 
WHAT SHALL VYE DO THEN? 31 
 
 and two curious lodgers. When I arrived, th6 room was 
 crowded to its fullest capacity. I pushed my way to the 
 table. The student and I exchanged greetings, and he 
 continued his questions. I looked around and questioned 
 the inmates of this apartment for my own purposes. 
 
 It turned out that in this apartment I did not find one 
 on whom my benefaction could be bestowed. In spite of 
 the poverty, smallness, and dirt of these quarters, which 
 startled me when I compared them with the mansion in 
 which I lived, the landlady lived in comparative ease, 
 as compared with the poor inhabitants of the cities ; but 
 in comparison with the village poverty, with which I was 
 well acquainted, she lived even in luxury. She had a 
 feather bed, a quilted coverlet, a samovar, a fur coat, 
 a cupboard with dishes. The landlady's friend had the 
 same well-to-do appearance : he even had a watch with a 
 chain. The lodgers were poor, but there was not one who 
 demanded immediate aid. Those who wanted help were 
 the woman at the wash-trough, who had been abandoned 
 with her children by her husband, an old widow, who, 
 as she said, had no means of support, and that peasant in 
 the bast shoes, who told me that he had not had that day 
 anything to eat. But upon closer inquiry it appeared 
 that all these persons were not in particular want, and 
 that, in order that I might aid them, I should have to 
 become better acquainted with them. 
 
 When I proposed to the woman, whom her husband 
 had abandoned, to put the children in a children's home, 
 she became confused, fell to musing, and thanked me, 
 but apparently it was not what she wanted : she pre- 
 ferred a contribution in money. Her eldest girl helped 
 her to wash, and her middle girl took care of her boy. 
 The old woman wanted very much to go to a poor- 
 house, but, upon examining her comer, I saw that the 
 woman was not in straits. She had a little trunk with 
 some possessions, a teapot with a tin mouth, and Mont- 
 
32 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 pensier boxes with sugar and tea. She knitted stockings 
 and gloves, and received a monthly allowance from a 
 benefactress. But the peasant was evidently not so 
 much in need of something to eat as of something to 
 drink, and anything which might have been given to him 
 would have gone into the tavern. 
 
 Thus these quarters did not contain people with whom, 
 I thought, the house was filled, such as I could make 
 happy by giving them money. These poor, so it seemed 
 to me, were of a doubtful character. I made a note of 
 the old woman, of the woman with the children, and 
 of the peasant, and decided that it would be necessary to 
 look after them, but only after I should have busied 
 myself with those particularly unfortunate people whom I 
 expected to find in the house. I decided that the aid 
 would have to be furnished in a given order, — at first to 
 those who needed it most, and then to these people. But 
 in the next quarters, and in the next, it was the same : 
 the people were all such as had to be investigated before 
 any aid was offered them. There were no unfortunates to 
 whom money was to be given, and who, having been 
 unhappy, would become happy. Though I ought to be 
 ashamed to say so, I began to be disappointed, because 
 I did not find in these houses anything I had expected. I 
 had expected to find people of a particular kind, but when 
 I had made the round of all the quarters, I convinced my- 
 self that the inhabitants of these houses were not at all a 
 particular kind of men, but precisely such men as I saw 
 myself surrounded by. Even as among us, there were 
 among them people who were more or less good, more or 
 loss bad, more or less happy, -more or less unhappy. The 
 unfortunate ones were just as unfortunate as those among 
 us, whose misfortune was not in external conditions but 
 within themselves, — a misfortune which could not be 
 mended by a bill. 
 
VI. 
 
 The inmates of these houses form the lower urban 
 population, of whom there must be more than one hun- 
 dred thousand in Moscow. Here, in this house, there are 
 representatives of all kinds of this population ; here you 
 will find small masters and proprietors, bootmakers, brush- 
 makers, joiners, turners, shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, 
 drivers, self-supporting traders and huckstresses, washer- 
 women, second-hand dealers, usurers, day-labourers and 
 people without any definite occupations, and beggars, 
 and prostitutes. 
 
 Here are many of the same class of people which I 
 saw in front of Lyapinski House, but here they are scat- 
 tered among working people. Besides, those others I had 
 seen at their very worst time, when everything was spent 
 in food and drink, and they, freezing and starving and 
 driven out of the restaurants, were waiting, as for the 
 heavenly manna, for admission into the free lodging- 
 house, and from there to the longed-for jail, in order to 
 be sent" back to their domicile ; whereas here I saw them 
 amidst a majority of labouring people, and at a time when 
 in one way or another they had gained three or five kopeks 
 for a night's lodging, and at times roubles for food and 
 drink. 
 
 And, no matter how strange this may sound, I here 
 experienced nothing resembling the feeling which I had 
 experienced in Lyapinski House; on the contrary, dur- 
 ing my first round, both I and the students experienced 
 almost a pleasant sensation, — but why do I say " almost 
 pleasant " ? That is not true : the sensation evoked by 
 
 33 
 
34 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 the intercourse with these people, no matter how strange 
 this may seem, was simply exceedingly pleasant. 
 
 The first impression was that the majority of people 
 who' were living here were labourers and very good 
 people. 
 
 The greater part of the inmates we found at work, — 
 the washerwomen over their troughs, the joiners at their 
 tables, the shoemakers on their stools. The close quar- 
 ters were filled with people, and they were working ener- 
 getically and merrily. There was an odour of workmen's 
 perspiration, and of hides at the shoemaker's, and of shav- 
 ings at the joiner's, and frequently we heard songs, and 
 saw the bared muscular arms which went through the 
 habitual motions with rapidity and with agility. We 
 were everywhere met with mirth and with kindness: 
 nearly everywhere our intrusion into the habitual life of 
 these people failed to rouse those ambitions, that desire to 
 show their importance and to snub, which the appearance 
 of the census-takers produced in the majority of the quar- 
 ters of the well-to-do people ; on the contrary, to all our 
 questions these people answered as was proper, without 
 ascribing any special significance to them. Our questions 
 merely served for them as a cause for amusement and 
 jesting as to how one was to be written down, who was 
 to be put down for two, and what two would stand for 
 one, and so forth. 
 
 Many we found at dinner or at tea, and to our greeting, 
 " Bread and salt," or " Tea and sugar," they invariably 
 replied by, " Please to join us," and even moved aside to 
 make place for us. Instead of purlieus of a constantly 
 changing population, which we had expected to find here, 
 it turned out that in this house there were many apart- 
 ments where people had lived for a long time. A joiner 
 and his workmen, a shoemaker and his master workman 
 had lived for ten years in one place. At the shoemaker's 
 it was very dirty and crowded, but the people at work 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 35 
 
 were very cheerful. I tried to talk to one of the work- 
 men, as I wished to get from him an account of the 
 wretchedness of his condition and of his indebtedness to 
 the master, but the workman did not understand me and 
 spoke in the highest terms of his master and his life. 
 
 In one apartment there Hved an old man and his wife. 
 They were selling apples. Their room was warm, clean, 
 and full of every good thing. The floor was carpeted with 
 straw matting, which they got in the apple shop. There 
 were trunks, a safe, a samovar, and dishes. In the cor- 
 ner were a number of images, and in front of them two 
 lamps were burning. Covered fur coats were hanging on 
 the wall behind a sheet. The old woman had star-shaped 
 wrinkles : she was kind and talkative, and apparently 
 took dehght in her quiet, well-arranged life. 
 
 Ivan Fedotych, the proprietor of the restaurant and the 
 landlord of the apartments, came from the restaurant and 
 walked with us. He jested cheerfully with many renters, 
 calling them by their names and patronymics, and gave 
 us short sketches of them. They were all people like 
 the rest of us, — Martin Sem^noviches, Peter Petroviches, 
 Marya Ivanovnas, — people who did not consider them- 
 selves unfortunate, and who indeed were like the rest of 
 us. 
 
 We had prepared ourselves to see nothing but what 
 would be terrible; but, instead of anything terrible, we 
 saw nothing but what was good, what involuntarily evoked 
 our respect. And of these good people there was such a 
 multitude that the ragged, hopeless, idle people, who now 
 and then were met with among them, did not impair the 
 general impression. 
 
 The students were not «o startled by it as I was. 
 They were simply out doing something useful for science, 
 as they thought, and at the same time made their casual 
 observations ; but I was a benefactor, — I went out to 
 help the unfortunate, lost, corrupt people, whom I had 
 
36 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 expected to find in this house. Suddenly, instead of un- 
 fortunate, lost, and corrupt people, I saw a large number 
 of calm, satisfied, happy, kind, and very good working 
 people. 
 
 This impressed itself upon me very vividly, whenever 
 I met in these quarters that very crying want which I 
 was prepared to assist. 
 
 Whenever I met this want, I found that it was already 
 attended to, and that the aid which I wanted to ofi*er 
 to it had already been given. This aid had been given 
 before me, and by whom ? By those same unfortunate, 
 corrupt creatures, whom I was prepared to help, and it 
 was given in a way which I could not emulate. 
 
 In a basement lay a lonely old man who was sick with 
 the typhus. The old man did not have a friend. A 
 widow with a little girl, a stranger to him, but a neigh- 
 bour of his, took care of him, brought tea to him, and 
 bought medicine for him with her own money. In an- 
 other apartment a woman was lying sick with puerperal 
 fever. A woman who was making a living by debauch 
 rocked the baby, made a sucking-rag for it, and for two 
 days did not go out to her calling. A girl who was left an 
 orphan was taken into the family of a tailor, who him- 
 self had three children. Thus the only unfortunates that 
 were left were some idle people, officials, scribes, lackeys 
 out of a job, beggars, drunkards, prostitutes, children, who 
 could not be at once helped with money, but who had 
 to be carefully examined, taken care of, and given work. 
 I was in search of pure unfortunates, such as were unfor- 
 tunate through poverty, and as could be helped by giving 
 them of our abundance ; but it seemed to me that I failed 
 to find such, and that all the unfortunates I came across 
 were such that much time and care would have to be 
 expended on them. 
 
VII. 
 
 The unfortunates whom I marked down naturally clas- 
 sified themselves in my imagination according to three 
 categories, namely, as people who had lost their former 
 profitable situation and were waiting to return to it (such 
 people belonged both to the higher and to the lower con- 
 ditions of life) ; then prostitutes, of whom there were very 
 many in these houses ; and the third category, — children. 
 The largest number marked down by me belonged to the 
 first category, to those who had lost their profitable sit- 
 uations and were wishing to return to them. Of such 
 people, especially of those who belonged to the burgher 
 and the official worlds, there were very many in these 
 houses. In nearly all the quarters which we entered 
 with the landlord, Ivan Fedotych, we were told by him : 
 "Here you do not need to write the census card your- 
 selves ; here you will find a man who can do all that, if 
 only he is not on a spree." 
 
 Ivan Fedotych would call such a man by his first name 
 and patronymic, and it always turned out to be one of 
 those men who had fallen from a higher condition of hfe. 
 To Ivan Fedotych's call an impoverished gentleman or 
 official would creep out from some dark corner, and he 
 would generally be drunk and always undressed. If he 
 was not drunk, he was always dehghted to take hold 
 of the matter which was placed before him, significantly 
 shook his head, frowned, put in his remarks with learned 
 terms, and with cautious tenderness held the clean, 
 printed red card in his trembling, dirty hands, and with 
 contempt eyed his fellow lodgers, as though triumphantly 
 
 37 
 
38 WHAT SUALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 asserting the superiority of his education before those 
 who had humiliated him so often. He was obviously 
 glad to commune with that world where they printed 
 cards on red paper, and where he had once been 
 himself. To my inquiries about his life, such a man 
 nearly always rephed readily and began with enthusiasm 
 to recite, like a prayer learned by rote, the history of those 
 calamities to which he had been subjected, and, above all, 
 of his former position, where he belonged according to his 
 education. 
 
 Such men were widely scattered through Ezhdnov 
 House. One of the apartments is soHdly occupied by 
 such men and women. When we came up to it, Ivdn 
 Fedotych said to us : " Here comes the apartment of the 
 gentry." The apartment was quite full: nearly all of 
 them, about forty, were at home. More thoroughly fallen, 
 unfortunate, neglected old persons, and pale, hopeless 
 young persons could not be found in the whole house. I 
 talked with some of them. It was nearly always the 
 same story, only in various degrees of evolution. Each of 
 them had been rich, or a father, a brother, uncle, had been 
 or still was rich, or his father, or he himself, had occupied 
 a fine position. Then a misfortune occurred, caused by 
 some envious person, or by his own goodness, or. %5^ some 
 special accident, and he lost everything, and now was 
 doomed to perish in these improper, hateful surroundings, 
 — covered with lice, dressed in rags, among drunkards 
 and harlots, feeding on liver and bread, and extending the 
 hand for alms. 
 
 All the thoughts, wishes, and recollections of these 
 people are directed only to the past. The present ap- 
 pears to them as something unnatural, abominable, and 
 unworthy of attention. Not one of them has a present. 
 They have only recollections of the past and expectations 
 in the future, which may be realized at any moment, and 
 for the realization of which very little is needed, but this 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 39 
 
 very little is wanting and is not to be had, and so life is 
 being uselessly ruined, one having suffered for a year, 
 another for five, and a third for thirty years. One needs 
 only to dress himself in decent clothes, in order to make 
 his appearance before a person who is favourably inclined 
 to him ; another needs only to put on decent clothes, pay 
 his bills, and reach Or^l ; a third needs only to redeem his 
 mortgaged property and obtain some small means for 
 the continuation of his case at law, which must end in his 
 favour, and then all will be well again. They all say that 
 they need only something external, in order that they 
 may get back to the condition which alone they consider 
 natural and happy for them. 
 
 If I had not been befogged by my pride of virtue, T 
 needed only to scan a little their young and their old, for 
 the most part weak, sensual, but good faces, in order to 
 understand that their misfortune was incorrigible by 
 external means ; that they could not be happy in any 
 situation, if their view of life remained the same ; that 
 they were not a special class of people, in unusually 
 unfortunate circumstances, but just such people as we 
 were surrounded by on all sides, and as we ourselves were. 
 I remember that my communion with this class of unfor- 
 tunates was particularly hard for me. Now I understand 
 why it was so : I saw myself in them as in a mirror. If 
 I had stopped to think of my life and of the lives of the 
 men of our circle, I should have seen that between us 
 there was no essential difference. 
 
 If those who are around me now live in grand quarters 
 and in their own houses on the Sivtsev Yrazhok and on 
 the Dmitrovka, and not in Rzhanov House, and still eat 
 and drink palatable things, and not liver and herring with 
 bread, that does not keep them from being just as un- 
 happy. They are just as dissatisfied with their situation, 
 regretting the past and wishing for something better, and 
 this better situation which they wish for is just such as 
 
40 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 the inmates of Rzhdnov House desire, that is, such as will 
 make it possible for them to work less and make more 
 extensive use of the labours of others. The difference is 
 only in the degree and the time. 
 
 If I had then stopped to think, I should have under- 
 stood it ; but I did not stop to think : I questioned these 
 people and noted them down, hoping to aid them later, 
 after I should have learned of their conditions and their 
 needs. I did not understand then that such a man could 
 be helped only by changing his world conception ; but, in 
 order to change the world conception of another person, 
 a man must first have his own better world conception 
 and live in accordance with it, whereas mine was just 
 such as theirs was, and I lived in accordance with the 
 world conception which had to be changed in order that 
 these people should stop being unhappy. 
 
 I did not see that these people were unhappy, not 
 because they, so to speak, lacked nutritive food, but 
 because their stomachs were ruined, and they no loilger 
 demanded nutritive food, but such as roused their 
 appetite; I did not see that, to aid them, I was not to 
 offer them food, but should cure their ruined stomachs. 
 Though I am anticipating here, I will say that I actually 
 did not help a single one of the men whose names I Had 
 taken down, although for some of them precisely that 
 was done which they had wanted, and which, it seemed, 
 ought to have put them on their feet. I specially re- 
 member three of these people. All three of them are, 
 after numerous upliftings and falls, in precisely the same 
 condition in which they were three years ago. 
 
VIII. 
 
 ^The second category of unfortunates whom I had hoped 
 to help later was that of the prostitutes ; of such women 
 there is a very large variety in Rzhdnov House, — from 
 young ones, who resemble women, to old ones, terrible to 
 look at, who have lost every human semblance. This 
 hope of helping the women, which I had not had in mind 
 before, arose under the following circumstance. 
 
 It was in the middle of our census-taking, and we had 
 by that time worked out a certain mechanical method of 
 procedure. 
 
 As we entered new quarters, we immediately asked for 
 the landlord of the rooms ; one of us sat down, clearing a 
 place where he could write, and a second walked from 
 corner to corner, questioning each person separately, and 
 transmitting the information to the recorder. 
 
 Upon entering one of the apartments of the basement 
 story, a student went to find the landlord, while I began 
 to question all those who were in these quarters. The 
 quarters were arranged as follows: In the middle of a 
 room twenty feet square there was a stove ; from the 
 stove radiated four partitions, forming four smaller com- 
 partments. In the first passage room there were four 
 cots and two persons, — an old man and a woman. After 
 this came a long compartment: here was the landlord, 
 a young, respectable-looking, extremely pale burgher, 
 dressed in a gray cloth coat without sleeves. On the 
 left of the first corner was the third compartment : there 
 was a man asleep, no doubt drunk, and a woman in a 
 pink blouse, which was open in front and gathered 
 
 41 
 
42 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN ? 
 
 behind ; the fourth compartment was beyond a partition : 
 it was entered from the landlord's room. 
 
 The student went to the landlord's room, and I stopped 
 in the passage room to question the old man and the 
 woman. The man was a master printer, but now had no 
 means of support. The woman was the wife of a cook. 
 I went to the third compartment and questioned the 
 woman in the blouse about the sleeping man. She said 
 that he was a guest. I asked the woman who she was. 
 She said she was a Moscow burgher woman. 
 
 " What is your occupation ? " 
 
 She laughed, and gave me no answer. 
 
 " How do you support yourself ? " I repeated, thinking 
 that she had not understood my first question. 
 
 " I sit in, the restaurant," she said. 
 
 I did not understand, and again asked : 
 
 " What do you live by ? " 
 
 She made no reply, and only laughed. In the fourth 
 compartment, where we had not yet been, there were also 
 heard laughing female voices. The landlord came out of 
 his compartment, and walked over to us. He had appar- 
 ently heard my questions and the woman's answer. He 
 cast a stern glance upon the woman, and turned to me : 
 "A prostitute," he said, obviously satisfied, because he 
 knew the word which is used in official language and 
 pronounced it correctly. Having said this, he with a 
 faint and respectful smile of satisfaction, which was meant 
 for me, turned to the woman. The moment he turned to 
 her, his whole face was changed. Speaking in that pecul- 
 iar, contemptuous, quick tone, with which one addresses 
 a dog, and without looking at her, he said : 
 
 " What use is there of talking bosh, * I sit in a restau- 
 rant ' ? You sit in a restaurant ! Say outright, — a 
 prostitute," he repeated the word. " She does not know 
 how to call herself." 
 
 His tone offended me. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 43 
 
 " It is not proper for us to put her to shame," I said. 
 " If all of us lived in godly fashion, there would be none 
 of them." 
 
 " Well, that is so," said the landlord, with an unnatural 
 smile. 
 
 " Then we ought not to rebuke them, but to pity them. 
 Is it their fault ? " 
 
 I do not remember how I expressed myself, but I 
 remember that I was offended by the contemptuous tone 
 of this youthful landlord of the quarters which were full 
 of women whom he called prostitutes, and I was sorry 
 for this woman, and so I expressed both sentiments. The 
 moment I had said this, the boards of the beds in the 
 compartment where the female voices were heard began 
 to creak, and above the partition, which did not reach as 
 high as the ceiling, there rose a curly, dishevelled female 
 head with small, swollen eyes and a shining red face, and 
 after her a second and a third head. They were evidently 
 standing on their beds, and aU three of them stretched 
 their necks and with bated breath and strained attention 
 looked silently at us. 
 
 There ensued an embarrassing silence. The student, 
 who had been smiling before, became serious ; the land- 
 lord became embarrassed, and lowered his eyes ; the 
 women did not dare to draw breath, and looked at me, 
 and waited. I was embarrassed more than the rest. I 
 had not expected to see a casual word produce such an 
 effect. It was as though Ezekiel's field of death, covered 
 with dead bones, had quivered by the touch of the spirit, 
 and the dead bones had come to hf». I unwittingly 
 uttered a word of love and of compassion, and this word 
 acted upon all persons as though they had all been waiting 
 for this word, in order to cease being corpses, and come to 
 life again. They kept looking at me and waiting for 
 what would come next. They were waiting for me to say 
 those words and do those acts which would make the 
 
44 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 bones come together, be covered with flesh, and come to 
 life again. But I felt that I did not possess those words 
 nor those acts with which I might continue what I had 
 begun ; I felt in the bottom of my heart that I had lied, 
 that I was precisely such as they were, and that I had 
 nothing else to say, and I began to record the names and 
 occupations of all the persons in these quarters. 
 
 This incident led me into a new delusion, — into the 
 thought that it was possible to help these unfortunates 
 also. In my self-conceit it then appeared to me that 
 that was easy. 1 said to myself : " We will note down 
 these women also and lat&r we " (I did not render myself 
 any account as to who these " we " were) " shall busy our- 
 selves with them." I imagined that we, those men who 
 for the period of several generations had brought these 
 women to such a state, would one beautiful day bethink 
 ourselves and mend all that at once. And yet, if I had 
 only recalled my conversation with that lewd woman who 
 was rocking the baby of the woman sick in childbirth, I 
 might have comprehended the whole madness of this 
 supposition. 
 
 When we saw this woman with the child, we thought 
 that it was her child. In reply to the question who she 
 was, she answered outright, " A girl." She did not say, 
 " A prostitute." It was only that burgher, the landlord, 
 who had used that terrible word. My supposition that 
 she had a baby gave me the idea of bringing her out of 
 her situation. I asked : 
 
 " Is this your child ? " 
 
 " No, it belongs to this woman." 
 
 " Why, then, do you rock it ? " 
 
 " She asked me to : she is dying." 
 
 Though my supposition proved incorrect, I continued to 
 speak to her in the same spirit. I asked her who she was, 
 and how she had come to her present condition. She 
 cheerfully and in a simple manner told ' me her story. 
 
>CALirq5§^ 
 
 "SHALL WE DO THEN? 45 
 
 She was the daughter of a factory hand, a Moscow 
 hurgher. She had been left an orphan, and her aunt took 
 her to her house. From her aunt's she started frequenting 
 the restaurants. Her aunt was dead now. When I asked 
 her whether she did not want to change her manner of 
 life, my question apparently did not even interest her. 
 Indeed, how could the proposition of something quite 
 impossible interest a person ? She smiled, and said : 
 
 " But who will take me with my yellow police card ? " 
 
 " Suppose I found you a place as a cook ? " I said. 
 
 This idea occurred to me, because she was a strong, 
 blonde woman, with a silly-looking round face. Cooks 
 are generally of this description. My words evidently 
 displeased her. 
 
 " A cook ! But I cannot bake bread," she said, laugh- 
 ing. She said that she could not be one, but I saw by 
 her face that she did not want to be a cook, because she 
 considered the position and calling of a cook to be 
 low. 
 
 This woman, who in the simplest manner possible, like 
 the widow of the Gospel, sacrificed everything she had for 
 the sake of the sick mother, like her other companions, 
 regarded the condition of a working man as low and worthy 
 of contempt. She was brought up to live without, work- 
 ing, and to hve a life which by those who surrounded her 
 was considered natural for her. In this did her mis- 
 fortune lie. Through this misfortune she had got into 
 her present state and was maintaining herself in it. That 
 had brought her to loaf in restaurants. Which of us, 
 man or woman, will correct her false conception of life ? 
 Where, in our midst, are those people who are convinced 
 that any life of labour is more respectable than a life of 
 idleness, — who are convinced of it, and live in accord- 
 ance with that conviction, and in accordance with that 
 conviction value and esteem TDeople ? If I had stopped to 
 think of it, I should have comprehended that neither I 
 
46 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 nor any one else of those whom I know could cure this 
 disease. 
 
 I should have comprehended that those startled and 
 meek heads that were thrust forward above the partition 
 were expressing nothing but amazement at the sympathy 
 which I had given utterance to, and by no means hope in 
 having their immorality mended. They do not see the 
 immorality of their lives. They see that they are despised 
 and cursed, but it is impossible for them to comprehend 
 why they are despised. Their lives have been passed 
 since childhood amidst just such women, who, they know 
 full well, have always existed and are necessary to society, 
 so necessary that there are special officers whose duty it 
 is to look after their regular existence. Besides, they 
 know that they exercise power over men and control 
 them, often more completely than do other women. They 
 see that their position in society, despite the fact that 
 everybody curses them, is recognized by women and by 
 men and by the authorities, and so they fail to under- 
 stand what they are to repent of or why they should 
 mend. 
 
 During one of the rounds a student told me that in one 
 of the rooms there was a woman who carried on a trade 
 with her thirteen-year-old daughter. As I wished to save 
 this girl, I went directly to that room. The mother and 
 the daughter were hving in great poverty. The mother, 
 a small, swarthy prostitute of about forty years of age, 
 was not merely homely, but disagreeably so. The daughter 
 was just as repulsive. To all my roundabout questions 
 as to their life, the mother answered me curtly, and with 
 suspicion and hostility, obviously feeling me to be an 
 enemy with evil intentions ; the daughter made no replies 
 and did not look at her mother, having evidently full 
 confidence in her mother. They did not evoke any sincere 
 pity in me, but rather disgust ; but I decided that it was 
 necessary, to save the daughter, to get the ladies interested 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 47 
 
 who sympathized with the miserable condition of these 
 women, and to send them thither. 
 
 However, if I had stopped to think of the mother's 
 long past, of how she had borne, reared, and brought up 
 her daughter in her condition, no doubt without the 
 slightest aid from people and with heavy sacrifices ; if I 
 had stopped to think of that view of life which had formed 
 itself in this woman, — I should have understood that in 
 the mother's act there was positively nothing bad or 
 immoral : she was doing for her daughter all she could, 
 that is, what she considered best for herself. It is possible 
 by force to take the daughter away from her mother ; but 
 it is impossible to convince the mother that she is doing 
 wrong in selling her daughter. If it comes to saving, it 
 is the mother that ought to be saved; above all, she 
 ought to be saved from that view of life, approved by all 
 men, which makes it possible for a woman to live out of 
 wedlock, that is, without bearing children and without 
 working, serving only for the gratification of sensuality. 
 
 If I had stopped to think of it, I should have compre- 
 hended that the majority of those ladies whom I wanted 
 to send there for the purpose of saving this girl not only 
 hved themselves without bringing forth children and 
 without work, serving only the gratification of sensuality, 
 but also brought up their daughters for the same life : one 
 mother takes her daughter to the restaurant, another takes 
 hers to court or to balls. But the world conception is 
 the same with either mother, namely, that a woman must 
 gratify a man's lust, and that for this she has to be fed, 
 and dressed, and taken care of. How, then, can our ladies 
 improve this woman and her daughter ? 
 
IX. 
 
 More extravagant still was my relation to the children. 
 In my capacity of benefactor I turned my attention to 
 the children also, wishing to save the innocent creatures 
 that were going to perdition in this den of debauch, and 
 took down their names, intending to busy myself with 
 them later. 
 
 Among the children I was particularly struck by twelve- 
 year-old Serezha. This bright, wide-awake boy, who had 
 been living at a shoemaker's, but was now left without a 
 home, because his master was in jail, I pitied with my 
 whole soul, and I wanted to do him some good. 
 
 I will now tell how my attempt at benefiting him 
 ended, because the story of this boy shows better than 
 anything my false position in my capacity as benefactor. 
 I took the boy to my house, and put him in the kitchen, 
 — it was certainly impossible to take a lousy boy out of 
 the den of debauch into my children's rooms ! And I 
 considered myself particularly good and kind, because he 
 did not embarrass me, but the servants in the kitchen, 
 and because it was not I who fed him, but our cook, and 
 because I gave him some old clothes to wear. 
 
 The boy stayed about a week. During this time I once 
 or twice, in passing him, said a few words to him, and 
 during my constitutioDal called on a shoemaker I knew, 
 offering him the boy as an apprentice. A peasant, who 
 happened to call at my house, invited him to join his 
 family in the village : the boy refused, and within a week 
 disappeared. I went to Rzh^nov House to inquire about 
 him. He had returned there, but when I called he was 
 not at home. This was the second day he had been going 
 
 48 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 49 
 
 to Pry^snenski Ponds, where he hired out at thirty kopeks 
 a day to act as a costumed wild man leading an elephant 
 in a procession. They were giving some kind of a show 
 there. I called a second time, but he was so ungrateful 
 that he evidently avoided me. 
 
 If I had then stopped to think of the life of this boy 
 and of my own, I should have comprehended that the 
 boy was spoiled by this, that he had discovered the possi- 
 bility of a merry life without labour, that he had lost the 
 habit of work. And I, to benefit and improve him, took 
 him to my house, where he saw what ? My children, — 
 those who were older than he, and younger, and of his 
 age, — who not only had never worked for themselves, 
 but did everything in their power to give work to others, 
 who soiled and ruined everything about them, and gorged 
 themselves on fat, savoury, and sweet food, and broke 
 dishes, and spilled and threw to the dogs such food as to 
 this boy appeared as dainties. If I took him out of the 
 den and brought him to a good place, he could not help but 
 acquire those views which exist in respect to life in that 
 good place ; and from these views he saw that in a good 
 place it was necessary to live in such a way as to do no 
 work, and to eat and drink sweet things, and to live merrily. 
 
 It is true, he did not know that my children were 
 working very hard to study the declensions out of the 
 Latin and the Greek grammars, and he would not have been 
 able to comprehend the aims of these labours. But it is im- 
 possible to overlook the fact that, if he had comprehended 
 this, the effect of my children's example would have been 
 more powerful still. He would have comprehended that 
 my children were being educated in such a way that they 
 might have nothing to do at present and should in the 
 future, by making use of their diploma, be able to work 
 as little as possible and enjoy the benefits of hfe as much 
 as possible. He understood this, and so did not go with 
 the peasant to look after his cattle and eat potatoes and 
 
50 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 drink kvas with him, but, instead, went to the Zoological 
 Garden, to lead an elephant for thirty kopeks, while clad 
 as a wild man. 
 
 I might have comprehended how foohsh it was of me, 
 who was educating my children in complete idleness and 
 luxury, to correct other people and their children, who 
 were perishiug from idleness in Ezh^nov House, which I 
 have called a den, but in which, however, three-fourths of 
 the people worked for themselves and for others. But I 
 did not understand anything about it. 
 
 There were very many children in Ezhanov House, 
 who were in a most miserable state : there were children 
 of prostitutes, and orphans, and children carried by beg- 
 gars on the streets. They were all very wretched ; but 
 my experience with Ser^zha showed me that, Jiving the 
 life I did, I was not able to help them. While Ser^zha 
 had been living at our house, I noticed in myself a desire 
 to conceal from him our life, especially the life of our 
 children. I felt that all my endeavours to lead him to a 
 good life of labour were destroyed by the examples of our 
 life and of that of our children. It is easy enough to 
 take a child away from a prostitute, or from beggars. It 
 is very easy, having money, to wash and clean him up, 
 and dress him in clean clothes, feed him, and even teach 
 him all kinds of sciences ; but it is very difficult, and even 
 impossible, for us, who do not earn our bread, but do the 
 very opposite, to teach him to earn his own bread, because 
 with our examples and with the material improvements of 
 his life, which do not cost us anything, we teach him the 
 very opposite. You can take a puppy and feed him, and 
 teach him to carry somethiug, and enjoy the sight of him ; 
 but it is not enough to rear and bring up a man, and 4 
 teach him Greek : he has to be taught to live, that is, to 
 take less from others, and give more ; and we are unable 
 to teach him to do the opposite, whether we take him to 
 our house, or send him to a special homa 
 
I NO longer experienced that sentiment of compassion 
 for people and of disgust with myself which I had expe- 
 rienced in Lyapinski House : I was all absorbed in the 
 desire to fulfil the work which I had undertaken, — to do 
 good to the people whom I should meet here. Strange to 
 say, one would think that doing good, giving money 
 to others, is a very good thing, and ought to dispose one 
 to the love of men, but the very opposite took place : it 
 provoked my ill-will and condemnation of people. In the 
 eveniQg of the first day's round there happened a scene 
 exactly like the one in Lyapinski House ; ,but this scene 
 did not produce on me the same impression as in Lya- 
 pinski House, but evoked an entirely different feeling. 
 It began with this, that in one of the quarters I found 
 an unfortunate who demanded immediate aid: it was a 
 hungry woman, who had not eaten for two days. 
 
 It was like this : in one very large, almost empty lodg- 
 ing apartment I asked an old woman whether there were 
 there any very poor people, such as did not have anything 
 to eat. The old woman thought for awhile and men- 
 tioned two persons ; then she seemed to recall something. 
 
 "Oh, yes, there is one lying here," she said, peering 
 into one of the occupied bunks. " This woman, I think, 
 has not had anything to eat." 
 
 " Is it possible ? Who is she ? " 
 
 " She was a lewd woman, but now nobody wants her, 
 so she has no money to buy anything with. The land- 
 lady has been pitying her, but she wants to drive her out 
 now. Agafya, oh, Agafya ! " shouted the old woman. 
 
 51 
 
62 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 We walked up to the bunk, on which something raised 
 itself. It was a haK-gray, dishevelled woman, as lean as 
 a skeleton, in nothing but a dirty, torn shirt, with a pecul- 
 iarly beaming and arrested glance. She looked with an 
 arrested glance past us, with her lean hand caught her 
 sack in order to cover her bony breast, which could be 
 seen back of her dirty and torn shirt, and almost barked 
 out, " What is it ? What is it ? " 
 
 I asked her how she was getting along. For a long 
 time she could not understand me ; finally she said : 
 
 " I do not know myself, — they are driving me out." 
 
 I asked her, — I blush to write it down, — I asked her 
 whether it was true that she had not eaten. She answered 
 in the same feverish and rapid tone, without looking at 
 me : 
 
 " I have not had anything to eat yesterday, or to-day." 
 
 The sight of this woman touched me, but not as I had 
 been touched in Lyapinski House : there my pity for the 
 people made me feel ashamed of myself, while here I was 
 glad to have at last found what I had been looking for, — 
 a hungry person. 
 
 I gave her a rouble, and I remember that I was very 
 glad that others saw it. When the old woman noticed it, 
 she, too, asked me for some money. It gave me such 
 pleasure to offer money that I gave the old woman some, 
 without considering whether it was right to give her any, 
 or not. The old woman saw me out at the door, and the 
 people who were standing in the corridor heard her thank- 
 ing me. Apparently the questions which I had put in 
 respect to poverty had roused some expectations, and 
 several persons followed us. In the corridor they began 
 to ask me for some money. There were among the sup- 
 plicants some who were evidently confirmed drunkards, 
 who roused a disagreeable feeling in me ; but, having 
 given some to the old woman, I had no right to refuse 
 these either, and I began to distribute my money. While 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN ? 53 
 
 I was giving, others came up, and in every quarter there 
 was excitement. People appeared on the staircases and 
 in the galleries, and they followed me. 
 
 As I came out into the yard, a boy, pushiag his way 
 through the crowd, came flying down the staircase. He 
 did not see me, and he shouted, hurriedly, " He gave 
 Agafya a rouble." Having run down-stairs, the boy 
 joined the crowd that was following me. I went out into 
 the street; all kinds of people followed me, begging for 
 money. I distributed all the change I had, and went iQto 
 an open shop to ask the dealer to change a ten-rouble 
 bill. Here the same happened as in Lyapinski House, 
 namely, there was a terrible crush. Old women, people 
 of the gentry, peasants, children, crowded at the shop, 
 extending their hands ; I gave them money, askiag a few 
 about their lives, and making note of them in my memo- 
 randum-book. The dealer turned in the fur corners of 
 the collar of his fur coat and sat like an idol, now and 
 then casting a glance at the crowd and again directing his 
 eyes past me. Apparently he felt, like the rest, that .it 
 was foohsh, but he could not say so. 
 
 In Lyapinski House I had been horrified by the wretch- 
 edness and the humiliation of the people, and I felt 
 myself guilty : I felt a desire and a possibihty of being 
 better. But now, a similar scene produced an entirely 
 different effect upon me : in the first place, I experienced 
 a malevolent feeling toward many of those who were 
 besieging me, and, in the second, unrest at what the shop- 
 keepers and janitors were thinking of me. 
 
 When I returned home on that day, I did not feel at my 
 ease. I felt that what I had done was foolish and immoral ; 
 but, as always happens in consequence of an inner confu- 
 sion, I talked a great deal about my undertaking, as 
 though I did not in the least doubt its success. 
 
 On the following day I went by myself to those persons 
 noted down by me, who seemed to me more miserable 
 
54 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN ? 
 
 than the rest, and whom, I thought, it was easier to help. 
 As I said, I did not help even one of those persons. It 
 turned out that it was much harder to help them than I 
 had thought. Either because I did not know how, or 
 because it was impossible to do otherwise, I only irritated 
 the people, without helping them. Before the end of the 
 census-taking I visited Ezhdnov House several times, and 
 each time the same thing happened : I was surrounded 
 by a crowd of begging people, in the mass of whom I was 
 completely lost. I felt the impossibihty of doing any- 
 thing, because there were too many of them, and so I felt 
 an ill-will toward them, because there were so many of 
 them ; besides, each of them individually did not gain my 
 favour. 
 
 I felt that each of them was telling me an untruth or 
 not the whole truth, and saw in me only a purse from 
 which one could draw money. Very frequently it seemed 
 to me that the very money which one of them extorted 
 from me would not improve his situation, but would make 
 it worse. The more frequently I went to these houses, 
 the more I had intercourse with those people, the more 
 manifest did it become to me that it was impossible to do 
 anything ; but I did not recede from my set purpose till 
 the last nightly round of the census. 
 
 I feel particularly ashamed to recall this last day's 
 round. Before that I used to go alone, while now we 
 went twenty of us together. At seven o'clock there 
 gathered at my house all those who wanted to go with 
 me on this last night's round. They were mostly stran- 
 gers, — students, an officer, and two of my society acquaint- 
 ances, who, saying the customary ** C'est tres intSressant ! " 
 begged me to receive them among the number of census- 
 takers. 
 
 My society acquaintances dressed themselves in pe- 
 culiar hunting- jackets and high travelling-boots, — a cos- 
 tume which they put on when they went out hunting, 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 55 
 
 and which, in their opinion, was proper for a visit to the 
 lodging-houses. They took with them peculiar hooks and 
 outlandish pencils. They were in that peculiar state of 
 excitement in which people are who are getting ready for 
 the chase, for a duel, or for the war. From them could 
 most clearly be seen the insipidity and falseness of our 
 situation, but the rest of us were in the same false con- 
 dition. 
 
 Before our start we had a consultation, something like 
 a military council, as to how we should begin, how dis- 
 tribute ourselves, etc. The consultation was precisely 
 like what takes place in councils, assembhes, and com- 
 mittees, that is, everybody spoke, not because they had 
 anything to say, but because they invented something to 
 say, in order not to fall behind the rest. In the course 
 of these discussions nobody mentioned anything about 
 philanthropy, of which I had spoken so frequently. 
 Though I was ashamed to do so, I felt that it was neces- 
 sary to make mention of the philanthropic work, that 
 is, of the taking note, during our round, of all those who 
 were in wretched circumstances. I always felt ill at ease 
 whenever I spoke of this, but here, amidst our excited 
 preparation for the expedition, I had the greatest difficulty 
 in speaking about it. They listened to me, as I thought, 
 with melancholy, and all agreed with me verbally ; but it 
 was evident that all knew that it was foolish, and that 
 nothing would come of it, and they all began at once to 
 speak of something else. This lasted till the time when 
 we had to go, and we started. 
 
 We arrived at the dark restaurant, where we roused 
 the waiters and began to unpack our note-books. When 
 we were told that the people had heard of our visit and 
 were leaving the quarters, we asked the landlord to shut the 
 gates, and we went ourselves into the yard to talk to 
 the people who were trying to get away and to assure 
 them that no one would ask for their police cards. I 
 
56 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 remember the strange and oppressive feeling produced on 
 me by those excited lodgers : haK-undressed and ragged, 
 they appeared to me tall in the lamplight of the dark 
 yard , frightened and terrible in their fright, they stood 
 in a crowd about the malodorous privy, listening to our 
 assurances, but not believing them ; they were evidently 
 prepared for anything, like baited beasts, if only they 
 could get away from us. 
 
 Gentlemen of every description — as policemen and as 
 gendarmes, and as examining magistrates, and as judges 
 — had been harassing them all their lives, in the cities 
 and in the villages, on the roads and in the streets, in the 
 restaurants and in the doss-houses, — and now these gen- 
 tlemen suddenly came and shut the gates on them, merely 
 to count them ; that was as hard for them to believe as 
 it would be for hares to believe that the dogs came to 
 count them, and not to hunt them. But the gates were 
 locked and the excited lodgers went to their quarters, and 
 we, dividing into groups, started on our round. 
 
 I had the two society gentlemen and two students with 
 me. In front of us, in the darkness, walked V^nya, in an 
 overcoat and his white trousers, and with a lantern in his 
 hand, and we followed him. We went to the quarters 
 with which I was acquainted. The rooms were familiar 
 to me and so were some of the people, but the majority 
 of the people were new to me, and the spectacle was new 
 and terrible, much more terrible than what I had seen 
 near Lyapinski House. All the quarters were full, all the! 
 cots were occupied, generally by two people. The specta-l 
 cle was terrible on account of the crowded condition and 
 of the intermingling of men and women. All women who 
 were not beastly drunk were sleeping with men. Many 
 women with children on narrow cots were sleeping with 
 strange men. Terrible was the spectacle of the wretched- 
 ness, dirt, raggedness, and fright of these people ; and, 
 above all, terrible on account of the enormous number of 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 57 
 
 people who were in this condition. There was one apart- 
 ment, and another, and a third, and a tenth, and a twen- 
 tieth, and there was no end to them. Everywhere the 
 same stench, the same stifling atmosphere, the same 
 crowding, the same mingling of the sexes, the same deliri- 
 ously drunken men and women, and the same fright, hu- 
 mility, and guilt on all the faces, — and I again felt ill at 
 ease and pained, as in Lyapinski House, and I understood 
 that what I had undertaken was nasty, stupid, and, there- 
 fore, impossible. I stopped taking down notes and ques- 
 tioning people, for I knew that nothing would come^of it. 
 I was dreadfully oppressed. In Lyapinski House I had 
 been like a man who suddenly sees a sore on another man's 
 body. He is sorry for the man, sorry because he did not 
 pity him before, and he still may hope to be able to help 
 the ailing man. But now I was like a physician who 
 comes with his medicaments to the patient, lays open his 
 sore, probes it, and must confess to himself that he has 
 done all that in vain, that his medicaments are no good. 
 
XI. 
 
 This visit inflicted the last blow to my self-deception. 
 It became patent to me that my undertaking was not 
 only stupid, but also abominable. But, although 1 knew 
 this, it seemed to me that 1 could not all at once throw 
 up the whole matter : it seemed to me that I had to con- 
 tinue this occupation, in the first place, because with my 
 article, my visits, and my promises I had roused the ex- 
 pectations of the poor, in the second place, because with 
 the same article and with my conversations I had roused 
 the sympathy of the benefactors, many of whom had 
 promised to me their cooperation, both by personal serv- 
 ice and by money contributions. I waited for both sides 
 to turn to me with their requests, which I should have to 
 answer the best way I knew how. 
 
 As to the applications of the needy, this is what took 
 place : I received more than one hundred letters and appli- 
 cations ; these applications were all from the rich poor, if I 
 may express myself in this fashion. On some of these I 
 called, some I left without a reply. Nowhere did I suc- 
 ceed in doing anything. AU the appHcations to me were 
 from persons who had once been in a privileged condition 
 (I call thus the condition in which people receive more 
 from others than they give), who had lost it, and now 
 wanted to go back to it. One needed two hundred roubles 
 in order to bolster up his declining trade and finish the 
 education of his children; another needed a photograph- 
 gallery ; a third wanted to pay debts and redeem his 
 decent clothes ; a fourth needed a piano, in order to 
 perfect himself in playing and support his family by 
 
 68 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 69 
 
 giving music lessons. The majority did not determine 
 the exact sum and simply asked for assistance ; but, 
 whenever I investigated their demands, it turned out that 
 these demands grev^ in proportion with the assistance, and 
 they were not satisfied, and could not be. I repeat, it is 
 very likely that all that was due to the fact that I did not 
 know how ; in any case, I did not help any one, although 
 I sometimes tried to do so. 
 
 As to the cooperation on the part of the benefactors, 
 something very strange and unexpected took place. Of 
 all the persons who had promised me monetary contribu- 
 tions and had even determined the sums, not one handed 
 me as much as a rouble to distribute to the poor. To 
 judge by the promises which they had made me, I could 
 count on something like three thousand roubles, and of 
 all these men not one recalled the former conversations 
 or gave me a single kopek. The only persons who gave 
 me anything were the students who turned over to me 
 the money which they received for their work in taking 
 the census, which was, I believe, twelve roubles. Thus 
 my whole undertaking, which was to have been expressed 
 in tens of thousands of roubles contributed by the rich, 
 and in hundreds and thousands of people who were to be 
 saved from wretchedness and debauch, reduced itself to 
 this, that I distributed at haphazard a few tens of roubles 
 to those men who extorted it from me, and that I had on 
 my hands twelve roubles contributed by the students, and 
 twenty-five roubles sent to me by the City Council for my 
 work as superintendent, which sums I was at a loss to 
 dispose of. 
 
 The whole affair came to an end. And so, before my 
 departure to the country, I went one Sunday morning, 
 about Butter- week, to Ezhdnov House, in order to get rid 
 of the thirty-seven roubles before my departure, and to 
 distribute them to the poor. I made the round of the 
 familiar quarters, and there found one sick man to whom 
 
60 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 I gave five roubles, I think. There was no one else to 
 give any money to. But, as I had not known them in 
 the beginning, so I did not know them then, and so I 
 decided to take counsel with Ivan Fedotych, the pro- 
 prietor of the restaurant, to know to whom I should give 
 the remaining thirty-two roubles. 
 
 It was the first day of Butter-week. All were dressed 
 up and had plenty to eat, and many were already drunk. 
 In the yard, near the corner of the house, stood an old, 
 but still hale, ragpicker, in a torn gabardine and bast 
 shoes ; picking over his booty in a basket, he threw out 
 into heaps scraps of leather and of iron and of something 
 else, and sang a merry song in a beautiful and powerful 
 voice. I got into a conversation with him. He was 
 seventy years old and all alone ; he made a hving by his 
 occupation as a ragpicker, and not only did not complain, 
 but even said that he had enough to eat and to get drunk 
 on. I asked him about those who were most in need. 
 He grew angry and said outright that there were no 
 needy persons, except drunkards and lazybones ; but when 
 he heard of my purpose, he asked me for a nickel with 
 which to get him a drink, and ran into the restaurant. I 
 went myself into the restaurant to Ivdn Feddtych, in 
 order to give him what money I had left for distribution. 
 
 The restaurant was full ; dressed up girls swarmed from 
 door to door ; all the tables were occupied ; there was 
 already a large number of drunken persons, and in a 
 small room some one was playing the accordion, and two 
 were dancing. Out of respect for me Ivdn Fed6tych 
 ordered the dance stopped, and sat down with me at an 
 unoccupied table. I told him that, since he knew his 
 lodgers, he might be able to point out to me those who 
 were most in need, as I had been ordered to distribute 
 a small sum of money. Good-natured Ivdn Fed(5tych 
 (he died a year later), though busy attending to his trade, 
 stayed away from it for awhile, in order to aid me. He 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 61 
 
 fell to musing, and was apparently perplexed. An elderly 
 waiter had heard us speak, and took part in the consulta- 
 tion. 
 
 They began to pass in review a number of persons, 
 some of whom I knew myself, and we could not come to 
 an understanding. 
 
 " Paramonovna," the waiter proposed. 
 
 " Yes, that is so. Goes often without food. Well, she 
 does have sprees." 
 
 " What of it ? Still." 
 
 " Well, Spiridon Ivanovich, — has children. That's it." 
 
 But Ivan Fedotych had some objection to Spiridon 
 Ivanovich. 
 
 "Akulina? She receives money. Well, how about 
 the blind man?" 
 
 To this one I myself objected. I had just seen him. 
 He was an old man of eighty years of age and blind, 
 without kith or kin. One would imagine that there could 
 not be a harder lot than his ; but I had seen him just 
 awhile ago : he was lying on a high feather bed, drunk, 
 and, as he did not see me, discharged the vilest of 
 words in a terrible bass against his comparatively young 
 mate. 
 
 Then they mentioned an armless boy and his mother. 
 I saw that Ivan Fedotych was embarrassed, on account of 
 his honesty, for he knew that, no matter what should 
 be given, it would all come to him in his restaurant. But 
 I had to get rid of the thirty-two roubles, and so I in- 
 sisted, and, by making compromises, we managed to dis- 
 tribute the money. Those who received it were generally 
 well dressed, and it was not. necessary to go far for them, 
 for they were all there, in the restaurant. The armless 
 boy came in extensible boots, a red shirt, and a vest. 
 
 Thus ended my whole philanthropic activity, and I went 
 back to the village, irritated at others, as is nearly always 
 the case when I have committed some foolish and bad 
 
62 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 act. My philanthropy was reduced to zero and came to 
 a complete stop, but the train of thought and of feelings 
 which it had evoked in me did not come to a stop : my 
 inner work proceeded with redoubled force. 
 
xn. 
 
 What, then, had happened ? 
 
 I had lived in the country, and there had had relations 
 with the village poor. Not out of humility, which is 
 worse than pride, but in order to tell the truth, which 
 is necessary for the comprehension of the whole train of 
 my thought and feelings, I will say that in the country 
 I had done very little for the poor; but the demands 
 made on me were so modest, that even this little was 
 useful to men and created around me an atmosphere of 
 love and union with the people, in which it was possible 
 for me to calm the gnawing feeling of the consciousness 
 of the illegality of my life. When I moved to the city I 
 expected to Hve in the same manner. But here I came 
 across want of an entirely different description. 
 
 The city want was less genuine, and more exacting, 
 and more cruel than the village want. Above all, there 
 was so much of it in one place that it produced a terrible 
 impression on me. The impression which I received in 
 Lyapinski House in the first moment made me feel the 
 monstrousness of my life. This sentiment was sincere 
 and very strong. But, in spite of its sincerity and 
 strength, I was at first so weak as to get frightened at 
 the transformation of my life, to which this sentiment 
 called me, and was so ready for compromises, I believed 
 that which everybody was telhng me, and which every- 
 body has been saying since the creation of the world, 
 namely, that there was nothing bad in wealth and luxury ; 
 that it was given by God ; that it was possible to aid the 
 
 63 
 
64 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 needy and yet continue to live in wealth. I believed it 
 and wanted to act accordingly. 
 
 I wrote an article in which I appealed to all the rich 
 people to offer their assistance. All the rich people 
 acknowledged themselves morally obhged to agree with 
 me, but evidently either did not wish, or were unable to 
 do or give anything for the poor. I began to visit the 
 poor, and I beheld there what I had never expected to see. 
 On the one hand, I saw in these dens, as I called them, 
 people whom it was impossible for me to assist, because 
 they were labouring people, who were used to work and to 
 privations, and so stood incomparably higher than I in life ; 
 on the other hand, I saw unfortunates whom I could not 
 assist, because they were the same kind of men that I 
 myself am. The majority of the unfortunates whom 
 I saw were unfortunate only because they had lost the 
 ability, the desire, and the habit of earning their bread, 
 that is, their misfortune consisted in being precisely such 
 as I am. 
 
 Of unfortunates who could be aided at once, — sick, 
 freezing, hungry people, — I did not find a single person 
 but starving Agdfya. I convinced myself that, with my 
 aloofness from the lives of the people whom I wished to 
 aid, it wsifr almost impossible for me to find such unfortunate 
 people, because every true need was always met by those 
 very people among whom these unfortunates lived ; and, 
 above all else, I was convinced that I was not able with 
 money to change that unfortunate hfe which these people 
 led. I was convinced of all that, but from a false shame 
 I did not throw up my undertaking and, deceiving my- 
 self with my own virtue, I continued the matter for quite 
 awhile, until it reduced itself to zero, until I with great 
 difficulty, and with the aid of Ivdn Feddtych, in the 
 restaurant of Rzh^nov House, got rid of the thirty-seven 
 roubles which I did not consider my own. 
 
 Of course I might have continued this business and 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 65 
 
 made of it a semblance of philanthropy ; I might have 
 pushed t]ie people who had promised me the money to 
 give it to me; might have collected more; might have 
 distributed the money and consoled myself with my 
 virtue ; but I ,saw, on the one hand, that we rich people 
 did not wish and were unable to apportion to the poor a 
 part of our abund^ance (we have so many needs of our 
 own), and that there was no one to give the money to, 
 Ai we indeed wished to do good to people, and not merely 
 to distribute money at haphazard, as I had done in the 
 Ezhanov restaurant. So I abandoned the whole business, 
 and with despair in my heart returned to the country. 
 
 In the country I wanted to write an article about 
 everything I had experienced, and to tell why my under- 
 taking had been a failure. I wanted also to justify 
 myself in regard to the rebukes which were heaped upon 
 me on account of my article on the census ; I wanted to 
 arraign society for its indifference and to point out the 
 causes which bred this urban poverty, and the necessity 
 of counteracting it and the means which I saw must be 
 adopted to do so. 
 
 I immediately began writing my article, and it seemed 
 to me that I should say some important things in it. 
 But, no matter how much I struggled with it, no matter 
 how abundant the material was, the excitement, under 
 the influence of which I wrote, and because I had not yet 
 sufficiently emerged from the impression produced by it 
 to be able to treat it in a direct manner, and, above all, 
 because I did not yet simply and clearly recognize the 
 cause of it all, a very simple cause, which had its root 
 in me, — I was unable to make headway with the article 
 and so did not finish it until the present year. 
 
 In the moral sphere there takes place a very remark- 
 able, but little observed phenomenon. 
 
 If I tell a man, who does not know it, anything I know 
 from geology, astronomy, history, physics, mathematics, 
 
66 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 he will acquire some new information and will n^ver say, 
 " What is there about it that is new ? Everybody knows 
 that, and I have known it for quite awhile ; " but impart 
 to a man the highest moral truth, which is expressed in 
 the clearest, most compact manner, as it has never been 
 expressed before, and the average man, especially if he is 
 not interested in these moral questions, or, more espe- 
 cially, if the moral truth which you utter strokes his fur 
 the wrong way, vdll be certain to say, " Who does not 
 know this ? This is an old story and has been said long 
 ago." It actually seems to him that it was said long ago 
 and in precisely this form. Only those who value and 
 esteem the moral truths know how precious and valuable 
 they are and by what long labour one obtains the simpli- 
 fication and elucidation of a moral truth, — its transition 
 from a hazy, indefinitely conceived supposition and wish, 
 from indefinite, incoherent expressions, to a firm and defi- 
 nite expression, which inevitably demands corresponding 
 actions. We are all of us accustomed to think that moral 
 teaching is a very base and tiresome thing, in which there 
 can be nothing new or interesting, whereas the whole of 
 human life, with all its complex and varied activities, 
 which seem to be independent of morality, in the fields 
 of politics, science, art, has no other purpose than a 
 greater and ever greater elucidation, confirmation, simpli- 
 fication, and accessibility of moral truths. 
 
 I remember one day I walked down a street in Mos- 
 cow, and saw a man coming out of a shop and carefully 
 scanning the stones of the sidewalk ; then he selected 
 one of them, sat down on it, and began (as I thought) 
 to chip it off or rub it with the greatest tension and 
 effort. 
 
 " What is he doing to the sidewalk ? " I thought. 
 When I walked up close to him, I saw what the man 
 was doing ; he was a fellow from a butcher shop ; he was 
 whetting his knife against the stones of the sidewalk. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 67 
 
 He had not been thinking of the stones at all when he 
 looked at them, and still less was he thinking of them 
 while doing his work, — he was simply whetting his 
 knife. He had to sharpen his knife to cut meat with it ; 
 and there I thought that he was busy doing something to 
 the stones. 
 
 Even so it only seems that humanity is busy with 
 commerce, treaties, wars, sciences, arts ; but there is only 
 one work which is of importance to humanity, and which 
 it does : it is explaining to itself the moral laws by 
 which it lives. The moral laws have existed before, and 
 humanity only elucidates them to itself, and this elucida- 
 tion seems unimportant and iusignificant to him who does 
 not need the moraMaw, who does not want to live by it. 
 But this elucidation of the moral law is not only the 
 chief, but also the only work of the whole of humanity. 
 This elucidation is as unnoticeable as the distinction 
 between a dull and a sharp knife. The knife is a knife, 
 and for him who does not have to cut with this knife the 
 distinction between a dull and a sharp knife is not notice- 
 able. But for him who has comprehended that his whole 
 life depends on a more or less dull or sharp knife, every 
 whetting of it is of importance, and he knows that there 
 is no end to this sharpeniag, and that a knife is a knife 
 only when it is sharp, when it cuts what it is necessary 
 to cut. 
 
 This happened with me when I began to write the 
 article. It seemed to me that I knew everything, com- 
 prehended everything in respect to those questions which 
 the impression of Lyapinski House and of the census had 
 evoked in me ; but when I attempted to make them clear 
 to myself and to expound them, it turned out that the 
 knife would not cut, that it was necessary to sharpen it. 
 Only now, after three years, did I feel that my knife was 
 sufficiently sharpened to let me cut what I wanted. I 
 had learned little that was new. All my thoughts are 
 
68 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 the same, but they were duller, dispersed easily, and did 
 not harmonize ; there was no sting in them ; they did not 
 reduce themselves to the simplest and clearest resolve, as 
 they do now. 
 
XIII. 
 
 I EEMEMBEK how during the whole time of my unsuc- 
 cessful experiment in aiding the unfortunate city dwellers 
 I felt like a man who wants to pull another out of 
 the mire, while he himself is standing on boggy ground. 
 Every effort of mine made me feel the insecurity of the 
 soil on which I was standing. I felt that I was myself 
 in the bog ; but that consciousness did not cause me then 
 to look more closely underneath me, in order that I 
 might find out what I was standing on; I kept all the 
 time looking for an external means for succouring the 
 evil which was outside of me. 
 
 I then felt that my life was bad and that it was im- 
 possible to live so. But from the fact that my Hfe was 
 bad and that it was impossible to live so, I did not de- 
 duce the very simple and clear conclusion that it was 
 necessary to improve my own life and . live better, but, on 
 the contrary, drew the ' strange conclusion that it was 
 necessary to correct the lives of others in order that I 
 might be able to live better, — and so I began to correct 
 the lives of others. I lived in the city and wanted to 
 improve the lives of those who lived in the city, but I 
 soon convinced myself that I could not do it at all, and 
 began to think about the peculiarities of city life and city 
 poverty. 
 
 "What is this city life and this city poverty? Why 
 could I not, while living in the city, help the city poor ? " 
 I asked myself. And I answered myself that I was un- 
 able to do anything for them, in the first place, because 
 there were too many of them in one spot ; in the second 
 
70 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 place, because all these poor were quite different from the 
 village poor. Why were there so many of them here, and 
 in what did they differ from the village poor ? There 
 was one answer to both these questions. There were 
 many of them here, because all those who have nothing 
 to live on in the country gather here around the rich, and 
 their peculiarity consists in this, that they are all people 
 who have left the country in order to find a living in the 
 city (if there are city poor who are bom here, and whose 
 fathers and grandfathers were born here, these fathers and 
 grandfathers had come to the city to make a living). 
 
 What is meant by the expression " to make a living in the 
 city " ? In the words " to make a living in the city " there 
 is something strange, something resembling a jest, when 
 you come to think of it. What ? Away from the coun- 
 try, that is, away from the places where there are forests, 
 and fields, and giain, and cattle, — where the whole 
 wealth of the land is, — do these people go to make a liv- 
 ing in a place where there are no trees, nor gi-ass, nor even 
 soil, but only stones and dust ? What, then, is meant by 
 the words " to make a living in the city," which are so 
 constantly employed by those who make a living and 
 by those who feed them, as something quite clear and 
 comprehensible ? 
 
 I remember all the hundreds and thousands of city 
 people, — both those who live well and those who are in 
 need, — with whom I spoke about their coming thither, 
 and all without exception told me that they came here 
 from the country to make a living ; that Moscow neither 
 sows nor reaps, but has wealth in heaps ; that there was 
 plenty of everything in Moscow and that, therefore, they 
 could only in Moscow gain the money which they needed 
 in the country for bread, fot* their home, for a horse, for 
 objects of prime importance. But the source of all wealth 
 is in the country, — only there is the true wealth to be 
 found, — bread, and the forest, and horses, and everything 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 71 
 
 else. Why, then, go to the city in order to obtain what 
 there is in the country ? And why, above all else, carry 
 from the country to the city what the villagers need, — 
 flour, oats, horses, cattle ? 
 
 I have spoken hundreds of times about it with peasants 
 living in the city, and it became clear to me, from my 
 conversations with them and from my observations, that 
 the crowding of the country population in the cities was 
 partly necessary, because they cannot otherwise earn a 
 livelihood, and partly voluntary, and that the temptations 
 of the city attract them thither. It is true that the con- 
 dition of the peasant is such that, in order to satisfy the 
 demands which are made on him in the village, he cannot 
 get along in any other way than by selling the grain and 
 the cattle which, he knows, he will need, and so he is 
 compelled against his will to go to the city in order 
 to redeem his grain. But it is also true that the compara- 
 tively easier earnings and the luxury of life in the city 
 attract him thither, and that, under the guise of making 
 a living in the city, he goes there, in order to work less 
 laboriously and eat better, to drink tea three times a day, 
 to play the dandy, and even to get drunk and live a 
 riotous life. 
 
 The cause of both is one and the same : the passing of 
 the wealth of the producers into the hands of the non- 
 producers and the accumulation of the wealth in the cities. 
 Indeed, the autumn comes, and all the wealth is hoarded 
 in the village ; immediately there present themselves the 
 demands of taxation, of military service, of rentals; 
 immediately there are put forth the temptations of vodka, 
 weddings, holidays, petty traders, who travel from village 
 to village, and of many other things ; and in one way or 
 another all this wealth in the most varied forms — r sheep, 
 calves, cows, horses, pigs, chickens, eggs, butter, hemp, 
 flax, rye, oats, buckwheat, peas, hemp and flax seeds — 
 passes into the hands of strangers and is transferred to the 
 
72 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 cities, and from the cities to the capitals. The villager 
 is compelled to give it all up in order to satisfy the demands 
 made on him and the temptations that entice him, and, 
 having given up all his wealth, he is left in arrears ; he 
 is compelled to go to where his wealth has been taken, 
 and there he partly tries to recoup the money which he 
 needs for his most wants in the country, and partly, being 
 carried away by the temptations of the city, enjoys, with 
 others, the accumulated wealth. 
 
 Everywhere, in the whole of Kussia, and, I think, not 
 only in Eussia, but in the whole world as well, the same 
 thing takes place. The wealth of the country population 
 passes into the hands of traders, landowners, officials, 
 manufacturers, and the men who have acquired this wealth 
 want to enjoy it ; but it is only in the cities that they can 
 fully enjoy it. In the country it is, in the first place, 
 impossible, on account of the thinness of the population, 
 to find a gratification for all the wants of rich people : 
 they miss all kinds of shops, banks, restaurants, the- 
 atres, and all kinds of social amusements. In the second 
 place, one of the chief enjoyments furnished by wealth — 
 vanity, the desire to startle and outdo others — can again, 
 on account of the thinness of the population, be with 
 difficulty gratified in the country. In the country there 
 are no connoisseurs of luxury, and there is nobody to 
 startle. No matter what adornments of the house, 
 what pictures, bronzes, carriages, and toilets the country 
 dweller may provide himself with, there is no one to look 
 at them and envy him, for the peasants have no under- 
 standing about this whole matter. In the third place, 
 luxury is even disagreeable and dangerous in the country 
 for a man who has a conscience and fear. It is awkward 
 and troublesome to take milk baths in the country and to 
 feed puppies on milk, when the children near by have none ; 
 it is awkward and troublesome to build pavilions and set 
 out gardens among people who live in cabins which are 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 73 
 
 surrounded by manure, and cannot be heated for want of 
 wood. In the village there is no one to keep in restraint 
 the stupid peasants who in their ignorance may destroy 
 all this. 
 
 And so the rich gather in one place and settle near 
 other rich people with similar wants in the cities, where 
 the gratification of all kinds of luxurious tastes is cau- 
 tiously guarded by a numerous police force. The funda- 
 mental city dwellers are the officials of the country ; about 
 them are grouped all kinds of professionals and indus- 
 trialists, and these are joined by the rich. Here a rich 
 man need only have a wish, and it is immediately ful- 
 filled. Here it is pleasanter for a rich man to live, for 
 this reason also, that here he is able to satisfy his vanity, 
 for he can vie in his luxury with others, and can startle 
 and overshadow people. Above all else, a rich man feels 
 happier in the city for this reason also, that before he had 
 fears on account of his luxury in the country, but now, on 
 the contrary, he feels out of place if he does not live 
 as luxuriously as all his friends around him. What 
 in the country seemed terrible and awkward to him, here 
 seems to be in place. 
 
 The rich congregate in the city, and here, under the 
 protection of the authorities, use up everything which is 
 brought hither from cne country. The villager is partly 
 obhged to go where the unceasing holiday of the rich 
 is celebrated, and where that which is taken from him is 
 used up, in order that he may feed on the crumbs which 
 fall from the tables of the rich ; and partly, as he looks 
 at the free and easy, elegant, well-guarded life of the rich, 
 which is approved of by everybody, he himself wants to 
 arrange his life in such a way as to work least and enjoy 
 most the labours of others. 
 
 And so he, too, is drawn to the city, where he hangs on 
 to the rich, trying in every manner possible to get away 
 from them what he needs, and submitting to all those 
 
74 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 conditions in which the rich have placed him. He con- 
 tributes to the gratification of all their lusts ; he or she 
 serves the rich man in the bath-house, and in the restau- 
 rant, and as a driver, and as a prostitute, and makes car- 
 riages for him, and toys, and fashion articles, and by 
 degrees learns of the rich man to live like him, not 
 by labour, but by all kinds of tricks, cheating others 
 of their hoarded wealth, — and he becomes corrupted and 
 perishes. It is this population, which is corrupted by 
 the city wealth, that forms the city poverty, which I in- 
 tended to assist, but could not. 
 
 Indeed, it is enough for one to stop and think of the 
 condition of these country dwellers, who, for the purpose 
 of earning money for bread and for the taxes, come to the 
 city where they see all about them thousands slung 
 thoughtlessly away and hundreds earned in a very easy 
 manner, while they themselves earn kopeks by the hard- 
 est labour possible, — in order that one may marvel why 
 there are still left working people, and why they do not 
 all of them take to a much easier way of making money, 
 by means of commerce, peddling, begging, debauch, ras- 
 cality, and even robbery. 
 
 We, indeed, the participants in the unceasing orgy 
 which takes place in the cities, we are able to get used to 
 our life, so that it seems quite natural for us to live alone 
 in five enormous rooms, which are heated with a quantity 
 of wood sufficient to cook the food of twenty families, and 
 to warm them, to travel half a verst with two trotters 
 and two servants, to cover the parquetry floor with rugs, 
 and to spend five and ten thousand for a ball, and 
 twenty-five for a Christmas tree, and so forth. But a 
 man who needs ten roubles for bread for his family, 
 or from \yhom they take the last sheep for the seven 
 roubles of his taxes, and who cannot earn these seven 
 roubles by hard labour even, cannot get used to it. 
 
 We imagine that all this appears natural to poor 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 75 
 
 people ; there even are naive people who say seriously 
 that the poor are very Jhankful to us for supporting them 
 through our luxury. But the poor are not deprived 
 of human intelligence because they are poor, and they 
 judge precisely as we do. Even as we, on hearing that 
 such and such a person has lost in cards, or wasted ten 
 or twenty thousand, think at first thought what a foolish 
 and worthless man he is to have uselessly squandered 
 such a sum, and how we might have made excellent use 
 of it for our building, which we have been needing for 
 quite awhile, or for the improvement of the estate, and 
 so forth, — so the poor judge, when they see the wealth 
 recklessly thrown about; and they are the more per- 
 sistent in their reflections since they do not need the 
 money for any fancies, but for the gratification of their 
 daily needs, of which they are deprived. We are very 
 much in error if we think that the poor can judge thus 
 and yet look with indifference on the luxury which sur- 
 rounds them. 
 
 They have never acknowledged the fact that it is right 
 for one set of people to be celebrating all the time, while 
 others are all the time fasting and working ; at first they 
 are surprised at it and feel offended, but later they ex- 
 amine it more closely and, seeing that this order of things 
 is considered legitimate, they try to free themselves from 
 labour, and to take part in the holiday. Some succeed in 
 it, and they become just such eternal celebrators; others 
 slowly make their way toward this state ; others give way 
 before reaching their goal and, having lost the habit of 
 working, fill the resorts of prostitution and the doss- 
 houses. 
 
 Two years ago we took a peasant lad from the country 
 to work in the buffet-room. He had a disagreement with 
 the lackey, and was discharged ; he entered the service of 
 a merchant, where he managed to please his master, and 
 now he sports a vest and a chain and foppish boots. In his 
 
76 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 place we engaged another peasant, a married man ; he went 
 on a spree and lost his money. We took a third man : 
 he, too, took to drinking and, having spent every kopek, 
 for a long time suffered misery in a doss-house. Our old 
 cook got drunk in the city, and fell sick. Last year our 
 lackey, who used to drink without let-up, but who for 
 five years had kept himself straight in the country, with- 
 out as much as touching liquor, went on a spree, and 
 ruined his whole life. A young lad from our village is a 
 servant of my brother's buffet-room. His grandfather, 
 a blind old man, came to me, during my stay in the 
 country, and asked me to influence his grandchild to send 
 him ten roubles for the taxes, for otherwise he would 
 have to sell his cow. 
 
 " He keeps saying that he has to dress decently ; well, 
 let him get a pair of boots, and let there be an end of it. 
 Or is he going to provide himself with a watch, too?" 
 said the old man, meaning to express as senseless a propo- 
 sition as possible by it. The proposition was, indeed, 
 senseless, if we know that the old man had prepared his 
 food without butter during the whole of Lent, and that 
 the wood which he had cut was being ruined, because he 
 lacked one rouble and twenty kopeks to pay for it 
 in full ; but it turned out that the senseless jest of the 
 old man was a reality. The lad came to me in an over- 
 coat of fine black cloth and in boots for which he had 
 paid eight roubles. The other day he took ten roubles 
 from my brother and spent them all on boots. My chil- 
 dren, who had known the lad since childhood, informed 
 me that he regarded it indeed as nece'fesary to provide 
 himself with a watch. He is a very good lad, but he 
 thinks that they will laugh at him so long as he does not 
 procure a watch. And he must have the watch. 
 
 This year our chambermaid, a girl of eighteen years of 
 age, entered into a liaison with the coachman. She was 
 discharged. An old nurse, with whom I spoke of this 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN 
 
 ? 
 
 unfortunate girl, reminded me of another girl, whom I 
 had forgotten. She, too, had ten years before entered 
 into a liaison with a coachman of ours ; she, too, had been 
 discharged, and ended up in a house of prostitution, dying, 
 before she had reached the age of twenty, in a hospital 
 from the effect of syphilis. We need but look around us 
 in order to get frightened at the infection which, to say 
 nothing of the factories and manufacturing plants that 
 also serve our luxury, we by our luxurious life directly 
 disseminate among those people whom we wish to help. 
 
 And so, as I grasped the peculiarity of the city poverty, 
 to which I was unable to offer any assistance, I saw that 
 its first cause was this, that I took everything necessary 
 away from the village dwellers and transferred it all to 
 the city. The second cause was this, that here, in the city, 
 where I made use of what I had collected in the country, 
 I with my reckless luxury tempted and corrupted those 
 country dwellers who came here in my track, in order 
 somehow to get back what was taken from them in the 
 village. 
 
XIV. 
 
 I CAME to the same conclusion from an entirely differ- 
 ent side. As I recalled all my relations with the city 
 paupers at this time, I saw that one of the causes which 
 kept me from aiding the city poor was this, that the poor 
 were insincere and untruthful to me. They all looked 
 upon me, not as a man, but as a means. I was not able 
 to get in closer touch with them and, perhaps, I did not 
 know how to ; but without truthfulness aid was impos- 
 sible. How could a man be aided if he did not tell every- 
 thing about his situation ? At first I reproached them 
 for it (it is so natural to reproach others), but one word 
 of a remarkable man, namely, of Syutaev, who was stay- 
 ing at my house at that time, made the whole matter 
 clear to me and showed wherein lay the cause of my 
 failure. 
 
 I remember that even then the word uttered by Syutaev 
 struck me forcibly ; but only much later did I grasp its 
 whole meaning. It was during the full heat of my self- 
 deception. I was sitting at my sister's, where Syutdev 
 was also. My sister asked me about my undertaking. 
 T told her about it and, as is always the case when a man 
 does not believe in his own undertaking, I told her with 
 much fervour, enthusiasm, and eloquence about what I 
 was doing, and what might come of it ; I told her how 
 we were going to look after orphans and old people; 
 how we would send out of town such of the country 
 dwellers as had fallen into straits in Moscow; how we 
 would make it easy for the corrupt to mend their ways ; 
 
 78 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 79 
 
 how, if the matter would go at all, there would not be a 
 man in Moscow who would be unable to get assistance. 
 
 My sister sympathized with me, and we went on talk- 
 ing. During the conversation I cast glances at Syutaev. 
 As I knew his Christian life and the significance which 
 is ascribed to charity, I expected him to sympathize with 
 me, and I spoke in such a way that he might understand 
 me; I talked to my sister, but my words were* directed at 
 him. He sat motionless in his black-tanned sheepskin 
 coat, which, like all peasants, he wore outside and in the 
 house, and did not seem to be hstening to us, but only 
 thinking. His httle eyes were not glistening, but seemed 
 to be turned inward. Having talked quite awhile, I 
 turned to him with the question what he thought 
 about it. 
 
 " It's all nonsense," he said. 
 
 « Why ? " 
 
 " Your whole society is foolish, and no good will come 
 from it," he repeated, with conviction. 
 
 " Why not ? Why is it foolish to help thousands, or 
 say hundreds, of unfortunates ? Is it bad according to 
 the Gospel to clothe the naked and feed the hungry ? " 
 
 "I know, I know, but you are not doing the right thing. 
 Do you suppose you can do anything this way ? You are 
 walking, and a man asks you for twenty kopeks. Ypu 
 give them to him. Is that an alms ? Give him a spirit- 
 ual alms, instruct him ; but what did you give him ? Oh, 
 ■just something to get rid of him." 
 
 " No, you do not understand me right. We want to 
 find out where there is want, and then help with money 
 and with deeds, — and to find work for them." 
 
 " You will do nothing for the people in this manner." 
 
 " Well, shall they starve and freeze to death ? " 
 
 " Why should they ? Are there many of them here ? " 
 
 " Are there many ? " I said, thinking that he was look- 
 ing so hghtly at the matter because he did not know what 
 
80 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 an immense number there was ot these people. " Do you 
 know," I said, " that there are some twenty thousand of 
 these starving and freezing people in Moscow? And 
 then, in St. Petersburg and other cities." 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 " Twenty thousand ! and how many farms are there in 
 Russia ? Will there be a million of them ? " 
 
 « What of it ? " 
 
 " What of it ? " and his eyes sparkled, and he became 
 enlivened. " Well, let us consider the matter. I am not 
 a rich man, but I will take two of them. You took a 
 lad to the kitchen ; I invited him to go with me, but he 
 would not. Even if there were ten times as many, we 
 could manage them. You and I will take them. We will 
 go to work together : he will see me work and will learn 
 how to live, and we shall sit down to eat at the same 
 table, and he will hear a good word from me or you. 
 This I call charity, but that society of yours is all non- 
 sense." 
 
 These simple words startled me. I could not help but 
 acknowledge the justice of his words, but it then seemed 
 to me that, in spite of this justice, my undertaking might 
 still be useful. But the farther I carried on this matter, 
 the more I came in contact with the poor, the more fre- 
 quently did I recall these words and the greater was the 
 meaning which they began to have for me. 
 
 Indeed, I arrive in an expensive fur coat or am brought 
 there in my own carriage, or he sees my two-thousand- 
 rouble apartments, while he needs a pair of boots ; or he 
 will see me give somebody five roubles without giving 
 any thought to it, merely because I wanted to do so ; he 
 knows that, if I give roubles in such a fashion, I do 
 so because I have collected such a lot of them that I have 
 many more, which I not only do not give to anybody, but 
 have with ease taken away from others. What else can 
 he see in me but one of those men who have taken pos- 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 81 
 
 session of what ought to belong to him ? What other 
 feeling can he have for me but the desire to get out of me 
 as many as possible of these roubles, which I have taken 
 away from him and from others ? I want to become 
 more closely acquainted with him, and I complain that 
 he is not sincere ; but I, to tell the truth, am afraid to sit 
 down on his bed for fear of becoming infested with lice 
 or catching a disease, and am afraid to admit him to my 
 room, when he comes to my house half-naked and waits, 
 not even in the antechamber, but in the vestibule. And 
 I say that it is his fault that I cannot come closer to him, 
 and that he is not sincere. 
 
 Let the most cruel of men try to eat a good meal 
 of five courses in the company of men who have eaten 
 Httle or who eat nothing but black bread. Not one of 
 them will have enough courage to eat, and to look at 
 the hungry persons with their mouths watering. Conse- 
 quently to be able to eat with pleasure amidst those who 
 do not get enough to eat, the first duty is to hide from 
 them and to eat in such a way that they may not see it. 
 This is precisely what, before anything else, we actually 
 do. 
 
 And so I looked more simply at our life, and I saw 
 that a closer communion with the poor was not acci- 
 dentally more difficult for us, but that we intentionally 
 arranged our life in such a way as to make this com- 
 munion difiicult. 
 
 More than this : looking from one side at our life, at 
 the life of the rich, I noticed that everything which 
 is regarded as a good in this Hfe consists in this, or is at 
 least inseparably connected with this, that we should 
 as much as possible segregate ourselves from the poor. 
 Indeed, all the striving of our life of wealth, beginning 
 with our food, our attire, our housing, our purity, and 
 ending with our education, — everything has for its main 
 purpose a segregation from the poor. And on this segre- 
 
82 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 gation and separation by impassable walls from the poor at 
 least nine-tenths of all our wealth is wasted. The first 
 thing a man grown rich does is to stop eating out of the 
 same bowl, — he gets all kinds of appliances and sepa- 
 rates himself from the kitchen and from the servants. 
 
 He feeds his servants well, so that their mouths shall 
 not water over his savoury food, but he eats by himself ; 
 but, as it is tiresome to eat alone, he invents things that 
 may improve the food and beautify the table, and the 
 mere nutrition (the dinners) become for him a matter of 
 vanity and of pride ; and the reception of food becomes 
 for him a means for segregating himself from the rest of 
 the people. It is unthinkable for a rich man to invite 
 a poor man to his table. A man has to know how to 
 take a lady to the table, how to bow, sit, eat, wash the 
 mouth, and it is only the rich who know all this. 
 
 The same takes place with the wearing apparel. If a 
 rich man wore simple garments, which only protected the 
 body against the cold, — short or long fur coats, felt or 
 leather boots, a peasant coat, pantaloons, shirts, — he 
 would need very httle, and he could not help, if he had 
 two fur coats, but give one to him who had none; but 
 the rich man begins by having made for himself wearing 
 apparel that consists of several parts and is good only for 
 certain occasions, and so is of no use to the poor man. 
 He has dress coats, vests, sack coats, patent leather boots, 
 capes, shoes with French heels, garments that for the 
 sake of fashion are cut up into small pieces, hunting 
 coats and travelling ulsters, and so forth, which can be 
 put to use only in a condition removed from poverty. 
 Thus the wearing apparel also becomes a means for segre- 
 gating oneself from the poor. Fashion makes its appear- 
 ance, that is, that which separates the rich from the 
 poor. 
 
 The same, but still more clearly, is to be seen in the 
 matter of the domicile. In order to live alone in ten 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 83 
 
 rooms, it is necessary that this be not seen by those who 
 live ten at a time in one room. The richer a man is, 
 the more difficult it is to get access to him, the more 
 porters there are between him and the needy, and the less 
 possible it is to take a poor man over his carpets and seat 
 him in velvet chairs. The same is true in the matter 
 of locomotion. A peasant who is travelling in a car or 
 sledge must be very cruel not to give a passer-by a ride, 
 — he has both the room and the possibility for it. But 
 the more elegant the carriage is, the farther it is removed 
 from the possibility of giving anybody a ride. There 
 is even a saying" about very foppish carriages being 
 egotists. 
 
 The same is true of the whole manner of life, which is 
 expressed by the word cleanhness. 
 
 Cleanliness ! Who does not know people, especially 
 women, who regard this cleanliness as a high virtue ? 
 And who does not know the extravagancies of this clean- 
 liness, which has no hmits, when it is attained by 
 other people's work ? What man who has grown rich 
 has not experienced in his own person with what diffi- 
 culty he has acquired this cleanhness, which only 
 confirms the proverb, " White hands love other people's 
 worii ? " 
 
 To-day cleanliness consists in changing your shirt 
 every day ; to-morrow it will have to be changed twice 
 a day. To-day it is the neck and the hands that are to 
 be washed every day ; to-morrow it will be the feet, and 
 another day the whole body, and at that with a particular 
 kind of rubbing down. To-day it is a table-cloth for two 
 days, to-morrow it vn.ll be one a day, and another time 
 two a day. To-day the lackey's hands should be clean ; 
 to-morrow he is to wear gloves and to hand a letter on 
 a clean tray, wearing clean gloves. There is no limit 
 to this useless cleanliness, except to segregate one from 
 the rest and to make communion with them impossible so 
 
84 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 long as this cleanliness is attained through the labour 
 of other people. 
 
 Moreover, when I grasped it all, I became convinced 
 that what in general is caUed education is also the same. 
 Language does not deceive: it calls by the right name 
 what people understand by this name. The masses under- 
 stand by education a fashionable dress, a polite conversa- 
 tion, clean hands, — cleanliness of a certain character. 
 Of such a man they say, in contradistinction from the 
 rest, that he is an educated man. In the circle a little 
 more cultured than the masses the same is understood by 
 education, but to its conditions they add playing on the 
 piano, the knowledge of French, the writing of a Kussian 
 letter without orthographical mistakes, and a still greater 
 external cleanhness. In the next higher circle they mean 
 by it the same with the addition of the English language 
 and of a diploma from a higher institution of learning, and 
 a still higher degree of cleanliness. But in all three cases 
 the education is essentially the same. Education is those 
 forms, and that knowledge which are to segregate a man 
 from tlie rest. Its aim is the same as thai of cleanliness, 
 — to separate a person from the mass of the poor, in 
 order that they, the starving and the freezing, may not 
 see us celebrate. But it is impossible for us to conceal 
 ourselves, and they see. 
 
 And so I became convinced that the cause which made 
 it impossible for us rich men to help the city paupers also 
 lay in the impossibility of our communion with them, 
 and that we ourselves made it impossible to commune 
 with them by the whole Hfe which we lead, by the use to 
 which we put our wealth. I became convinced that 
 between us, the rich, and the poor there had been raised 
 by us a wall of cleanhness and of education, which our 
 wealth has reared, and that, to be able to aid the poor, we 
 must first of all destroy the wall and make possible the 
 application of Syutdev's method, — distributing the poor. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 8.6 
 
 And thus I came from another side to the same inference 
 to which I had been brought by the train of my thought 
 concerning the causes of the city poverty : the cause lay 
 in our wealth. 
 
XV. 
 
 I BEGAN to analyze the matter from a third, a purely 
 personal, side. Among the number of the phenomena 
 which struck me particularly during this time of my 
 philanthropic activity, there was a very strange one for 
 which I could not for a long time find any explanation. 
 It was this : every time I had a chance in the street or 
 at home to give to a pauper, without talking with him, some 
 small coin, I saw, or I thought I saw, joy and gratitude 
 expressed on the poor man's face, and I myself experienced 
 a pleasant sensation in connection with this form of philan- 
 thropy. I saw that I did what the man wanted and 
 expected of me. But if I stopped to talk with the poor 
 man, sympathetically asking him about his former and 
 his present life, and more or less entered into the details 
 of his life, I felt that I could no longer give him three or 
 twenty kopeks, and began to rummage in my purse, doubt- 
 ing how much to give. I always gave more and always 
 saw that the poor man went away from me dissatisfied. 
 But if I entered into still closer communion with the poor 
 man, I was in still greater perplexity as to how much to 
 give, and, no matter how much I gave, the poor man 
 grew more gloomy and more dissatisfied. 
 
 As a general rule it always turned out that if, after a 
 closer contact with a poor man, I gave him three roubles 
 or more, I nearly always saw gloom, dissatisfaction, and 
 even resentment on the face of the man, and it sometimes 
 happened that he took ten roubles and went away, with- 
 out as much as thanking me for it, as though I had 
 offended him. On such occasions I always felt ill at 
 
 39 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 87 
 
 ease, and ashamed, and guilty. But if I watched a poor 
 man for weeks, months, and years, aiding him and express- 
 ing my views to him, and keeping in close contact with 
 him, my relations with him nearly always became a 
 torment, and I saw that the poor man hated me. And I 
 felt that he was right. 
 
 If I walk down the street, and he, standing in the 
 street, asks me, among the number of other passers-by, 
 for three kopeks, and I give them to him, I am for him 
 a passer-by, and a good passer-by at that, one of those 
 who give a thread out of which the naked man's shirt is 
 formed ; he is not expecting anything more than a thread, 
 and if I give it to him, he is sincerely grateful to me. 
 But if I stop to talk with him, as with a man, and show 
 him that I want to be more than a passer-by to him ; if, 
 as has frequently happened, he weeps, as he tells me his 
 woe, he no longer sees in me a passer-by, but what I want 
 him to see in me, — a good man. And if I am a good 
 man, my goodness cannot stop at two dimes, nor at ten 
 roubles, nor at ten thousand. It is impossible to be a 
 good man just a little. 
 
 Let us suppose that I have given him a great deal, that 
 I have fixed him up, clothed him, put him on his feet, so 
 that he is able to live without another person's aid ; but 
 for some reason or other, whether from misfortune, or 
 from weakness, or from viciousness, he again lacks an 
 overcoat, and underwear, and the money which I gave 
 him, and he is again freezing and starving, and he again 
 comes to me, — why shall I refuse him ? If the cause of 
 my activity consisted in obtaining a certain material aim, 
 — in giving him so many roubles or such and such an 
 overcoat, I could give that to him, and feel satisfied ; but 
 the cause of my activity is not this : the cause is that I 
 want to be a good man, that is, I want to see myself in 
 every other man. Every man understands kindness in 
 this manner, and not otherwise. And so, if he has twenty 
 
88 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 times squandered what you have given him, and he is 
 again freezing and starving, and you are a good man, you 
 cannot help but give him some again, and you cannot 
 stop giving him, if you have more than he has. But if 
 you back out, you show by this that everything you did, 
 you did not because you are a good man, but because you 
 wanted to appear as a good man before all men and before 
 him. 
 
 And it was with such people, when I had to back out 
 and stop giving, and thus renounce the good, that I 
 experienced agonizing shame. 
 
 What was this shame ? This shame I had experienced 
 in Lyapinski House, and before and after that in the 
 country, whenever I had occasion to give money or some- 
 thing else to the poor, and during my visits to the city 
 poor. 
 
 A case of shame which lately happened with me 
 reminded me and elucidated to me the causes of the 
 shame which I used to experience when giving money to 
 the poor. 
 
 This happened in the country. I needed twenty kopeks 
 to give them to a pilgrim ; I sent my son to borrow them 
 from some one; he took two dimes to the pilgrim, and 
 told me that he had borrowed them from the cook. A 
 few days later other pilgrims came, and I again needed 
 twenty kopeks ; I had a rouble ; I recalled my owing 
 the cook twenty kopeks, and went to the kitchen, in the 
 hope that the cook would have some more change. I 
 said to him : 
 
 " I borrowed two dimes from you, so here is a rouble." 
 
 Before I had finished speaking, the cook called his wife 
 from the adjoining room. 
 
 " Par^sha, take it," he said. 
 
 Assuming that she understood what I needed, I gave 
 her the rouble. I must say that the €ook had lived about 
 a week in our house, and I had seen his wife, though T 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 89 
 
 had never spoken to her. I was on the point of saying 
 to her that I wanted change for it, when she made a rapid 
 motion toward my hand, intending to kiss it, no doubt on 
 the supposition that I was giving her the rouble. I mut- 
 tered something and left the kitchen. I felt ashamed, 
 painfully ashamed, as I had not felt for a long time. I 
 had a griping pain, and I felt that I was making faces, 
 and I groaned from shame, as I ran out of the kitchen. 
 This, as I thought, undeserved and unexpected shame 
 startled me, more especially since I had not felt any 
 shame for a long time and because I, as an old man, was 
 living, as I thought, in such a way as not to deserve 
 such shame. I was very much startled by it. I told 
 this to my family, and to my friends, and all agreed that 
 they would have experienced the same. I began to wonder 
 why I had felt ashamed. An incident which had happened 
 to me in Moscow gave an answer to it. 
 
 I reflected on this incident, and I found an explanation 
 for the shame which I had experienced with the cook's 
 wife, and all those sensations which I had experienced 
 during my Moscow philanthropic activity, and which I 
 now experience every time when I have to give to people 
 something beyond that small pittance to mendicants and 
 pilgrims which I am in the habit of giving and consider 
 the work not of charity, but of decency and politeness. 
 If a man asks you for fire, you must Hght a match for 
 him, if you have one. If a man asks you for three or 
 for twenty kopeks, or even for several roubles, you must 
 give him that sum, if you have it. This is a matter of 
 politeness, and not of charity. 
 
 Here is a case : I have already spoken of the two peas- 
 ants with whom I used to saw wood two years ago. One 
 Saturday evening, as it was getting dark, I went with 
 them into the, city. They were going to their master to 
 receive their wages. As we approached Dragomilov Bridge 
 we met an old man. He asked for an alms, and I gave 
 
90 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 him twenty kopeks. As I gave them to him, I reflected 
 on how well this must affect Sem^n, with whom I had 
 spoken of divine things. Sem^n, that Vladimir peasant, 
 who had a wife and two children in Moscow, himself 
 stopped, turned aside the skirt of his caftan, took out his 
 purse, rummaged in it awhile, and fetched out three 
 kopeks, which he gave to the old man, asking him to give 
 him back two kopeks. 
 
 The old man showed him two three-kopek coins and 
 one one-kopek coin. Sem^n looked at these, and was on 
 the point of taking the kopek, but changed his mind, took 
 off his cap, made the sign of the cross, and went on, leav- 
 ing the three kopeks with the old man. I knew all about 
 Semen's financial condition : he had neither a house, nor 
 any property. Up to the day on which he gave those 
 three kopeks he had earned six roubles and fifty kopeks. 
 Consequently six roubles and fifty kopeks represented all 
 his savings. My savings were approximately equal to six 
 hundred thousand roubles. I had a wife and children, 
 so had Semdn. He was younger than I, and had fewer 
 children ; but his children were little, while I had two 
 of working age, so that our situations, outside of our sav- 
 ings, were the same, — I may say mine w^as a httle more 
 favourable. He gave three kopeks, I gave twenty. What 
 did he give, and what did I give ? What ought I to have 
 done in order to equal Sem^n ? He had six hundred 
 kopeks ; he gave away one of them, and then two more. 
 I had six hundred thousand roubles. In order to give 
 the same as Sem^n gave, I ought to have given three 
 thousand roubles, and have asked back two thousand 
 roubles, and, if I could get no change, to have left also 
 these two thousand roubles with the old man, made the 
 sign of the cross, and walked on, talking peacefully about 
 how factory hands live, and how much liver is worth in 
 Smolensk Market. I thought about the matter then and 
 there, but it was only much later that I drew from tliis 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 91 
 
 incident the conclusion which inevitably follows from it. 
 This deduction seems so unusual and strange that, in spite 
 of its mathematical accuracy, it takes time to get used to 
 it. One cannot help thinking that there must be some 
 mistake about it, but there is no mistake. There is only 
 a terrible darkness of errors, in which we live. 
 
 This conclusion, the moment I arrived at it, and recog- 
 nized its accuracy, explained to me . my feeling of shame 
 in the presence of the cook's wife and of all the poor to 
 whom I gave money. 
 
 Indeed, what is all that money which I give to the 
 poor, and which the cook's wife thought that I was giving 
 to her ? In the majority of cases it is such a small frac- 
 tion that it is not even possible to express it intelhgibly 
 for Sem^n and the cook's wife, — it is generally a mil- 
 lionth, or something like it. I give so little that my 
 giving of money is not, and cannot ^ ,, a deprivation for 
 me; it is only a pastime which amuses me whenever and 
 however I please. Even so did the cook's wife understand 
 me. If I give a man from the street a rouble or twenty 
 kopeks, why should I not give her a rouble ? For the 
 cook's wife this giving of a rouble is the same as the 
 throwing of gingersnaps among the people, in which 
 gentlemen indulge : it is the amusement of people who 
 have a lot of fool's money. I felt ashamed because the 
 mistake of the cook's wife immediately showed me the 
 view which she and all who are not well-to-do must have 
 of me: "He is throwing about fool's money," that is, 
 money which he has not worked for. 
 
 Indeed, what is this money of mine, and how did I get 
 possession of it? Part of it I collected from the land 
 which was left me by my father. The peasants sold their 
 last sheep, or cow, in order to give me the money. Another 
 part of my money is what I have received for my works, 
 for writing books. If my books are harmful, they are 
 being bought as a result of the offence which I have com- 
 
92 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 initted, and the money which I receive for it is ill-gotten ; 
 but if my books are useful to people, the result is even 
 worse. I do not give them to people, but say : " Give me 
 seventeen roubles, and I will let you have them." And 
 as in the other case, a peasant will sell his last sheep, 
 so here a poor student, a teacher, a poor man will deprive 
 himself of what he needs, in order to give me this money. 
 Thus I have collected a lot of money, and what do I do 
 with it ? I take this money to the city and give it to the 
 poor only when they comply with my whims and come to 
 the city to clean for me the sidewalks, the lamps, my boots, 
 and to work for me in factories. 
 
 For this money I haggle with them for everything I 
 want, that is, I try to give them as little as possible and 
 to get as much as possible from them. Suddenly I begin 
 without any premeditation, just for the fun of it, to give 
 this same money to the poor, — not to all the poor, but 
 only to those I take a fancy to. How can any poor man 
 help but hope that, perhaps, it will be his luck to be one 
 of those to whom I will take dehght in giving away my 
 fool's money ? Thus all look upon me, and thus did the 
 cook's wife look at me. 
 
 I have been so dreadfully deluded that this taking of 
 thousands with one hand from the poor, and slinging 
 kopeks back to those to whom I take a fancy, I call doing 
 good. What wonder, then, that I felt ashamed ? 
 
 Yes, before doing good, I must myself stand outside 
 of evil, and be in such a condition that I can stop doing 
 evil. But my whole life is nothing but evil. If I give 
 away one hundred thousand roubles I shall still fail to 
 be in a situation where it is possible to do good, because 
 I shall have five hundred thousand roubles left. Only 
 when I shall have nothing left shall I be able to do a 
 little good, if it be no more ihan what the prostitute did 
 who for three days attended on the sick woman and her 
 babe. And this had seemed so little to me ! And I dared 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 93 
 
 to think of the good ! The first inkling I had at the sight 
 of the starving and the freezing at Lyapinski House, as to 
 my being guilty in the matter, and as to its being im- 
 possible, impossible, absolutely impossible, to live the way 
 I lived, — this alone was the truth. 
 
 So what is to be done ? To this question, if any one 
 needs an answer to it, I shall, God willing, give a detailed 
 answer. 
 
XVL 
 
 It was hard for me to come to the recognition of this, 
 but when I came to it, I was horrified at the delusion in 
 which I had hved. I was standing up to my ears in the 
 mire and pretending to pull others out of it. 
 
 Indeed, what did I mean to do ? I want to do good 
 to others, I want to see to it that men shall not suffer 
 from hunger and from cold, — that they shall live as is 
 proper for men. 
 
 This I want, and I see that in consequence of violence, 
 extortions, and all kinds of tricks, in which I take part, 
 the necessary things are taken away from the working 
 classes, and that the leisure classes, to whom I belong, 
 make superabundant use of the labours of other men. 
 
 I see that this enjoyment of other people's work is 
 distributed in such a manner that, the more cunning and 
 the more complicated the device which a man practises, 
 or which he practised from whom he gets his inheritance, 
 the more fully does he enjoy the labours of others and 
 the less labour does he himself apply^ 
 
 First come a Stieglitz, Derviz, Mordzov, Demidov, 
 Yusupov, then the richer bankers, merchants, landed pro- 
 prietors, officials; then the less wealthy bankers, mer- 
 chants, officials, landed proprietors, to whom I belong; 
 then the lower order of petty traders, innkeepers, usurers, 
 officers of rural police, teachers, sextons, clerks ; then 
 janitors, lackeys, coachmen, water-carriers, drivers, ped- 
 dlers ; and finally the working people, factory hands and 
 peasants, who stand in relation to the first as ten is to 
 one. 
 
 94 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 95 
 
 I see that the life of nine-tenths of the working classes 
 by its essence demands tension and work, like any nat- 
 ural life, but that in consequence of the devices which 
 take the necessities away from these people and put 
 them under oppressive conditions, this life is getting 
 harder and fuller of privations from year to year ; but 
 our life, the life of the men of leisure, thanks to the co- 
 operation of the arts and of the sciences, which are 
 directed to this aim, is getting from year to year more 
 abundant, more attractive, and more secure. I see that 
 in our day the life of the working men, especially of the 
 old men, women, and children of the working population, 
 is simply being ruined by the intensified work, which 
 bears no relation to the nourishment received ; and that 
 this life is not made secure even in its most elementary 
 necessities ; and that, side by side with it, the hfe of the 
 leisure class, of which I am a member, is from year to 
 year more and more filled with superabundance and 
 luxury, and becomes more and more secure, and has, 
 finally, in its favourites, to whom I belong, reached such 
 a degree of security as anciently they dreamed about only 
 in fairy tales, — the condition of the owner of the purse 
 of the never-failing rouble, that is, a condition in which 
 a man is not only completely freed from the law of labour 
 for the support of life, but also acquires the ability with- 
 out labour to enjoy all the benefits of life and to transmit 
 to his children or to whom it may please him that purse 
 with the never-failing rouble. 
 
 I see that the products of men's labour pass more and 
 more away from the mass of the labouring people to those 
 who do not labour, and that the pyramid of the social 
 structure seems to be built in such a way that the stones 
 of the foundation are passing to the apex, the rapidity of 
 this passage increasing in a certain geometric progres- 
 sion. I see that what is taking place is similar to what 
 would take place in an ant-hill, if the society of the ants 
 
96 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 lost the feeling of the common law, if some of the ants 
 should begin to transfer the products of labour to the top 
 of the hill, narrowing down the base and widening the 
 top, and thus compelling all the other ants to transfer 
 themselves from the base to the top. I see that instead 
 of the ideal of a Hfe of labour there has risen before men 
 the ideal of the purse with the never-failing rouble. 
 
 The rich, I among them, employ every device to confirm 
 this state of the never-failing rouble, and to enjoy it, 
 move to the city, where nothing is produced, but every- 
 thing is swallowed up. The poor labouring man, who is 
 fleeced in order that the rich man may have this magic, 
 never-faihng rouble, pushes to the city after him and 
 there also takes up the devices, and either arranges for 
 himself a condition in which he is able to make use of 
 many things, with as little work as possible, thus only 
 making harder the state of the labouring classes ; or, 
 without having reached this condition, he perishes or finds 
 his way among the number of the starving and freezing 
 inmates of the doss-houses, which is increasing with un- 
 usual rapidity. 
 
 I belong to the class of those people who by means of 
 all kinds of devices take from the labouring classes the ne- 
 cessities, and who with these devices have created for them- 
 selves the magic never-failing rouble, which tempts these 
 unfortunates. I want to aid the people, and so it is clear 
 that, above all else, I must not fleece them, as I am 
 doing now, and, on the other hand, I must not tempt 
 them. But I, by aid of the most complex, cunning, evil 
 devices, accumulated through the ages, have arranged for 
 myself the condition of the proprietor of the never-failing 
 rouble, that is, a condition in which I can, without doing 
 any work myself, compel hundreds and thousands to work 
 for me, as indeed I am doing ; and I imagine that I pity 
 people and want to help them. I am sitting on a man's 
 neck, choking him, and demanding that he carry me, and, 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 97 
 
 without getting off him, I assure myself and others that I 
 am very sorry for him and want to alleviate his condition 
 by all possible means except by getting off his neck. 
 
 And this is so simple. If I want to aid the poor, that 
 is, to cause the poor not to be poor, I must not be pro- 
 ductive of them. But as it is, I by my own choice give 
 roubles, tens and hundreds of roubles, to the poor who 
 have departed from the path of life ; and in place of these 
 roubles I take away thousands from people who have not 
 yet departed from this path, and thus make them poor 
 and corrupt them even more. 
 
 That is very simple ; but it was terribly difficult for 
 me to understand all this without any compromises and 
 excuses, which might justify my condition. All I had to 
 do was to recognize my guilt, and everything which before 
 had appeared strange, compHcated, obscure, insoluble, 
 now became quite intelligible and simple. Above all 
 else, the path of my life which resulted from this ex- 
 planation, instead of being tangled, and insoluble and 
 agonizing, as it had been before, became simple, clear, 
 and agreeable. 
 
 Who am I, the one who wants to help people ? I want 
 to help people, and I get up at noon, after a ^ame of vint, 
 with four candles on the table, all worn out and pampered, 
 demanding the aid and service of hundreds of men, and I 
 go to bring aid, — to whom ? To people who get up at 
 five, sleep on boards, live on cabbage and bread, know 
 how to plough, mow, fasten a helve, dress timber, hitch a 
 horse, sew, — people who in strength, endurance, art, and 
 abstemiousness are a hundred times stronger than I, 
 and I come to aid them ! What else but shame could I 
 have experienced when I entered into communion with 
 these people ? The weakest of them, a drunkard, an 
 inmate of Kzhanov House, whom they call a loafer, is a 
 hundred times more industrious than I ; his balance, so to 
 speak, that is, the relation of what he takes from people 
 
98 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 and of what he gives to them, is a thousand times more 
 favourable for him, if I consider what I take from people 
 and what I give them. 
 
 And it is these people that I go out to help. I go to help 
 the poor. Who is poor ? There is no one who is poorer than 
 I am. I am a feeble, worthless parasite, who can exist 
 only under the most exclusive of conditions, who can exist 
 only if thousands will labour to support this worthless 
 life. And I, the louse that devours the leaf of a tree, want 
 to be instrumental in the growth and health of this tree 
 and want to cure it. 
 
 This is the way I pass my whole life : I eat, talk, and 
 listen ; I eat, write, or read, that is, again talk and listen ; 
 I eat, I play ; I eat, talk again, and hsten ; I eat and go to 
 bed ; and thus it is every day, and I can do nothing else. 
 And, in order that I^may be able to do so, it is necessary 
 for the janitor, the peasant, the sculHon, the cook, the 
 lackey, the coachman, the laundress to work from morning 
 until evening, to say nothing of those labours of people 
 which are necessary to furnish the coachmen, the cooks, 
 the lackeys, and the rest with those tools and objects with 
 which and over which they work for me, — the axes, 
 barrels, brushes, dishes, furniture, glasses, blacking, coal- 
 oil, hay, wood, meat. And all these people work hard 
 the whole day long and every day, in order that I may 
 be able to talk, eat, and sleep. And I, this wretched man, 
 imagine that I am able to help others and those very 
 men who are supporting me. 
 
 What is surprising is not that I did not help any one 
 and that I felt ashamed, but that such an insipid idea 
 could have occurred to me. The woman who tended the 
 sick old man helped him; the peasant woman who cut 
 off a slice from the bread which was got from the soil 
 through labour helped the mendicant ; Sem^n who gave 
 three kopeks from his earnings to the beggar helped the 
 beggar, because these three kopeks actually represented 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 99 
 
 his labour : but I had not served any one, had not worked 
 for any one, and knew well that my money did not rep- 
 resent my labour. 
 
 And so I felt that in the money itself, in the possession 
 of it, there was something base and immoral, and that 
 the money itself and the fact that I had it was one of the 
 chief causes of all the evils which I saw before me, 
 and I asked myself : " What is money ? " 
 
xvn. 
 
 Money ! What is money ? 
 
 Money represents labour. I have met educated people 
 who asserted that money represents also the labour of 
 him who possesses it. I must confess that formerly I in 
 some obscure manner shared this opinion. But I had 
 to go to the bottom of what money was, and so, to find 
 this out, I turned to science. 
 
 Science says that there is nothing unjust and prejudicial 
 about money, that money is a natural condition of social 
 life, — necessary : (1) for convenience of exchange, (2) for 
 the establishment of measures of value, (3) for saving, 
 and (4) for payments. The obvious phenomenon that, if 
 I have in my pocket three superfluous roubles which are 
 of no use to me, I need only to whistle in order to col- 
 lect in every civihzed city hundreds cf men who are 
 prepared for these three roubles to do at my will the hard- 
 est, most detested, and most humiliating work, is not due 
 to money, but to very complex conditions of the economic 
 life of the nations. The control exercised by one set of 
 men over another is not due to money, but to this, that 
 the labourer does not receive the full value of his labour ; 
 and he does not get the full value of his labour on 
 account of the properties of capital, interest, wages, and 
 of the complex relations between them and between the 
 production, distribution, and employment of wealth them- 
 selves. 
 
 To express myself in Russian fashion, it turns out that 
 people who have money have the right to twist those who 
 have no money into ropes. But science says that this is 
 
 100 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 101 
 
 a different matter. Science says that in all kinds of pro- 
 ductions three factors take part: land, stored-up labour 
 (capital), and labour. From the different relations of 
 these factors of production among themselves, — from the 
 fact that the first two factors — land and capital — are not 
 in the hands of the working men, but in those of other 
 people, — from this and from the very complex combina- 
 tions which arise from it there follows the enslavement 
 of one set of men by another. 
 
 What is the cause of that monetary kingdom which 
 startles us all by its injustice and cruelty ? Why does 
 one set of people rule others by means of money ? Sci- 
 ence says : this is due to the division of the factors of 
 production and the consequent combinations, which 
 oppress the labourer. This answer has always seemed 
 strange to me, not only in that it leaves out one part of 
 the question, namely, as regards the significance of money 
 in the matter, — but also by that division of the factors 
 of production, which to an unbiassed man always- appears 
 artificial and as not corresponding to reality. 
 
 It is asserted that in every production three factors 
 take part, — land, capital, and labour, — and in this divi- 
 sion it is understood that wealth (or its valuation, — 
 money) is naturally subdivided among those who own 
 this or that factor : the rent — the value of the land — 
 belongs to the landowner, the interest to the capi- 
 talist, and the wages for the labour to the working 
 man. 
 
 Is this true ? In the first place, is it true that three 
 factors take part in every production ? Here, right about 
 me, the production of hay is taking place, while I am 
 writing this. Of what does this production consist ? I 
 am told : of the land which made the grass grow ; of the 
 capital, — the scythes, rakes, forks, wagons, necessary for 
 the making of the hay; and of the labour. But I see 
 that this is not true. In addition to the land, other 
 
102 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 factors take part in the production of the hay : the sun, 
 the water, the social order, which kept this grass from 
 being trespassed upon, the knowledge of the working men, 
 their ability to speak and understand words, and many 
 other factors of production, which for some reason are not 
 recognized by poHtical economy. 
 
 The power of the sun is just as much a factor of every 
 production as the land, and even more necessary than the 
 land. I can imagine the condition of people in which 
 (say, in the city) one set of men assume the right to shut 
 off the sun from others by means of walls or trees ; why 
 is it not included among the factors of production ? 
 Water is another factor, which is just as important as 
 the land. The same is true of the air. I can again 
 imagine people deprived of water and of fresh air, because 
 other people arrogate to themselves the right to the exclu- 
 sive possession of the water and the air which others 
 need. Social security is another such factor; food and 
 wearing apparel are for the working men just such factors 
 of production, and this is acknowledged by certaio econo- 
 mists. Education, the ability to speak, which gives the 
 possibility of applying a different kind of work, is just 
 such a factor. 
 
 I could fill a whole volume with such omitted factors 
 of production. Why, then, have they chosen just those 
 three factors and put them at the basis of science ? The 
 sunlight and the water may, just like the land, be taken 
 as separate factors of production ; the labourer's food and 
 wearing apparel, knowledge and its transmission may be 
 taken as separate factors of production. Why are the 
 sunbeams, the water, food, knowledge, not taken as sepa- 
 rate factors of production, instead of only the land, the 
 tools of labour, and the labour itself ? There can be no 
 other reason than that only in rare cases do men lay 
 claim to the right of using the sunbeams, water, air, food, 
 and the right to speak and Hsten, whereas in our society 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 103 
 
 people constantly lay claim to the use of the land and the 
 tools of labour. 
 
 There is no other basis, and so I see, in the first place, 
 that the division of the factors of production into three 
 factors only is quite arbitrary and does not he in the 
 essence of things itself. But, perhaps, this division is so 
 characteristic of men that where economic relations form 
 themselves, these three, and only these three, factors of 
 production are immediately pushed to the front. Let us 
 see whether that is so. 
 
 I look at those nearest to me, the Eussian colonists, 
 of whom there are a million. The colonists come to some 
 new land, settle down upon it, and begin to work, and it 
 does not occur to any one that a man who does not make 
 use of the land could claim any right to it, and the land 
 does not claim any special rights ; on the contrary, the 
 colonists consciously recognize the land as a common pos- 
 session, and they consider it right for every man to mow 
 and plough wherever he pleases and as much ground as 
 he can take. The colonists procure the tools of labour 
 for the working of the land, for the gardens, for the build- 
 ing of their houses, and it does not even occur to any one 
 that the tools of labour can in themselves bring an 
 income, nor does the capital lay claim to any privileges ; 
 on the contrary, the colonists consciously recognize that 
 all interest for the tools of labour, for grain loaned, for 
 capital is unjust. The colonists work on free land with 
 their own tools or with such as have been loaned to them 
 without interest, each of them working for himself, or 
 all together for the common good, and in such a com- 
 mune it is impossible to find rents, or interest on capital 
 or wages. 
 
 Speaking of such a commune I am not indulging in 
 reveries, but am describing what has always taken place, 
 not only in the case of the Eussian colonists, but also 
 everywhere so long as man's natural quality has not been 
 
104 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 violated by anything. I am describing what to every 
 man appears natural and sensible. People settle on the 
 land, and each person takes hold of the work which is 
 proper for him, and, having elaborated what he needs for 
 his work, he does his own work. But if it is more con- 
 venient for people to work together, they form associa- 
 tions ; but neither in the farming in severalty, nor in the 
 associations will the factors of production be separate, but 
 there will be labour and the necessary conditions of 
 labour : the sun which warms all ; the air which people 
 breathe, the water which they drink, the land on which 
 they work ; raiment on their bodies, food in their bellies ; 
 the crowbar, the spade, the plough, the machine, with 
 which they work, — and it is evident that neither the sun- 
 beams, nor the air, nor the water, nor the earth, nor the 
 raiment on their bodies, nor the crowbar, with which they 
 work, nor the spade, nor the plough, nor the machine, with 
 which they work in associations, can belong to any one 
 but those who make use of the sunbeams, breathe the air, 
 drink the water, eat the bread, cover their bodies, and 
 work with their spades or machines, because all this is 
 needed by those only who make use of it. 
 
 When people act in this manner, we all see that they 
 act as is proper for men, that is, sensibly. And thus, as 
 I observe the economic relations of men in the moment 
 of their formation, 1 do not see that the division into 
 three factors of production is proper to men. I see, on 
 the contrary, that it is improper and senseless. But 
 perhaps the division into three factors fails only in primi- 
 tive human societies ; perhaps it is inevitable with the 
 increase of the population and the evolution of civiliza- 
 tion, and this division has taken place in European society, 
 and we cannot help but acknowledge the accomplished 
 fact. 
 
 Let us see whether this is so. We are told that in 
 European society the division of the factors of production 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 105 
 
 has taken place ; that is, that some people own the land, 
 others the tools of labour, and others again are deprived 
 both of the land and the tools of labour. The labourer is 
 deprived of the land and of the tools of labour. We are 
 so accustomed to this assertion that we are no longer 
 startled by its strangeness. In this expression there is 
 an inner contradiction. The concept of a labourer in- 
 cludes the concept <^ the land on which he lives, and of 
 the tools with which he works. If he did not live on the 
 land, and did not have any tools of labour, he would not 
 be a labourer. There has never been, and there never can 
 be, a labourer who is deprived of the land and of the tools 
 of labour. 
 
 There cannot be a farmer without the land on which 
 he works, nor without a scythe, a cart, a horse ; nor can 
 there be a shoemaker without a house on the land, without 
 the water, the air, and the tools of labour, with which he 
 works. If a peasant has no land, no horse, and no scythe, 
 and a shoemaker has no water and no awl, this means 
 that some one has driven him off the land and has taken 
 away from him or cheated him out of his scythe, his cart, 
 his horse, his awl ; but it can nowise mean that there can 
 be farmers without ploughs and shoemakers without tools. 
 As a fisherman is unthinkable on the land and without 
 his tackle unless some one has driven him off the water 
 and has taken the tackle from him ; even so, it is impos- 
 sible to think of a peasant, a shoemaker, without the land 
 on which he lives, and without instruments of labour, 
 unless, indeed, some one has driven him off the land and 
 has taken the tools away from him. 
 
 There may be people who are driven from one plot of 
 earth to another, and who have been deprived of their 
 tools of labour, and who are forcibly compelled with other 
 people's tools of labour to produce objects which they do 
 not need, but this does not mean that such is the property 
 of the production, but only that there are cases when the 
 
106 ^HAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 natural property of production is violated. But if we 
 accept as factors of production everything of which the 
 labourer may be deprived by another through force, why 
 should we not regard the claims to the slave's person as a 
 factor of production ? Why should we not regard the 
 claims to the sun's rays, to the air, to the water, as just 
 such factors ? 
 
 There may appear a man who, building up a wall, will 
 screen a man from the sun, or who will lead the river 
 water into a pond and thus poison the water ; there may 
 appear a man who will claim the whole man as his chat- 
 tel ; but neither pretension, even if it be put into execu- 
 tion through force, can be recognized as a basis for the 
 division of the factors of production, and so it is just as 
 incorrect to accept the imaginary right to the land and to 
 the tools of labour as special factors of production, as to 
 regard the imaginary right to the use of the sun's rays, 
 the air, the water, and the person of another man as 
 special factors of production. There may be men who 
 will lay claim to the land and to the tools of a man's 
 labour, just as there have been men who lay claim to the 
 labourer's person, and as there may be men who lay claim 
 to the exclusive use of the sun, the water, the air ; there 
 may be men who drive a labourer from place to place, and 
 who by force take away from him the products of his 
 labour as they are manufactured, and even the tools of 
 his labour, and compel him to work for the master and 
 not for himself, as is the case in the factories, — all that 
 is possible : but there can still be no labourer without 
 land and without tools, even as one man cannot be 
 another man's chattel, although people have asserted for 
 a long time that he can be. 
 
 Just as the assertion of the right -o another man's 
 property could not deprive a slave of his inborn property 
 of seeking his own good, and not that of the master, even 
 so now the assertion of the right to the possession of the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN"? 107 
 
 land and to the tools of other people's labour cannot 
 deprive the labourer of each man's innate right to live on 
 the land and work with his own tools or with those of the 
 commune, jn order to produce what he considers useful 
 for himself. 
 
 All that science, observing the present economic con- 
 dition, can say is this, that there exist claims, which 
 certain people lay to the land and the tools of working 
 men's labour, and in consequence of which, for a part of 
 these working men (by no means all), the conditions of 
 production characteristic of man are violated to such an 
 extent that the labourers are deprived of the land and of 
 the tools of labour and are driven to the use of other 
 people's tools of labour ; but nowise this, that this acci- 
 dental violation of the law of production is itself the law 
 of production. 
 
 In affirming that the division of the factors of pro- 
 duction is the basic law of production, the economist does 
 precisely what a zoologist would do, who, seeing a large 
 number of siskins with clipped wings in little houses, 
 should conclude from this that the little house and the 
 small water-pail, which is lifted on rails, are the most 
 essential condition of the life of tlie birds, and that the 
 life of the birds is composed of these three factors. No 
 matter how many siskins with clipped wings there may 
 be in little card houses, the zoologist cannot recognize the 
 card houses as a natural quality of the birds. No matter 
 how many labourers may be driven from their place and, 
 deprived of the productions and the tools of their labour, 
 the labourer's natural property of living on the land and 
 producing with his tools what he pleases will always be 
 the same. 
 
 There are pretensions which some people have to the 
 labourer's land and tools of labour, even as in ancient 
 times there existed the pretensions of some people to the 
 persons of others ; but under no condition can there be a 
 
108 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 division of men into masters and slaves, such as they 
 wished to establish in the ancient world, and there can 
 under no conditions be a division of the factors of produc- 
 tion into land and capital, such as the economists want to 
 estabHsh in modem society. 
 
 It is these illegal pretensions which some people have 
 to the liberty of others that science calls natural proper- 
 ties of production. Instead of taking its bases in the 
 natural properties of human societies, science took them 
 in a specific case and, wishing to justify this specific case, 
 recognized one man's right to the land, which feeds 
 another, and to the tools of labour, with which another 
 works, that is, it recognized a right which never existed 
 and never can exist, and which bears a contradiction in 
 its very expression, because the right to the land claimed 
 by a man who does not work on the land is in reality 
 nothing but the right to make use of the land which I do 
 not use ; and the right to the tools of labour is nothing, 
 but the right to work with tools with which I do not 
 work. 
 
 By its division of the factors of production, science 
 affirms that the natural condition of the labourer is that 
 unnatural condition in which he is ; just as in the ancient 
 world they affirmed, in dividing people into citizens and 
 slaves, that the unnatural condition of the slaves is a 
 natural property of man. This division, which is accepted 
 by science only in order to justify the existing evil, which 
 is placed by it at the basis of all its investigations, has 
 had this effect, that science tries in vain to give explana- 
 tions of existing phenomena, and, denying the clearest 
 and simplest answers to questions that present themselves 
 to it, gives answers which are devoid of contents. 
 
 The question of economic science is as follows : What 
 is the cause of this, that some men, who have land and 
 capital, are able to enslave those who have no land 
 and no capital? The answer which presents itself to 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 109 
 
 common sense is this, that it is due to the money, which 
 has the power of enslaving people. But science denies 
 this and says : This is not due to the property of money, 
 but because some have land and capital, and others have 
 not. We ask why people who have land and capital 
 enslave those who have none, and we are told : Because 
 they have land and capital. But that is precisely w^hat 
 we want to know. The privation of the land and of the 
 tools of labour is that very enslavement. The answer is 
 like this : Facit dormire quia hahet virtutem dormitivam. 
 
 But life does not cease putting its essential question, 
 and even science itself sees it and tries to answer it, but 
 is absolutely unable to do so as long as it rests on its fun- 
 damental principles, and keeps moving about in its magic 
 circle. In order to be able to do so, it must first of all 
 renounce its false division of the factors of production, 
 that is, the recognition of the consequences of phenomena 
 as their causes, and must seek, at first the nearer, and 
 then the more remote, cause of those phenomena which 
 form the subject of its investigations. Science must 
 answer the question as to what the cause is of the fact 
 that some people are deprived of the land and of the tools 
 of labour, while others own them, or, what cause produces 
 the alienation of the land and of the tools of labour from 
 those who work the land and employ the tools. 
 
 The moment science will put to itself this question, 
 there will appear entirely new considerations, which will 
 turn upside down all the propositions of the former quasi- 
 science, which moves in a hopeless circle of assertions that 
 the wretched condition of the labourer is due to its being 
 wretched. To simple people it seems indubitable that 
 the nearest cause of the enslavement of one class of men 
 by another is money. But science, denying this, says 
 money is only an instrument of ex:change which has 
 nothing in common with the enslavement of people. Let 
 us see whether this is so. 
 
xvm. 
 
 Whence does money come? Under what condition 
 does a nation always have money, and under what con- 
 ditions do we know nations who do not use money ? 
 
 A tribe Hves in Africa, or in AustraHa, as anciently the 
 Scythians or Dr^vlyans lived. The tribe lives, ploughing, 
 raising cattle, planting gardens. We hear of it only when 
 history begins; but history begins with the incursion of 
 conquerors. The conquerors always do one and the same 
 thing : they take from the tribe everything they can, — 
 its cattle, its grain, its stuffs, and even captives, and carry 
 it all off. A few years later the conquerors return, but 
 the tribe has not ye recovered from its desolation, and 
 there is nothing to take away, so the conquerors invent 
 another, a better mefjiod for exploiting the forces of this 
 tribe. 
 
 These methods are very simple and occur naturally to 
 all people. The first ipaethod is personal slavery. This 
 method has the inconvenience of demanding the manage- 
 ment of all the working forces of the tribe, and the 
 feeding of all, and so there naturally presents itself a 
 second method, — of leaving the tribe on its land, but 
 recognizing it as belonging to the conquerors and distrib- 
 uting it to the retainers, in order to exploit the tribe's 
 labour through the retainers. But this method has also 
 its inconveniences. The retainers have to look after all 
 the productions of the tribe, and a third method, just as 
 primitive as the first two, is introduced : it is the peremp- 
 tory demand of a term tribute which the conquered have 
 to pay. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN t 111 
 
 The aim of the conquerors consists in taking from the 
 conquered as many productions of their labour as possible. 
 It is evident that, in order to be able to take as much as 
 possible, the conqueror must take such objects as are of 
 the highest value among the people of thi& iribe, and 
 vs^hich, at the same time, are not bulky and inconvenient 
 to store, — pelts, gold. And so the conquerors generally 
 impose a term tribute in pelts or in gold on each family 
 or gens, and by means of this tribute in the most con- 
 venient way exploit the tools of labour of this tribe. The 
 pelts and the gold are nearly all taken from the tribe, and 
 so the conquered have to sell to one another and to the 
 conqueror and his retainers everything they have for 
 gold. 
 
 Precisely this took place in antiquity and in the Middle 
 Ages, and is taking place now. In the ancient world, 
 where one nation was frequently conquered by another, 
 and where the consciousness of the human equality of 
 men was absent, personal slavery was the most popular 
 means of enslavement practised by one set of men agaiast 
 another, and in the personal slavery lay the centre of 
 gravity of this enslavement. In the Middle Ages the 
 feudal system, that is, the territorial possession which is 
 connected with it, and the vassalage partially take the 
 place of slavery, and the centre of gravity of enslavement 
 is transferred from the person to the land. In modern 
 times, since the discovery of America and the develop- 
 ment of trade and the influx of gold, which is accepted 
 as the universal money standard, the monetary tribute 
 becomes, with the enforcement of the political power, the 
 chief instrument for the enslavement of men, and upon it 
 all the economic relations of men are based. In a volume 
 of literary productions there is an article by Professor 
 Yanzhul, which describes the latest history of the Fiji 
 Islands. If I tried to invent a most telling illustration 
 of how in our time the peremptory demand of money has 
 
112 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 become the chief instrument for the enslavement of one 
 class of people by another, I could not discover one which 
 would be more glaring and more convincing than this true 
 story, which is based on documentary evidence and took 
 place recently. 
 
 On certain islands of the South Sea, in Polynesia, there 
 lives the Fiji nation. The whole group of the islands, 
 says Professor Yanzhul, consists of tiny islands which 
 approximately cover a territory of forty thousand square 
 miles. Only half of the islands are inhabited, by a popu- 
 lation of 150,000 natives and fifteen hundred whites. The 
 natives have long since come out of their savage state, 
 excel in ability all the other natives of Polynesia, and 
 represent a nation capable of work and of development, 
 which they have proved by having lately become good 
 farmers and stock-raisers. 
 
 The inhabitants were prosperous, but in 1859 the new 
 kingdom found itself in a desperate state. The people 
 of the Fiji Islands and their representative, Cacabo, needed 
 money. The sum of f 45,000 was- wanted by the Fiji 
 kingdom, in order to pay a contribution or damages, which 
 the United States of North America demanded for certain 
 violence which, it was claimed, the Fijians had shown to 
 some citizens of the American republic. For this purpose 
 the Americans sent a squadron, which suddenly seized a 
 few of the better islands as a pledge, and even threatened 
 to bombard and destroy the colonies, if the contribution 
 should not be handed to the representatives of America 
 at a certain time. 
 
 The Americans were among the first colonists to appear, 
 with the missionaries, in Fiji. Selecting or seizing, under 
 one pretext or another, the best plots of ground on the 
 islands, and there laying out cotton and coffee plantations, 
 the Americans hired whole crowds of natives, binding 
 them by contracts, which were not familiar to the savages, 
 or acting upon them through especial contractors or pur- 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 113 
 
 veyors of live chattel. Conflicts between such planters 
 and the natives, upon whom they looked as slaves, were 
 inevitable, and it was some of these that served as a cause 
 for the demand of a contribution by America. 
 
 In spite of its prosperity, Fiji has almost down to our 
 time preserved the so-called system of payment in kind, 
 which in Europe was current only in the Middle Ages. 
 No money was in circulation among the natives, and the 
 whole commerce had exclusively the character of barter ; 
 commodity was exchanged for commodity, and the few 
 public and governmental levies were made in country 
 produce. What were the Fijians and their king Cacabo 
 to do, when the Americans categorically demanded $45,- 
 000, under threat of the most summary consequences in 
 case of their non-compliance ? For the Fijians the figure 
 itself was something inaccessible, to say nothing of the 
 money, which they had never seen in such a large sum. 
 
 Cacabo took counsel with the other chiefs, and decided 
 to turn to the Queen of England. At first he asked 
 her to take the islands under her protection, and later 
 simply to annex them. But the English were cautious 
 in reply to this request, and were in no hurry to rescue 
 the semi-savage monarch from his difficulty. Instead of 
 a direct answer, they fitted out a special expedition in 
 1860, for the purpose of investigating the Fiji islands, 
 so as to decide whether it was worth while to annex 
 them to the British possessions, and to spend money in 
 order to satisfy the American creditors. 
 
 In the meantime the American government con- 
 tinued to insist on payment, and retained as a pledge 
 several of the best points in its actual possession, and, 
 having gained an insight into the national wealth, in- 
 creased the former 145,000 to 190,000 and threatened to 
 increase even this sum, if Cacabo did not pay it at once. 
 Hard pressed on all sides, poor Cacabo, who was un- 
 acquainted with the European methods of credit trans- 
 
114 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 actions, began, with the advice of European colonists, to 
 look for money in Melbourne, asking it of the merchants, 
 under any and all conditions, even if he had to yield the 
 whole kingdom to private individuals. 
 
 Here, in Melbourne, a commercial company was formed 
 in reply to Cacabo's appeal. This stock company, which 
 took the name of the Polynesian Company, made a pact 
 with the rulers of the Fiji Islands, upon conditions which 
 were exceedingly favourable to itself. Taking upon itself 
 the debt to the American government and binding itself to 
 pay it off in instalments, the company received for it, 
 according to the ■ first agreement, one hundred thousand, 
 and later two hundred thousand, acres of the best land of 
 its own choice, the freedom for all times from all taxes 
 and revenues for all its factories, plants, and colonies, and 
 the exclusive right for a considerable time to estabHsh 
 banks of issue, with the privilege of an unlimited issue of 
 notes. 
 
 From the time of this pact, which was conclusively 
 settled in 1868, the Fijians were confronted, side by side 
 with their local government, with Cacabo at its head, by 
 a powerful commercial organization, with extensive terri- 
 torial possessions on all the islands, and with a decisive 
 influence in the government. Heretofore Cacabo's govern- 
 ment had been satisfied, for its necessities, with those 
 material means which consisted in all kinds of levies in 
 kind, and an insignificant revenue from customs for im- 
 ported goods. After the conclusion of the pact and the 
 foundation of the powerful Polynesian Company, its finan- 
 cial condition was changed. A considerable part of the 
 best land in the possessions passed over to the company, 
 and so the taxes were diminished ; on the other hand, as 
 we know, the company had obtained a grant of a free 
 import and export of all commodities, by which the reve- 
 nue from customs was also reduced. The natives, that is 
 ninety-nine hundredths of the population, had always been 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 115 
 
 poor contributors to the customs revenue, as they hardly 
 used any European commodities, except a few stuffs and 
 metal objects ; but now, since by the grant to the Poly- 
 nesian Company the wealthier Europeans were freed from 
 the customs revenue, the income of King Cacabo became 
 completely insignificant, and he had to bethink himself 
 of its increase. 
 
 And so Cacabo began to take counsel with his white 
 friends as to how he might avert the calamity, and these 
 advised him to introduce the first direct levy in the 
 country, and, no doubt in order to make it as little cum- 
 bersome for himself as possible, it was to be in the shape 
 of a monetary contribution. The levy was established in 
 the form of a universal or head tax, to the amount of one 
 pound for each man and four shillings for each woman on 
 all the islands. 
 
 As we have said, payment in kind and barter even now 
 persist in the Eiji Islands. Very few natives possess any 
 money. Their wealth consists exclusively in all kinds 
 of raw products and flocks, and not in money. But the 
 new tax demanded that, at certain stated periods of time, 
 money be paid, which, when added up, amounted to a 
 considerable sum for a head of a native family. Here- 
 tofore the native had been accustomed to no individual 
 imposts in favour of the government, except personal 
 obhgations; all the levies that were made were paid by 
 the Commune or the village to which he belonged from 
 the common fields, from which he received his main 
 income. There was but one way left for him, — to seek 
 money from the white colonists, that is, to turn either to 
 the trader, or the planter, who had what he needed, — 
 money. 
 
 To the first he was compelled to sell his products at 
 any price, since the collector of taxes demanded the 
 money by a given time ; or he had to borrow money 
 against some future product, a circumstance which, of 
 
116 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 course, the trader made use of in order to demand un- 
 scrupulous interest ; or he had to turn to the planter and 
 sell him his labour, that is, turn labourer. But the wages, 
 no doubt on account of the great simultaneous supply, 
 turned out to be very low in the Fiji Islands, according 
 to the statements of the present administration, at about 
 one shilling a week, or two pounds twelve shillings a 
 year; consequently, in order merely to pay the tax for 
 himself, to say nothing of his family, a Fijian was com- 
 pelled to abandon his home, his family, his own land, and 
 his farm, and, often settling far away, on some other 
 island, to sell himself to a planter for at least six months 
 in order to gain the one pound necessary for the payment 
 of the new tax ; but for the payment of the taxes for his 
 whole family he was compelled to look to other means. 
 
 The result of this order can be easily imagined. From 
 the 150,000 subjects Cacabo collected only <£ 6,000; and 
 so there begins an intensified extortion of taxes, which 
 was unknown before, and a series of compulsory measures. 
 The local administration, incorruptible before, very soon 
 made common cause with the planters, who began to 
 manage the country. For arrears the Fijians were taken 
 to court, and were sentenced, in addition to the payment 
 of the costs, to incarceration for periods of not less than 
 six months. The r6le of these prisons were played by 
 the plantations of the first white man who was willing to 
 pay the tax and the legal cost for the defendant. In this 
 manner the whites had an abundant supply of cheap labour 
 in any quantity desired. At first this compulsory farming 
 out was permitted for the period of six months, but later 
 on the venal judges found it possible to send a man to 
 work for eighteen months, and then to renew their 
 decree. 
 
 Very soon, in the period of a few years, the picture of 
 the economic condition of Fiji was completely changed. 
 Whole prosperous districts were half depleted of their 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 117 
 
 population and extremely impoverished. The whole male 
 population, except the old men and the feeble, were work- 
 ing away from their homes, on the plantations of the 
 whites, in order to provide themselves with the money 
 necessary for the payment of the tax or to satisfy the 
 decree of the court. The women in Fiji do hardly any 
 agricultural labour, and so, in the absence of their hus- 
 bands, the farms were neglected or entirely abandoned. 
 In a few years half the population of Fiji were turned 
 into slaves of the white colonists. 
 
 To alleviate their condition, the Fijians once more 
 turned to England. A new petition, covered with a large 
 number of signatures of the most prominent persons and 
 chiefs, and asking to be annexed to England, made its 
 appearance and was handed to the British consul. By 
 this time England, thanks to its learned expeditions, had 
 had time, not only to study, but also to measure the 
 islands, and in due manner to appreciate the natural 
 wealth of this beautiful corner^ of the globe. On account 
 of all this the negotiations were this time crowned with 
 full success, and in 1874 England, to the great dissatis- 
 faction of the American planters, entered into possession 
 of the Fiji Islands, by annexing them to its colonies. 
 
 Cacabo died, and a small pension was decreed to his 
 successors. The government of the islands was entrusted 
 to Sir Eobinson, the governor of New South Wales. In 
 the first year of its annexation to England, Fiji did not 
 have its administration, but was under the influence of 
 Sir Eobinson, who appointed an administrator for it. On 
 taking the islands into its hands, the English government 
 had to solve a difficult problem, — to satisfy the various 
 expectations from it. The natives naturally expected 
 first of all the abolition of the hateful head tax ; but the 
 white colonists (the Americans) looked upon the British 
 rule partly with suspicion, and partly (those of British 
 origin) expected all kinds of benefits, for example, the 
 
118 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 recognition of their rule over the natives, the approval of 
 their land-grabbing, etc. 
 
 The English government, however, proved itself to be 
 equal to the task, and its first action was the abolition 
 for ever of the head tax, which had created the slavery 
 of the natives to the advantage of a few colonists. But 
 here Sir Kobinson was confronted with a difficult dilemma. 
 It became necessary to do away with the head tax, to 
 save themselves from which the Eijians had turned to the 
 Enghsh government ; at the same time, according to the 
 rule of the English colonial policy, the colonies were to 
 support themselves, that is, it was necessary to find local 
 means to meet the expenditures of the administration. 
 But, with the abolition of the head tax, all the income of 
 Fiji (from the customs dues) did not exceed £6,000, 
 whereas the expenditures of the administration demanded 
 at the least X 70,000 a year. And so Kobinson, after 
 having abolished the money tax, invented the labour tax, 
 which the Fijians had to pay in work, but this did not 
 net the £70,000 necessary for the support of Eobinson 
 and his assistants. 
 
 The thing did not go until the appointment of a new 
 governor, Gordon, who, to get out of the inhabitants the 
 money necessary for his support and for that of his assist- 
 ants, took it into his head that he would not demand any 
 money until a sufficient amount of it should be in circula- 
 tion in the islands, but that he would take the products 
 from the natives and would sell them himself. 
 
 This tragic episode from the life of the Fijians is the 
 clearest and best indication of what money is and in what 
 its significance lies. Here everything was expressed : the 
 first fundamental condition of the enslavement — the can- 
 non, menaces, murder, and seizure of land, and the chief 
 means — money, which has taken the place of all the 
 other means. What in the historical sketch of the 
 economic development of the nations has to be followed 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 119 
 
 out in the course of centuries, is here, where the forms of 
 the monetary violence are worked out completely, concen- 
 trated in one decade. The drama begins by this, that the 
 American government sends its ships with loaded cannon 
 to the shores of the islands, whose inhabitants it wants to 
 enslave. The pretext of this threat is money, but the 
 beginning of the drama is with the cannon which are 
 directed upon all the inhabitants, — women, children, old 
 men, — people who are not guilty of anything, and this 
 phenomenon is now repeated in America, in China, 
 in Central Asia. The beginning of the drama is this, 
 "Your money or your life," which is repeated in the 
 history of all the conquests of all the nations ; $45,000 
 and then 190,000, or slaughter. But there are no 
 190,000. The Americans have them. And so the second 
 act of the drama begins: it is necessary to put off, to 
 exchange the bloody, terrible, concentrated slaughter 
 for less noticeable, though more prolonged, sufferings. 
 And the little nation by its representative seeks a means 
 for exchanging slaughter for enslavement to money. It 
 borrows money, and the forms of the enslavement of men 
 by means of money are worked out. 
 
 This method begins at once to act like a disciplined 
 army, and in five years the work is done : the people have 
 lost not only the right to use their land, but also their 
 property and their freedom ; the men are slaves. 
 
 The third act begins. The situation is exceedingly 
 hard, and the unfortunate people hear the rumour that it 
 is possible to change masters and go into another slavery. 
 (Of liberation from the slavery which the money imposes 
 there is no longer a thought.) And the little nation in- 
 vites another master, to whom it abandons itself with the 
 request that it improve its condition. The English come 
 and see that the possession of these islands makes it pos- 
 sible for them to feed some drones who have been breed- 
 ing in too great a quantity, and the English government 
 
120 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 takes these islands with their inhabitants, but not in the 
 form of personal slaves : it does not even take the land 
 and does not distribute it to its assistants. Those old 
 methods are not needed now. All that is necessary is 
 that they should pay a tribute, one that will, on the one 
 hand, be sufficiently large to keep the labourers in perpet- 
 ual slavery, and, on the other, will feed well the multitude 
 of drones. 
 
 The inhabitants have to pay <£ 70,000. This is the 
 fundamental condition under which England agrees to 
 ransom the Fijians from American slavery, and this is 
 at the same time the one necessary thing for the complete 
 enslavement of the inhabitants. But it turns out that 
 the Fijians are not able under their present condition to 
 pay the X 70,000. The demand is excessive. The Eng- 
 lish for a time modify the demand and take a part in 
 kind, in order, in proper time, when the money shall be 
 in circulation, to increase the demand to its full norm. 
 
 England does not act like the former company, whose 
 procedure may be compared with the first arrival of 
 savage conquerors in the country of savage inhabitants, 
 when they have but the one thought of carrying off as 
 much as possible and going away again; England acts 
 like a more far-sighted enslaver : it does not all at once 
 kill the hen with the golden eggs, but does not mind feed- 
 ing her, since it knows that she is a good layer^ At first 
 it slackens the reins for its own benefit, in order later to 
 pull them tight for all time and to bring the Fijians 
 to that condition of monetary slavery in which all the 
 European and civilized nations are, and from which no 
 liberation is in sight. 
 
 Money is a harmless medium of exchange, but certainly 
 not when the shores of the country are lined with loaded 
 cannon, which are directed upon the inhabitants. The 
 moment money is levied by force, under the protection 
 of guns, there is inevitably repeated what took place on 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 121 
 
 the Fiji Islands, and what has taken place everywhere 
 and at all times, — in the case of the princes and the 
 Dr^vlyans, and of all the governments and their nations. 
 People who have the power to employ force against others 
 will do so by means of the extortion of a sum of money, 
 which compels the people on whom the extortion is prac- 
 tised to become the slaves of the extortioners. 
 
 Besides, there will take place what took place in the 
 case of the English and the Fijians, namely, that the ex- 
 tortioners will, in their demand for money, be more likely 
 to transcend the limit at which the sum of money de- 
 manded has been set, in order to hasten the enslavement, 
 than not to come up to it. They will reach the limit 
 without crossing it only in case of a moral sentiment, and 
 they will always reach it, even though the sentiment may 
 exist, if they are in want. But the governments will 
 always cross this limit, in the first place, because, as we 
 know, the governments themselves are in extreme need, 
 due to the wars and to the necessity of offering stipends 
 to their accompHces. 
 
 All the governments are always in insolvable debt, and, 
 even if they wished to do otherwise, cannot help but carry 
 out the rule promulgated by a Russian statesman of the 
 eighteenth century, that it is necessary to shear the peas- 
 ant and not give him a chance to grow his hair. All the 
 governments are in insolvable debt, and this debt in its 
 totality (not counting its accidental decrease in England 
 and in America) grows from year to year in a terrifying, 
 progression. Even so grow the budgets, that is, the ne- 
 cessity of fighting other extortioners and giving stipends 
 in money and land to the assistants in the extortion, 
 and in a similar way does the land value grow. 
 
 The wages do not grow according to the law of rents, 
 but because there exists a state and land tribute, the pur- 
 pose of which is to take from the people all their surplus, 
 so that for the fulfilment of this demand they may sell 
 
122 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 their labour, because the exploitation of this labour is the 
 aim of the imposition of a tribute. Now the exploitation 
 of this labour is possible only when a greater aggregate 
 amount of money is demanded than the labourers can 
 give without depriving themselves of their means of sup- 
 port. The raising of the scale of wages would destroy 
 the possibility of slavery, and so it can never be raised so 
 long as there is any violence. It is this simple and intel- 
 ligible action of one set of men upon another that the 
 economists call an iron law ; but the instrument with 
 which this action is produced they call a medium of 
 exchange. 
 
 Money, this harmless medium of exchange, is needed 
 by men in their relations among themselves. Where 
 there does not exist a violent demand for a monetary 
 tribute, there has never been any money in its modem 
 significance, and there could have been none, but it has 
 always been, and it always wiU. be, as it is with the 
 Fijians, the Kirgizes, the Africans, the Phoenicians, and 
 in general with people who do not pay any taxes : there 
 we have the direct exchange of objects for objects, and 
 there the accidental standards of values are sheep, furs, 
 hides, shells. A certain kind of money becomes current 
 among people only when it is forcibly demanded of alL 
 Only then does it become a necessity for each person in 
 order that he may ransom himself from violence, and 
 only then does it receive a constant exchange value. 
 What, then, receives a value is not what is more con- 
 venient for exchange, but what is demanded by the 
 government. If gold is demanded, gold will have a value ; 
 if knuckle-bones are demanded, knuckle-bones will have 
 a value. If this were not so, why has the issue of this 
 medium of exchange always formed the prerogative of 
 the government ? 
 
 People — let us say the Fijians — have established 
 their medium of exchange ; very well, let them exchange 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 123 
 
 things in any way they please, and you people who have 
 power, that is the means for violence, do not meddle with 
 this exchange. But what you do is to coin this money, 
 prohibiting others from coining the like : then, as is the 
 case with us, you print a lot of bills, representing on them 
 the portraits of kings ; you sign them with special signa- 
 tures ; determine penalties for the counterfeiting of this 
 money ; distribute them among your assistants, and de- 
 mand, in the form of state and land taxes, just such coins 
 and scraps of paper, with precisely the same signatures, 
 and so many of them that the labourer has to give up his 
 whole labour in order to obtain these scraps of paper and 
 these coins, and you assure us that this money is neces- 
 sary as a medium of exchange. 
 
 All men are free, and one set of men does not oppress 
 another, does not keep men in slavery ; all there is, is 
 money in society and an iron law, according to which 
 rents rise and wages decrease to a minimum ! The fact 
 that half (more than half) the Russian peasants sell them- 
 selves to work for landed proprietors and manufacturers, 
 for the sake of their direct and indirect and land taxes, 
 does not at all mean what it obviously means, namely, 
 that the levying of head taxes and of indirect and land 
 taxes, which are paid to the government and to its assist- 
 ants, the proprietors, in money, compels the labourer to be 
 in the slavery of him who levies the money, but it means 
 that there is money — the medium of exchange — and 
 an iron law ! 
 
 When the serfs were not free, I was able to compel 
 Vanka to do all kinds of work, and if Vanka refused, 
 I sent him to the rural officer, and the officer flogged him 
 until he submitted. However, if I made Vanka work 
 above his strength, without giving him land or food, 
 the matter reached the ears of the authorities, and I had 
 to be responsible for it. Now men are free, but I can 
 compel V^nka, Sidorka, or Petriishka to do any kind of 
 
124 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN ? 
 
 work, and if he refuses I will not give him any money 
 for his taxes, and they will flog him until he submits ; 
 besides, I can compel a German, and a Frenchman, and a 
 Chinaman, and a Hindoo to work for me, by not giving 
 him money, in case of his insubmission, with which to 
 rent land or buy bread, because he has neither land nor 
 bread. And if I make him work without food, above his 
 strength, if I kill him with work, no one will say a word 
 to me ; but if, in addition, I have read books on political 
 economy, I can be firmly convinced that all men are free, 
 and that money does not create any slavery. 
 
 The peasants have known for a long time that it is 
 possible to cause more pain with a rouble than with a 
 club ; it is only political economy that does not want 
 to know it. To say that money does not cause any en- 
 slavement, is the same as if half a century ago we should 
 have said that the serf law does not produce any enslave- 
 ment. Political economists say that, although in conse- 
 quence of the possession of money one man may enslave 
 another, money is a harmless medium of exchange. Why, 
 then, could it not have been said half a century ago that, 
 although it is possible by means of the serf law to enslave 
 a man, the serf law is not a means for enslavement, but a 
 harmless medium of mutual services ? Some give their 
 rude work, others attend to the physical and mental wel- 
 fare of the slaves and to the distribution of the work. It 
 seems to me they used to talk that way. 
 
XIX. 
 
 If this imaginary science — political economy — did 
 not busy itself with what all the juridical sciences busy 
 themselves with, — with an apology for violence, it could 
 not help but see that strange phenomenon that the distri- 
 bution of wealth and the despoliation of land and capital 
 by some, and the enslavement of one set of men by an- 
 other, are all dependent on money, and that only by means 
 of money one set of men now exploits the labour of 
 others, that is, enslaves others. 
 
 I repeat : a man who has money can buy up all the 
 bread and starve another and for the bread enslave him 
 completely. Indeed, so it is done on a large scale in our 
 own sight. One would think that it would be necessary to 
 look for a connection between these phenomena of enslave- 
 ment and money, but science assures us with absolute 
 confidence that money has no relation whatever to the 
 enslavement of men. 
 
 Science says : Money is a commodity Hke any other 
 which has the value of its production, with this difference, 
 that this commodity is chosen as the most convenient 
 medium of exchange for the establishment of prices, for 
 storing, and for making payments : one man makes boots, 
 another grows grain, a third raises sheep, and, to be able 
 more conveniently to exchange their products, they intro- 
 duce money, which represents a corresponding share of 
 labour, and by means of it exchange soles for a brisket 
 of mutton and ten pounds of flour. 
 
 The men of this imaginary science are very fond of 
 representing to themselves such a state of affairs ; but 
 
 126 
 
126 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 such a state of affairs has never existed in this world. 
 Such a representation of society is the same as the rep- 
 resentation of the primeval, uncorrupted, perfect human 
 society, which former philosophers used to make for 
 themselves. There has never existed such a state. In 
 all human societies, where there has been any money as 
 such, there has always existed violence, which is exerted 
 by the strong and the armed over the weak and the 
 unarmed ; but where there has been violence, the stand- 
 ards of values — money, no matter what it may have 
 been, — cattle, furs, hides, metals, — had inevitably to 
 lose their significance and to acquire the meaning of 
 ransom from violence. 
 
 Money has unquestionably the harmless properties 
 which science mentions, but it would in reahty have 
 these properties in a society where the violence of one 
 man over another has not made its appearance, — in an 
 ideal society; but in such a society there would be no 
 money as such, as a common standard of values, as it has 
 not existed, and cannot exist, in any society which has not 
 been subjected to the general political violence. Its chief 
 significance is not to serve as a medium of exchange, but 
 to serve for the purpose of violence. Where there is 
 violence, money cannot serve as a regular medium of 
 exchange, because it cannot be a standard of values. It 
 cannot be a standard of values, because, as soon as one 
 man in society can take away from another the products 
 of his labour, this standard is at once impaired. 
 
 If horses and cows, raised by farmers and others, are 
 taken by force away from farmers and brought together 
 to the market, it is evident that the value of the horses 
 and cows at this market will no longer correspond to the 
 labour of raising the stock, and the values of all other 
 articles will change in conformity with this change, and 
 money will not determine the values of these articles. 
 Besides, if it is possible by force to acquire a cow, a horse, 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 127 
 
 or a house, it is possible by means of this same violence 
 to acquire the money itself, and with this money to ac- 
 quire all the other products. But if the money itself is 
 acquired through violence and is used for the purchase of 
 articles, the money loses every semblance of a medium 
 of exchange. The oppressor, who has taken away the 
 money and gives it for the products of labour, does not 
 exchange, but by means of the money takes all he needs. 
 
 But even if there existed such an imaginary, impossible 
 society, in which, without the general political violence 
 being exerted over men, money — silver or gold — had 
 the significance of a standard of values, it would, at the 
 appearance of violence, immediately lose its significance 
 even in such a society. The oppressor makes his appear- 
 ance in such a society in the form of a conqueror. This 
 oppressor, let us assume, seizes the cows, and the horses, 
 and the houses of the inhabitants ; but it is not conve- 
 nient for him to possess all this, and so it naturally occurs 
 to him to seize that from these people which among them 
 forms all kinds of values and is exchanged for all kinds 
 of articles, namely, money. Immediately the money, as 
 a standard of values, ceases to have any place in such a 
 society, because the standard of the value of all articles 
 will always depend on the arbitrary will of the oppressor. 
 The article which the oppressor will need most and for 
 which he will give most money, will receive a greater 
 value, and vice versa. Thus in a society which is sub- 
 jected to violence, the money at once receives the one 
 predominant meaning of a medium of oppression for the 
 oppressor, and will retain its significance as a medium of 
 exchange for the oppressed only to such an extent and in 
 such a relation as is convenient for the oppressor. 
 
 Let us imagine the matter in a small circle. The serfs 
 furnish the proprietor with cloth, chickens, sheep, and day 
 labour. The farmer substitutes money for the dues in 
 kind, and determines the price of the various articles of 
 
128 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 the dues. He who has no cloth, bread, cattle, or work 
 hands, can offer a certain sum of money. It is evident 
 that in the society of the peasants belonging to this pro- 
 prietor, the valuation of the articles wiU always depend 
 on the arbitrary will of the proprietor. The proprietor 
 makes use of the articles collected, and some he needs 
 more, others less, and in accordance with this he deter- 
 mines a higher or lower price for this or that article. It 
 is evident that nothing but the proprietor's will or his 
 needs decides the prices of these articles among the 
 payers. 
 
 If the proprietor needs grain, he puts a high price on 
 the right of not furnishing a given amount of grain, and a 
 low price on the right of not furnishing cloth, cattle, or 
 day labour ; and so those who have no grain will sell to 
 others their labour, their cloth, and their cattle, in order 
 to buy the grain which they have to furnish to the 
 proprietor. 
 
 If the proprietor takes it into his head to demand all 
 the obligations in money payments, the price of the arti- 
 cles will again not depend on the value of the labour, 
 but, in the first place, on the amount of' money which the 
 proprietor will demand, and, in the second, on the articles 
 produced by the peasants, which the proprietor needs 
 most, and so on this, for what articles he pays more and 
 and for what less. The levy of money, which the pro- 
 prietor makes on the peasants, would not have an influ- 
 ence on the value of articles among the peasants, unless, 
 in the first place, the peasants of this proprietor lived 
 separately from other people and had no other relations 
 except those between themselves and the proprietor, and, 
 in the second, the proprietor did not use the money for 
 the purchase of articles from his own village, but else- 
 where. Only under these two conditions would the value 
 of the articles, though nominally changed, remain rela- 
 tively true, and the money would have the significance 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 129 
 
 of a standard of values and of exchange ; but if the peas- 
 ants have economic relations with the surrounding inhab- 
 itants, the greater or lesser demand for money made by the 
 proprietor will, in the first place, affect the greater or lesser 
 value of their articles in relation to their neighbours. (If 
 less money is demanded of their neighbours than of them, 
 their products will be sold more cheaply than the products 
 of their neighbours, and vice versa.) And, in the second 
 place, the levy of money made by the proprietor on the 
 peasants could have no influence on the value of the prod- 
 ucts unless the proprietor did not use the money collected 
 for the purchase of products from his peasants. But if he 
 uses his money for the purchase of his peasants' products, 
 it is evident that even the relation of prices of various 
 articles among the peasants themselves will constantly 
 change in proportion as the proprietor purchases this or 
 that article. 
 
 Let us suppose that one proprietor has set the peasant 
 dues very high, and his neighbour has put them low : it 
 is evident that in the sphere of the first proprietor all the 
 articles will be cheaper than in the sphere of the second, 
 and that the prices in either sphere will depend only on 
 the raising or the lowering of the dues. Such is one of 
 the influences of violence on prices. 
 
 Another influence, which results from the first, will 
 consist in the relative values of all articles. Let us sup- 
 pose that one proprietor likes horses and pays well for 
 them ; another is fond of towels and pays well for them. 
 It is evident that in the possessions of the two proprietors 
 horses and towels will be high, and the price for these 
 articles will not be in proportion to the prices of cows 
 and of grain. To-morrow the one who is fond of towels 
 dies, and his successor is fond of chickens : it is evident 
 that the price of the towels will go down, and that of the 
 chickens will rise. 
 
 Where in society there exists the oppression of one 
 
130 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 man by another, the significance of money as a standard 
 of values is immediately subjected to the arbitrary will of 
 the oppressor, and its significance as a medium of ex- 
 change of products of labour gives way to its significance 
 as a most convenient medium for exploiting the labour of 
 others. The oppressor needs the money not for exchange, 
 nor for the establishment of standards of values, — he 
 establishes them himself, — but only as a convenience of 
 oppression, which consists in this, that the money is put 
 away for safe-keeping, and that with money it is much 
 easier to keep in subjection the greatest number of men. It 
 is inconvenient to take away all the cattle, in order that 
 one may all the time have horses, and cows, and sheep, 
 as many as one may need of them, because one has to 
 feed them ; the same is true of the grain, — it may get 
 spoiled. The same is true of the labour, the corvee : at 
 one time a thousand labourers are wanted, and at another 
 not even one. The money, which is demanded of him 
 who does not have it, makes it possible to get rid of all 
 these inconveniences and always to have everything 
 which is needed, and it is for this alone that the oppressor 
 needs it. Besides, the oppressor needs the money for 
 this, that his right to exploit the labour of others may 
 not be limited to certain persons, but may extend over all 
 men who are in need of money. When there was no 
 money, the proprietor could exploit the labour of his 
 serfs alone ; but when two of them agreed to take from 
 their serfs money, which they did not have, they both 
 began indiscriminately to exploit all the forces in the 
 two estates. 
 
 And so the oppressor finds it more convenient to make 
 his demands for other people's labour in the shape of 
 money, and for this alone does the oppressor need the 
 money. But for the oppressed man, for him who is 
 deprived of his labour, the money is not necessary for 
 exchange, — he exchanges without money, as all the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 131 
 
 nations without governments have exchanged; nor for 
 determining the standards of values, because this determi- 
 nation takes place in spite of him ; nor for safe-keeping, 
 because he who is deprived of the products of his labour 
 cannot save ; nor for payments, because the one who is 
 oppressed will have to pay more than he receives, or, 
 if he has to receive, the payments will not be made 
 to him in money, but in commodities, — if the labourer 
 receives the payment for his work directly from his 
 master's shop, — and the same is true if for his whole 
 earnings he purchases articles of prime necessity in free 
 shops. Money is demanded of him, and he is told that, 
 if he does not pay it, he will get no land, no grain, or his 
 cow, his house, will be taken from him, and he will be 
 made to work out or will be put in prison. From this 
 he can free himself only by selling the products of his 
 labour and his labour itself at prices which are not estab- 
 lished by a regular exchange, but by the power which 
 demands the money of him. 
 
 With these conditions that result from the influence of 
 tributes or taxes on the values, which are repeated at all 
 times and everywhere, with the proprietor on a small 
 scale, and in the government on a large scale ; with these 
 conditions, where the causes of the changes of values are 
 as evident, as it is evident to him who looks back of the 
 curtain why and how the marionette raises or lets down 
 a foot ; with these conditions, to speak of money as repre- 
 senting a medium of exchange and a standard of values 
 is, to say the least, astonishing. 
 
XX. 
 
 Every enslavement of one man by another is based on 
 nothing but this, that one man may deprive another 
 of life and, without abandoning this menacing state, may 
 compel another to do his will. 
 
 It may unmistakably be said that, if there is an 
 enslavement of a man, that is, the fulfilment by one man 
 against his will, at the will of another, of certain acts 
 which are undesirable to him, the cause of it is only the 
 violence which has for its foundation the menace of 
 depriving him of life. If a man gives all his labour 
 to others, gets insufficient nourishment, allows his little 
 children to do hard work, leaves his land, and devotes 
 his whole life to hateful and to him useless labour, as 
 actually takes place in our sight, in our society (which 
 we call cultured only because we live in it), it is safe to 
 say that he does so only in consequence of the fact 
 that for the non-fulfilment of all this he is threatened 
 with the loss of his life. And so, in our cultured society, 
 where the majority of people under terrible privations 
 perform hateful and to them useless labour, the majority 
 of men are in a state of enslavement, which is based on 
 the menace of depriving them of their lives. Wherein 
 does this enslavement consist? And in what does the 
 menace of depriving them of their lives lie ? 
 
 In ancient times the manner of enslavement and the 
 threat of depriving men of their Hves were manifest: 
 they employed a primitive method for enslaving people, 
 which consisted in the direct threat of killing by means 
 
 132 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 133 
 
 of the sword. The man in arms said to him who 'was 
 unarmed : " I can kill you, as you saw me kill your 
 brother ; but I do not want to do so, — I spare you, most 
 of all, because it is more advantageous for me and for you 
 if you work for me, than if you are killed. And so, do 
 everything which I command you, for if you refuse I will 
 kill you." And the unarmed man submitted to him who 
 was armed, and did everything commanded by him. The 
 unarmed man worked, the one in arms threatened. That 
 was that personal slavery which is the first to appear 
 among all the nations, and even now may be met with 
 among primitive nations. 
 
 This method of enslavement is the first to make its 
 appearance, but with the greater complexity of life this 
 method is modified. In proportion as life becomes more 
 complicated, this method presents great inconveniences to 
 the oppressor. To exploit the labour of the feeble, the 
 oppressor is obH'ged to feed and clothe them, that is, to 
 maintain them in such a way that they may be able to 
 do work, and thus the number of the enslaved is lim- 
 ited ; besides, this method compels the oppressor all the 
 time to stand over the enslaved with the threat of kill- 
 ing them. And so a second method of enslavement 
 is worked out. 
 
 Five thousand years ago, as is noted down in the 
 Bible, this new, more convenient, and broader method 
 was worked out by Joseph the Fair. This method is 
 the same which in modem times is used for the taming 
 of unruly horses and wild beasts in menageries. This 
 method is starvation. 
 
 This is the way it is described in the Bible, in the 
 Book of Genesis, Chapter XLI. : 
 
 48. And he gathered up all the food of the seven years 
 which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in 
 the cities : the food of the field which was round about 
 every city, laid he up in the same. 
 
134 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 49. And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, 
 very much, until he left numbering ; for it was without 
 number. 
 
 53. And the seven years of plenteousness that was in 
 the land of Egypt, were ended. 
 
 54. And the seven years of dearth began to come, 
 according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in 
 all lands ; but in all the land of Egypt there was 
 bread. 
 
 55. And when all the land of Egypt was famished, 
 the people cried to Pharaoh for bread : and Pharaoh said 
 unto all the Egyptians, Go unto Joseph ; what he saith 
 to you, do. 
 
 56. And the famine was over all the face of the earth : 
 and Joseph opened all the store-houses, and sold unto 
 the Egyptians , and the famine waxed sore in the land 
 of Egypt. 
 
 57. And aU countries came into Egypt to Joseph for 
 to buy corn ; because that the famine was so sore in all 
 lands. 
 
 Making use of the right of the primitive method of 
 enslaving people with the threat of the sword, Joseph 
 collected the corn in the good years, in expectation of 
 the bad years, which generally follow after the good, a 
 fact which all people know without Pharaoh's dreams, 
 and by this means — by hunger — he enslaved the 
 Egyptians and all the other inhabitants of the surround- 
 ing countries more powerfully and more conveniently for 
 Pharaoh. But when the people began to suffer from 
 hunger, he so arranged it that the people would for ever 
 be in his power, — through hunger. This is described in 
 Chapter XLVII. : 
 
 13. And there was no bread in all the land ; for the 
 famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt, and all 
 the land of Canaan, fainted by reason of tlie famine. 
 
 14. And Joseph gathered up all the money that was 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 135 
 
 found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, 
 for the corn which they bought : and Joseph brought the 
 money into Pharaoh's house. 
 
 15. And, when money failed in the land of Egypt, and 
 in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto 
 Joseph, and said. Give us bread : for why should we die 
 in thy presence ? for the money faileth. 
 
 16. And Joseph said, Give your cattle ; and I will give 
 you for your cattle, if money fail. 
 
 17. And they brought their cattle unto Joseph : and 
 Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for 
 the flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the 
 asses ; and he fed them with bread, for all their cattle, 
 for that year. 
 
 18. When that year was ended, they came unto him the 
 second year, and said unto him. We will not hide it from 
 my lord, how that our money is spent ; my lord also hath 
 our herds of cattle : there is not aught left in the sight of 
 my lord, but our bodies and our lands : 
 
 19. Wherefore shall we die before thine eyes, both we 
 and our land ? buy us and our land for bread, and we and 
 our land will ^be servants unto Pharaoh : and give us 
 seed, that we may live, and not die that the land be not 
 desolate. 
 
 20. And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for 
 Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, 
 because the famine prevailed over them : so the land 
 became Pharaoh's. 
 
 21. And as for the people, he removed them to cities 
 from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other 
 end thereof. 
 
 22. Only the land of the priests bought he not ; for the 
 priests had a portion assigned them of Pharaoh, and did 
 eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them; wherefore 
 they sold not their lands. 
 
 23. Then Joseph said unto the people. Behold, I have 
 
136 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh : lo, here 
 is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land. 
 
 24. And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye 
 shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall 
 be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and 
 for them of your households, and for food for your little 
 ones. 
 
 25. And they said, Thou hast saved our lives : let us 
 find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pha- 
 raoh's servants. 
 
 26. And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt 
 unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part; 
 except the land of the priests only, which became not 
 Pharaoh's. 
 
 Before this, Pharaoh, to exploit the labours of the 
 people, had to compel them by force to work for him; 
 but now, since the provisions and the land are all in the 
 hands of Pharaoh, he needs only to watch them by force, 
 and may compel them by hunger to work for him. 
 
 The whole land is Pharaoh's, and the provisions (what 
 can be taken away) are always in his hands, and so, 
 instead of driving each one individually with the sword 
 to work, he needs only guard the provisions by force, and 
 the people are enslaved, not by the sword, but by hunger. 
 
 In a year of famine, all may by Pharaoh's will be 
 starved to death, and in a year of plenty those may be 
 starved who, from some accidental mishaps, have no 
 supply of corn. 
 
 And there establishes itself a second method of enslave- 
 ment, not directly by the sword, that is, by this, that the 
 one who is strong, threatening with death, drives the one 
 who is weak to work, but by this, that the strong man, 
 taking the provisions away and guarding them with the 
 sword, compels the weak man to surrender himself to 
 work for his food. 
 
 Joseph says to the hungry : " I can starve you to death, 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 137 
 
 because I have the corn ; but I spare you, if, for the bread 
 which I give you, you will do what I command." 
 
 Eor the first method of enslavement the one in power 
 needs only have warriors, who make their rounds among 
 the inhabitants and under the threat of death carry out the 
 demand of the powerful man. With the first method 
 the oppressor need divide only with his warriors. But 
 with the second method, the oppressor needs, in addition 
 to the warriors necessary to guard the stores of corn and 
 the land against the starving, another class of assistants, 
 — big and little Josephs, — managers and distributers 
 of corn. And the oppressor has to divide up with them 
 and to give Joseph a vesture of fine linen, a gold ring, 
 and servants, and corn, and silver for his brothers and 
 relatives. Besides, in the very nature of things, the 
 accomplices in the violence of this second method are not 
 only the managers and their relatives, but also all those 
 who have supplies of corn. As in the first method, which 
 is based on rude force, every one who had arms became 
 a participant in the violence, so in this method, which 
 is based on hunger, every one who has supplies takes 
 part in the oppression and rules over those who have 
 none. 
 
 The advantage of this method over the first consists for 
 the oppressor in this: (1) above all else, that he is no 
 longer obliged to exert an effort in compelling the labour- 
 ers to do his will, but that the labourers come themselves 
 and sell themselves to him ; (2) that a smaller number of 
 men slip away from his oppression. The disadvantage 
 for the oppressor is only this, that in this method he has 
 to divide up with a larger number of men. The advan- 
 tage in this method for the oppressed is this, that they 
 are no longer subjected to rude violence, but are left to 
 themselves and may always hope to pass over from the 
 oppressed to the oppressor, which in reality they some- 
 times are able to do under favourable conditions; but 
 
138 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 their disadvantage is this, that they can never slip away 
 from a certain amount of violence. 
 
 This new method of enslavement generally enters into 
 use with the old, and the powerful man reduces the one 
 and expands the other, as the need for it may arise. But 
 even this method of enslavement does not fully satisfy 
 the wishes of the powerful man, — to take away the great- 
 est possible amount of products of labour from the greatest 
 possible number of labourers, and to enslave the great- 
 est possible number of men, — and does not correspond to 
 the more complex conditions of life, and a new method of 
 enslavement is worked out. 
 
 The new, and third, method is the method of tribute. 
 This method, like the second, is based on hunger, but to 
 the means of enslaving men by depriving them of bread 
 is added also that of depriving them of the other necessi- 
 ties. The powerful man exacts from his slaves such an 
 amount of monetary tokens, which he himself possesses, 
 that, in order to obtain them, the slaves are obliged not 
 only to sell supplies of corn on a larger scale than that 
 fifth which Joseph determined, but also articles of prime 
 necessity, — meat, hides, wool, garments, fuel, buildings 
 even, and so the oppressor always keeps his slaves in sub- 
 jection, not only through hunger, but also through thirst, 
 and want, and cold, and all other kinds of privations. 
 
 And there establishes itself a third form of slavery, 
 that of money, which consists in this, that the powerful 
 man says to the weak : " I can do with each of you sepa- 
 rately what I please ; I can simply kill you with a gun, 
 or I can kill you by taking away your land which feeds 
 you, or I can, for the monetary tokens, which you must 
 furnish me, buy up all the corn on which you feed, and 
 sell it to strangers, and any moment starve you out; I 
 can take away everything which you have, — your cattle, 
 your dwellings, your garments, — but that is not conve- 
 nient and agreeable for me, and so I leave it to you to 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 139 
 
 dispose of your labour and the products of your labour 
 as you please ; only give me so many monetary tokens, 
 which demand I distribute either by heads, or according 
 to the land on which you are settled, or according to 
 your food and drink, or your garments, or buildings. Let 
 me have these tokens, and arrange matters among your- 
 selves as you please; but know this much, that I will 
 not defend and protect the widows, nor the orphans, nor 
 the sick, nor the old, nor those who have suffered from 
 fires ; I will defend only the regularity of the circulation 
 of these monetary tokens. Only he who gives me reg- 
 ularly, in accordance with my demand, the established 
 amount of monetary tokens, will be right in my eyes and 
 will receive my protection. It is a matter of indifference 
 to me how these monetary tokens are obtained." 
 
 And the powerful man issues these tokens, as receipts 
 for the fulfilment of his demands. 
 
 The second method of enslavement consists in this, 
 that, taking away the fifth part of the crops and laying 
 by stores of corn, Pharaoh, in addition to the personal 
 enslavement by means of the sword, receives, with his 
 assistants, the possibility of ruling all the workingmen in 
 time of famine and some of them in time of calamities 
 which befall them. The third method consists in this, 
 that Pharaoh demands of the labourers more than the 
 part of corn costs which he took from them, and re- 
 ceives, with his assistants, a new means for ruling the 
 labourers, not only in time of famine and accidental mis- 
 haps, but also at all times. 
 
 With the second method the people keep supplies of 
 com, which help them, without surrendering themselves 
 to slavery, to bear small failures of crops and accidental 
 mishaps; with the third method, when the exactions are 
 greater, the supplies of corn are all taken away, and so 
 are all the other supplies of articles of prime necessity, 
 and with the slightest mishap the labourer, who has no 
 
140 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 supplies of com, nor any other supplies, which he might 
 be able to exchange for com, is subjected to slavery by 
 those who have money. With the first method the op- 
 pressor needs only have warriors and divide with them ; 
 with the second method he has to have, in addition to 
 the guardians of the land and of the supplies of com, col- 
 lectors and clerks for the distribution of the corn ; with 
 the third method he can no longer himself mle the land, 
 but in addition to the warriors to guard the land and the 
 wealth, he must also have owners of land and collectors 
 of tribute, distributers according to heads or to articles of 
 use, superintendents, customs servants, managers of money, 
 and operators with money. 
 
 The organization of the third method is much more 
 complicated than the second; with the second method, 
 the collecting of the corn may be farmed out, as was done 
 in ancient times and is even now done in Turkey ; but in 
 burdening the slaves with taxes, a complicated adminis- 
 tration of men is needed, to watch after this, that the 
 men, or their acts which are taxable, shall not escape the 
 tribute. And so, with the third method, the oppressor 
 has to share with a still greater number of men than with 
 the second method ; besides, in the very nature of things, 
 all the men, either of the same or of a foreign country, 
 who have money, become the participants in this third 
 method. The advantages of this method for the op- 
 pressor over the first and the second methods are the 
 following : 
 
 In the first place, that by means of this method a 
 greater amount of work may be got out in a more con- 
 venient manner, for a money tax is like a screw, — it 
 may be easily and conveniently screwed in to its highest 
 limit, care being taken that the golden hen is not killed, 
 so that it is not even necessary to wait for a year of fam- 
 ine, as in the case of Joseph, because the year of famine 
 is made perpetual 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 141 
 
 In the second place, that with this method the violence 
 is now extended over all the people without land, who 
 formerly escaped and gave only part of their labour away, 
 but now are obliged, in addition to the part of their labour 
 which they used to give for the corn, to give also part of 
 this labour as taxes to the oppressor. 
 
 The disadvantage for the oppressor consists in this, 
 that with this method he has to share with a greater 
 number of men, not only of his immediate assistants, but 
 also, in the first place, with all those private landowners 
 who generally make their appearance with this third 
 method ; in the second place, with all those men of his 
 own, and even of a foreign, nation, who have the monetary 
 tokens which are demanded of the slaves. 
 
 The advantage for the oppressed man, in comparison 
 with the second method, is this : he receives a still greater 
 personal independence from the oppressor; he can live 
 where he pleases, do what he pleases, and sow grain, or 
 not ; he is not obliged to give an account of his work and, 
 having money, may consider himself quite free, and con- 
 stantly hope to obtain, and actually obtain, for a time at 
 least, if he has surplus money or land bought for it, not 
 only an independent condition, but also that of an op- 
 pressor. 
 
 The disadvantage to him is this, that in its totality the 
 condition of the oppressed, under this third method, be- 
 comes much harder, and they are deprived of the greater 
 part of the products of their labour, since with this third 
 method the number of men who exploit the labour of 
 others is still greater, and so the burden of supporting 
 them falls on a smaller number. 
 
 This third method of enslavement is also very old, and 
 enters into use with the other two, without completely 
 excluding them. All three methods of enslavement have 
 never ceased to exist. All three methods may be com- 
 pared with screws which hold down the plank that is 
 
142 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 laid over the labourers and is choking them. The chief, 
 fundamental, middle screw, without which the other 
 screws will ^not hold, which is the first to be screwed in 
 and is never relaxed, is the screw of personal slavery, of 
 the enslavement of one set of men by another by means 
 of the threat of execution by the sword ; the second screw, 
 which is screwed in after the first, is the enslavement of 
 people by means of depriving them of the land and of the 
 provisions of food, a seizure which is supported by the per- 
 sonal threat of execution ; and the third screw is the en- 
 slavement of people by means of a demand for monetary 
 tokens, which they do not have, again supported by the 
 threat of murder. All three screws are screwed in, and 
 only when one is tightened do the others weaken. For 
 the complete enslavement of the labourer all three screws 
 — all three kinds of enslavement — are needed, and in 
 our society all three methods of enslavement are con- 
 stantly in use, — all three screws are always screwed in. 
 
 The first method of the enslavement of men by means 
 of personal violence and the threat of execution by the 
 sword has never been abolished, and will not be abolished 
 so long as there exists any kind of an enslavement of one 
 set of men by another, because upon it every enslavement 
 is based. We are all very naively convinced that personal 
 slavery has been abolished in our civilized world, that 
 its last remnants have been destroyed in America and 
 in Kussia, and that now barbarians alone have slavery, 
 while we do not have it. We all forget about a small 
 circumstance, about those hundreds of millions of a stand- 
 ing army, without which there does not exist a single 
 government, and with the abolition of which the whole 
 economic structure of any government will inevitably go 
 to pieces. What are these millions of soldiers, if not the 
 personal slaves of those who rule over them ? Are not 
 these men compelled to do the whole will of their owners 
 under threat of torments and of death, — a threat which 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 143 
 
 is frequently carried out? The only difference is this, 
 that the subjection of these slaves is not called slavery, 
 but discipline, and that the others were slaves from their 
 birth to their death, while these are so only for the longer 
 or shorter time of their so-called service. 
 
 Personal slavery has not only not been abohshed in our 
 civilized societies, but with the universal military service 
 it has of late been strengthened, and it remains at present 
 such as it has always been, only a little changed. It 
 cannot help but be, for, so long as there is any enslave- 
 ment of one set of men by another, there will be this 
 personal slavery, which with the threat of the sword 
 supports the territorial and tax enslavement of men. It 
 may be that this slavery, that is the army, is very neces- 
 sary, as they say, for the defence and the glory of the 
 country, but this usefulness is more than doubtful, for we 
 see that in unsuccessful wars it frequently serves for 
 the enslavement and degradation of the country ; but what 
 is quite indubitable is the usefulness of this slavery for 
 the purpose of maintaining the territorial and tax enslave- 
 ment. Let the Irish or the Russian peasants get posses- 
 sion of the proprietors' lands, the armies will come and 
 take them back again. Let one build a distillery or 
 brewery and refuse to pay the revenue, and the soldiers 
 will come and stop the plant. Refuse to pay taxes, and 
 the same will happen. 
 
 The second screw is the method of enslaving people 
 by depriving them of their land, and so, of their food 
 supphes. This method of enslavement has also existed 
 and will always exist, wherever men are enslaved, and, 
 no matter how much it jmay be modified, it exists every- 
 where. At times the whole land belongs to the king, as 
 is the case in Turkey, and one-tenth of the crop is collected 
 for the treasury; at others only part of the land, and a 
 tax is collected from it ; again, the whole land belongs to 
 a small number of men, and a share of the labour is 
 
144 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 exacted, as is the case in England ; or a greater or smaller 
 part belongs to large proprietors, as in Kussia, Germany, 
 and France. But, wherever there is any enslavement, 
 there is also the appropriation of the land by means of 
 enslavement. 
 
 The screw of this enslavement of people is loosened or 
 tightened in proportion as the other screws are screwed 
 down ; thus, in Kussia, when the personal enslavement 
 was distributed over the majority of the labourers, the 
 territorial enslavement was superfluous ; but the screw of 
 the personal enslavement in Russia was loosened only 
 when the screws of the territorial and tax enslavement 
 were tightened. All were attached to communes, all 
 migration and transposition were discouraged, the land 
 was appropriated or given away to private persons, and 
 then the peasants were set free. In England, for example, 
 the territorial enslavement is most active, and the question 
 of the nationalization of the land consists merely in tighten- 
 ing the tax screw, in order to loosen the screw of the 
 territorial enslavement. 
 
 The third method of enslavement — by means of 
 tribute, of taxes — has similarly existed, and, in our 
 time^ with the dissemination of uniform monetary tokens 
 in the different countries and the strengthening of the 
 governmental power, has only acquired a special force. 
 This method has been so worked out in our time that it 
 is striving to substitute itself for the second, the terri- 
 torial method of enslavement. It is the screw which, 
 when tightened down, weakens the territorial screw, as is 
 evident from the economic cc>ndition of the whole of 
 Europe. We have within our memory gone in Russia 
 through two passages of slavery from one form into 
 another : when the serfs were emancipated and the pro- 
 prietors were left with the right to the greater part of 
 the land, the proprietors were afraid that their power over 
 their peasants was escaping from them ; but experience 
 
WHAT SHALL WE BO THEN? 145 
 
 showed that they needed only to let out of their hands 
 the old scourge of the personal slavery and take up 
 another, the territorial scourge. The peasant had no corn 
 to feed on, and the proprietor had the land and the 
 supply of corn, and so the peasant was left the same 
 slave he had been. 
 
 The second passage was when the government with its 
 taxes screwed down very tightly the other screw, that of 
 the taxes, and the majority of the labourers were com- 
 pelled to sell themselves into slavery to the landed pro- 
 prietors and into the factories. And thus a new form of 
 slavery took possession of the people even more thor- 
 oughly, so that nine-tenths of the working classes work 
 for the proprietors and in the factories, only because they 
 are compelled to do so by the demand for state and land 
 taxes. This is so obvious that, let the government just 
 try not collecting any direct, indirect, and land taxes for 
 the period of one year, and all the works in other people's 
 fields and in the factories will come to a standstill. Nine- 
 tenths of the Eussian people hire out during the time 
 that the taxes are levied, and for the purpose of paying 
 the taxes. 
 
 All three methods of the enslavement of people have 
 never ceased to exist, and exist now; but people are 
 prone not to notice them, the moment new justifications 
 are found for these methods. And what is strange is 
 that this very method, on which at the present time 
 everything is based, — this screw which holds everything 
 together, — is not noticed. 
 
 When in the ancient world the whole economic struc- 
 ture was based on persoual slavery, the greatest minds 
 could not see that it was it. It seemed to Xenophon, and 
 to Plato, and to Aristotle, and to the Eomans that it 
 could not be otherwise, and that slavery was the inevi- 
 table outcome of wars, without which humanity was 
 unthinkable. Even so in the Middle Ages and down to 
 
146 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 our own time men did not see the significance of terri- 
 torial possession and the consequent slavery, on which 
 the whole economic structure of the Middle Ages was 
 hased. Even so no one sees now, nor wants to see, that 
 in our time the enslavement of the majority of people is 
 based on the monetary state and land taxes, which are 
 collected by the governments from their subjects, — taxes 
 which are collected by means of the administration and 
 the army, which are maintained by the taxes. 
 
XXL 
 
 It is not surprising that the slaves themselves, who 
 since antiquity have been subjected to slavery, are not 
 conscious of their condition and consider that condition 
 of slavery in which they have always lived as a natural 
 condition of human life, and see an alleviation in the 
 change of the form of slavery. Nor is it surprising that 
 the slave-owners sometimes sincerely mean to free the 
 slaves, — to loosen one screw, when the other is already 
 tightened. Both are accustomed to their condition, and 
 the first, the slaves, who do not know what liberty is, 
 seek only alleviation or at least a change of the form 
 of slavery ; the others, the slave-owners, who wish to con- 
 ceal their injustice, try to ascribe a special significance to 
 those new forms of slavery which they impose on the 
 people in the place of the old. 
 
 But what is remarkable is how science, the so-called 
 free science, can, in investigating the economic conditions 
 of the people's life, help seeing what forms the basis of 
 all the economic conditions of the people ? One would 
 think that it is the business of science to discover the 
 connection between phenomena, and the common cause 
 of a series of phenomena. Political economy does pre- 
 cisely the opposite : it carefully conceals the connection of 
 the phenomena and their significance, and carefully avoids 
 all answers to the simplest and most essential questions ; 
 it is like a lazy, restive horse, which goes well only down- 
 hill, when there is nothing to pull ; but the moment it is 
 necessary to pull, it prances toward one side, pretending 
 that it has to go somewhere to one side, to attend to its 
 
 147 
 
148 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 own business. The moment a serious, essential question 
 presents itself to science, there at once begin scientific 
 discussions about subjects which have nothing to do with 
 the question and which have but one purpose, — to draw 
 the attention away from the question. 
 
 You ask what the cause is of that unnatural, monstrous, 
 irrational, and not only useless, but even harmful, phe- 
 nomenon that certain men can neither eat nor work 
 except by the will of other men. And science answers 
 with a most serious look : Because certain people attend 
 to the work and nourishment of others, — such being the 
 law of production. 
 
 You ask what the right of property is, on the basis of 
 which one set of men appropriate to themselves the land, 
 the food, and the tools of labour of others. Science 
 answers with a most serious look : This right is based on 
 the defence of one's labour, that is, that the defence of 
 labour by one set of men is expressed by the seizure 
 of the labour of other men. 
 
 You ask what that money is which is coined and 
 printed everywhere by the government, that is, by the 
 power, and which is in such enormous quantities exacted 
 from the labourers, and which in the form of state debts 
 is imposed on future generations of labourers. You ask 
 whether this money, carried to the farthest limits of pos- 
 sible exaction, in these proportions has not an effect on 
 the economic relations of the people who are paying to 
 the receivers. And science with a most serious look tells 
 you : Money is a commodity, like sugar and chintz, which 
 differs from these only in that it is more convenient for 
 exchange ; but the taxes have no effect at all upon the 
 economic conditions of the people : the laws of produc- 
 tion, of exchange, of the distribution of wealth are one 
 thing, and the taxes are another. 
 
 You ask whether the economic conditions are not 
 influenced by this, that the government of its own will 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 149 
 
 may raise or lower prices, and may, by raising the taxes, 
 enslave all those who have land. Science with a most 
 serious look answers : Not at all ! The laws of production, 
 exchange, distribution, are one science, and taxes and the 
 management of the state in general are another science, — 
 the law of finance. 
 
 You ask, finally, about the whole nation's being en- 
 slaved by the government, about the government being 
 able of its own will to ruin all men, to take away from 
 them all the products of their labour, and even to tear the 
 men away from labour, by putting them into mihtary 
 slavery ; you ask whether this circumstance has any effect 
 upon the economic conditions. To this, science does not 
 even trouble itself to reply : this is an entirely different 
 science, — that of civil government. 
 
 Science most seriously analyzes the laws of the eco- 
 nomic life of the nation, whose every function and activ- 
 ity depends on the will of the enslaver, and recognizes 
 this influence of the enslaver as a natural condition of the 
 nation's Hfe ; science does the same that the investigator 
 of the economic condition of the life of personal serfs 
 belonging to various masters would do, if he did not take 
 into consideration the influence upon the lives of the slaves 
 which is exerted by the will of the master, who by his 
 arbitrary will compels them to do this or that work, 
 according to his will drives them from one spot to another, 
 and according to his will feeds them, or does not feed 
 them, kills them, or lets them live. 
 
 One is inclined to think that science does so out of 
 stupidity ; but it is enough to grasp and analyze the prop- 
 ositions of science in order to become convinced that it is 
 not due to stupidity, but to great ingenuity. 
 
 This science has a very definite aim, which it attains. 
 This aim is to keep people in superstition and deception, 
 and thus to prevent humanity from moving toward the 
 truth and the good. There has long existed a terrible 
 
150 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 superstition which has done almost more harm to people 
 than the most terrible superstitions. And it is this super- 
 stition which the so-called science sustains with all its 
 might and main. 
 
 This superstition is very much like religious supersti- 
 tions : it consists in the assertion that, in addition to the 
 obhgations which man has to man, there exist still more 
 important obligations to an imaginary being. For theology 
 this imaginary being is God, and for political sciences it is 
 the state. The rehgious superstition consists in this, 
 that the sacrifices, sometimes of human lives, which are 
 brought to the imaginary being, are necessary, and men 
 can and must be brought to them by all means, not even 
 excluding violence. The political superstition consists in 
 this, that, in addition to the obligations of man to man, 
 there exist more important obligations to the imaginary 
 being, and the sacrifices, very frequently of human lives, 
 which are brought to the imaginary being, the state, are 
 also necessary, and men can and must be brought to them 
 by all means, not excluding violence. This superstition, 
 which formerly was sustained by priests of various relig- 
 ions, is now sustained by the so-called science. Men 'are 
 thrust into a more terrible and a worse slavery than any 
 other; but science tries to assure people that this is 
 necessary and cannot be otherwise. 
 
 The state must exist for the good of the people and 
 must do its business, — rule the people and defend them 
 from the enemy. For this the state needs money and an 
 army. The money is to be suppHed by all the citizens of 
 the state, and so all the relations of men must be viewed 
 under the necessary conditions of political existence. 
 
 " I want to help my father in his farm work," says a 
 simple, untutored man, " I want to marry, and they take 
 me and send me for six years to Kaz^n to be a sol- 
 dier. I leave the army, want to plough the land and 
 support my family, but for a hundred versts about me I 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 151 
 
 am not permitted to plough, unless I pay money, which 
 I do not have, to those people who do not know how to 
 plough and demand so much money for it that I am com- 
 pelled to give them all my labour. I manage to earn 
 something and want to give my surplus to my children ; 
 but the rural officer comes to me and takes away my 
 surplus in the shape of taxes ; again I earn some, and every- 
 thing is taken from me. My whole economic activity, 
 all of it, without any residue, is dependent on the demands 
 of the state, and it appears to me that the improvement 
 of my condition and of that of my brothers must come 
 from our liberation from the demands of the state." 
 
 But science says : Your judgments are due to your 
 ignorance. Learn the laws of production, exchange, and 
 distribution of wealth, and do not mix up economic ques- 
 tions with questions of state. The phenomena to which 
 you point are not restrictions of your freedom, but those 
 necessary sacrifices, which, together with others, you 
 bring for your freedom and your good. 
 
 " But they have taken my son from me and promise to 
 take all my other sons as soon as I see them grow up," 
 again says the simple man. " They take them forcibly 
 from me and drive them under bullets into another coun- 
 try, of which we have never heard, and for purposes which 
 we cannot understand. But the land, which we are not 
 permitted to plough and the lack of which causes us to 
 starve, is owned by a man whom we have never seen and 
 whose usefulness we are not able even to comprehend. 
 But the taxes, to satisfy which the officer took the cow 
 away from my children, by force, for all I know will go 
 back to this officer who took the cow away from me, and 
 to various members of commissions and ministries, whom 
 I do not even know, and in whose usefulness I do not 
 believe. How, then, can all these violences secure my 
 liberty, and how can all this evil do me any good ? " 
 
 It is possible to make a man be a slave, and do what 
 
152 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 he considers to be evil, but it is impossible to make him 
 think that, while suffering violence, he is free, and that 
 the obvious evil which he is suffering is for his good. 
 That seems impossible; but that is precisely what has 
 been done in our day with the help of science. 
 
 The government, that is, armed people doing violence, 
 decides what it needs from those to whom it offers 
 violence ; like the English in respect to the Fijians, it 
 decides how many assistants it needs for the collecting of 
 this labour, organizes its assistants in the form of soldiers, 
 in the form of landed proprietors, and in the form of col- 
 lectors of taxes. And the slaves give up their labour 
 and at the same time believe that they give it up, not 
 because their masters want it, but because for their free- 
 dom and their good they must serve and bring bloody 
 sacrifices to the divinity called " the state," but that, out- 
 side of this divinity, they are free. They believe this, 
 because formerly religion and the priests talked that way, 
 and because science and the learned say so. But we need 
 only stop believing blindly in what other people, calling 
 themselves priests and learned men, say, in order that 
 the insipidity of such an assertion may become evident. 
 People who do violence to others say that this violence is 
 necessary for the government, and that the government 
 is necessary for the freedom and for the good of the 
 people: it turns out that oppressors oppress the people 
 for the sake of their freedom, and do them evil for their 
 good. But people are rational beings that they may un- 
 derstand in what their good hes, and that they may be 
 free to do it. 
 
 But the deeds, the goodness of which is incomprehen- 
 sible to people, and to which they are urged on by force, 
 cannot be good for them, for a rational being can regard 
 as good only that which presents itself as such to his 
 mind. If people from passion or ignorance are drawn 
 toward the evil, all that people can do, who do not act 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 153 
 
 thus, is to persuade men to do what constitutes their real 
 good. It is possible to persuade people that their good 
 will be greater if they all become soldiers, be deprived of 
 land, give up all their labour for taxes ; but, so long as 
 people will not consider this as their good, and will not 
 do it voluntarily, this matter cannot be called the general 
 good of men. The only sign of the goodness of a deed is 
 that all people do it of their own free will, and of such 
 deeds the lives of men are full. 
 
 Ten labourers provide themselves with cooper's tools in 
 order to work together, and, in doing this work, they un- 
 questionably do a common good to themselves ; but it is 
 absolutely impossible to imagine that the labourers, com- 
 pelling an eleventh man by force to take part in their 
 association, could assert that their common good will also 
 be a good for the eleventh man. 
 
 The same is true of gentlemen who give a dinner to a 
 friend of theirs : it is just as little possible to assert that 
 the dinner will be a good thing for him from whom they 
 will take ten roubles by force. The same is true of 
 peasants who decide to dig a pond for their convenience. 
 For those who will regard the existence of this pond as a 
 greater good than the labour expended upon it, the dig- 
 ging of it will be a common good ; but for him who con- 
 siders the existence of this pond a lesser good than the 
 harvesting of the field, to which he has come too late, 
 the digging of this pond can be no good. The same is 
 true of roads which people lay out, and of churches, and 
 museums, and of the greatest variety of social and political 
 matters. All these matters can be a good only for those 
 who regard them as such and so do them freely and will- 
 ingly as in the case of the purchase of the tools for the 
 association, the dinner given by the gentlemen, the pond 
 which the peasants dig. But all works to which people 
 have to be driven by force are, in consequence of this 
 violence, no longer common, nor good. 
 
154 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 All this is so clear and so simple that, if people had not ' 
 been deceived for so long a time, it would not be neces- 
 sary to explain anything. Let us suppose that we are 
 living in the country and that we, all the villagers, have 
 decided to build a bridge across a swamp into which we 
 sink. We have agreed or promised to give from each 
 farm so much money, or timber, or so many days. We 
 have agreed to do so, only because the building of this 
 bridge is of greater importance to us than the expense 
 which we incur upon it. But among us there are some 
 people for whom it is more convenient not to have a 
 bridge than to spend money upon it, or who at least 
 think that this is more advantageous for them. Can the 
 compulsion of these men to build the bridge make it an 
 advantage for them ? Evidently not, because these men, 
 who regarded their free participation in the building of 
 the bridge as unprofitable, will regard it as even more 
 unprofitable, when it becomes compulsory. 
 
 Let us even suppose that we, aU of us without excep- 
 tion, have agreed to build this bridge and have promised 
 so much money or labour from each farm ; but it so 
 happens that a few of those who promised a share have 
 not furnished it, because their circumstances have changed, 
 causing them to find it more advantageous to be without 
 the bridge than spend money on it ; or they have simply 
 changed their mind ; or they simply calculate that the 
 others will build the bridge without their contributions, 
 so that they also will be able to drive over it : can com- 
 pelling these people to take part in the building of the 
 bridge make these compulsory sacrifices a benefit to them ? 
 Evidently not, because, if these men have not carried out 
 what they promised, on account of circumstances which 
 have changed, so that the contributions for the bridge 
 have become harder for them than the absence of the 
 bridge, their compulsory contributions will only be a 
 greater evil to them. But if those who refuse have a 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN"? . 155 
 
 mind to make use of the labours of others, their compul- 
 sion to contribute will only be a punishment for their 
 intention, and their intention, completely unexpressed, 
 will be punished before it is carried into effect ; in neither 
 case can their compulsion to take part in an undesirable 
 work be a good for them. 
 
 Thus it will be when the contributions are received for 
 a work that is comprehensible, obvious, and unquestion- 
 ably useful for them, like the bridge over the swamp, 
 through which all travel. How much more unjust and 
 senseless will be the compulsion exerted on millions of 
 people to make sacrifices, the aim of which is incom- 
 prehensible, intangible, and frequently unquestionably 
 harmful, as is the case with mihtary service and with 
 the taxes. But according to science it turns out that 
 what to all appears as an evil is a common good ; it turns 
 out that there are people, a tiny minority of men, who 
 alone know wherein the common good lies, and, although 
 all other men consider this common good to be evil, this 
 minority, compelling all other men to do this evil, is able 
 to consider this evil to be a common good. 
 
 In this consists the chief superstition and the chief 
 deception, which retards the motion of humanity toward 
 truth and the good. The maintenance of this superstition 
 and this deception forms the aim of the political sciences 
 in general and of the so-called political economy in par- 
 ticular. Its aim is to conceal from people that condition 
 of subjection and of slavery in which they are. The means 
 which it employs for this purpose consist in this, that, in 
 analyzing the violence which conditions the whole economic 
 life of the enslaved, it intentionally recognizes this violence 
 as natural and inevitable, and thus deceives people and 
 veils their eyes from the real cause of their wretchedness. 
 
 Slavery has long been abolished. It was abolished in 
 Eome, and in America, and in our country, but what has 
 been abolished is words, and not facts. 
 
156 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 • Slavery is the liberation of self from labour (necessary 
 for the gratification of one's needs), which by means of 
 violence is transferred to others; and where there is a 
 man who does not work, not because other people work 
 for him for love's sake, but because he is able not to 
 work himself, but to compel others to work for him, there 
 is slavery. But where there are people, as in all European 
 societies, who by means of violence exploit the labours of 
 thousands of men, and who regard this as their privilege, 
 and other people, who submit to the violence and recog- 
 nize it as their obligation, there slavery exists in terrible 
 proportions. 
 
 Slavery exists. In what does it consist ? In that in 
 which it has always consisted, and without which it can 
 never exist: in the violence of the strong and armed 
 exerted over the weak and the unarmed. 
 
 Slavery with its three fundamental methods of personal 
 violence, — of militarism, taxation of land, supported by 
 the militarism, and the tribute which is imposed on all 
 the inhabitants by means of direct and indirect taxes, and 
 which is supported by the same militarism, — exists to- 
 day as it has always existed. The only reason why we 
 do not see it is this, that each of the three forms of 
 slavery has received a new justification, which shields 
 from us its meaning. The personal violence of the armed 
 done to the unarmed has received the justification of a 
 defence of the country against its imaginary enemies ; in 
 reality it has the old meaning, namely, that of the subjec- 
 tion of the vanquished by the oppressor. The violence 
 exerted in taking the land from those who work upon 
 it has received the justification of a reward for deserts 
 respecting the imaginary common good and is confirmed 
 by the right of inheritance ; in reality it is the same 
 despoliation of the land and enslavement of the people 
 which was produced by the army (the power). The last, 
 the monetary violence, the violence of taxation, — the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN"? 157 
 
 most powerful and most important in modern times, — 
 has received the most remarkable justification, namely, 
 this : people are deprived of their property and freedom, 
 and of their whole good in the name of freedom, of the 
 common good. In reality it is nothing but the same 
 slavery, except that it is impersonal. 
 
 Where violence is exalted into a law, there slavery also 
 will exist. Whether the violence is expressed in this 
 way, that the princes make incursions with their retinues, 
 killing women and children, and giving the villages to 
 fire; or whether the slave-owners exact work or money 
 from the slaves for the land, and, in case 'of arrears, call 
 in the aid of armed men ; or whether certain people put 
 others under tribute, travelling armed from village to 
 village ; or whether the ministry of the interior collects 
 money through governors and rural officers, and, in case 
 of refusal to pay, sends out companies of soldiers, — in 
 short, so long as there is violence, supported by bayonets, 
 there will be no distribution of wealth among people, but 
 the whole wealth will go to the oppressors. 
 
 George's project of the nationalization of the land 
 serves as a striking illustration of the truth of this propo- 
 sition. George proposes that all the land be regarded as 
 the property of the state, and so all imposts, whether 
 direct or indirect, are to be replaced by a ground rent, 
 that is, that every man who makes use of the land shall 
 pay to the state the value of its rent. 
 
 What would happen? Land slavery would be des- 
 troyed within the limits of the state, that is, the land 
 would belong to the state : England would have its land, 
 America its own, and so forth, — that is, there would be 
 a slavery which would be determined by the amount 
 of land under exploitation. 
 
 Maybe the condition of some of the labourers (on the 
 land) would improve; but so long as there was left a 
 violent levy of taxes for the rent, slavery would be left. 
 
158 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 The agriculturist, who after a failure of crops would be 
 unable to pay the rent, which is exacted of him by force, 
 would be compelled, in order not to lose everything, to 
 sell himself to the man who had the money. 
 
 If a bucket is leaky, there is certainly a hole in it. As 
 we look at the bottom of the bucket, it may appear to us 
 that the water is leaking out of several holes ; but, no 
 matter how much we may stop up these imaginary holes, 
 the water will continue to flow. In order to stop the 
 flow, it is necessary to find the place where the water 
 escapes from the bucket and stop it from the inside. The 
 same has to te done with the proposed measures for 
 stopping the irregular distribution of wealth, in order to 
 stop the hole through which the wealth of the people 
 leaks out. They say: "Form labour unions; turn the 
 capital into public property ; turn the land into pubhc 
 property ! " All this is nothing but an external stoppage 
 of the places through which the water seems to leak. In 
 order to stop the leakage of the working men's wealth, 
 which passes into the hands of the leisure class, it is 
 necessary to find the inside hole through which this 
 leakage takes place. 
 
 This hole is the violence exerted by an armed man 
 over one who is not armed; it is the violence of the 
 army, which takes the men away from their labour, or 
 which despoils them of the land and of the products pf 
 their labour. So long as there shall exist a single armed 
 man who arrogates to himself the right to kill another, 
 there will exist the irregular distribution of wealth, that 
 is, slavery. 
 
 What led me into the error that T could help others was 
 that I imagined that my money was the same kind of 
 money as Semen's. But that was not true. 
 
 There exists a common opinion that money represents 
 wealth ; but money is the product of labour, and so money 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 159 
 
 represents labour. This opinion is as correct as that other 
 opinion that every political organization is the result of a 
 pact (contrat social). 
 
 All want to believe that money is only a medium of 
 the exchange of labour. I have made some boots, you 
 have raised some grain, he has fattened some sheep; in 
 order to be able more conveniently to exchange our arti- 
 cles, we introduce money, which represents a correspond- 
 ing share of labour, and by means of it we exchange some 
 soles for a brisket of mutton and ten pounds of flour. We 
 exchange our products through the mediun^ of the money, 
 and the money of each of us represents our individual 
 labour. That is quite true, but only so long as in society, 
 where this exchange takes place, there has not appeared 
 the violence of one man over another, not only violence 
 to another man's labour, as is the case in war and slavery, 
 but also violence in the defence of one's labour against 
 others. It will be true only in a society whose members 
 fully execute the Christian law, in a society where he 
 who asks receives what he asks for, and where they do 
 not ask the aggressor to give back what he has taken. 
 But as soon as any violence is exerted in society, the 
 money at once loses for the owner its significance as a 
 representative of labour, and assumes the meaning of 
 a right which is not based on labour, but on violence. 
 
 The moment there is war, and one man takes anything 
 away from another, the money can no longer be a repre- 
 sentative of labour ; the money which the warrior gets for 
 the booty which he sells, and which the chief of the 
 warrior gets, is by no means a product of their labour, 
 and has an entirely different meaning than the money 
 received for work put into making boots. So long as 
 there are slave-owners and slaves, as has always been the 
 case in the whole world, it is just as impossible to say 
 that money represents labour. The women have woven 
 some linen, and this they sell, and they receive money 
 
\ 
 
 160 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 for it ; the serfs have woven for the master, and the 
 master sells the linen, and receives money for it. Either 
 money is the same ; but the first is the product of labour, 
 the second is the product of violence. In the same way 
 a stranger or my father has made me a present of money, 
 and my father, giving it to me, knew, and I, too, know, 
 and everybody else knows, that nobody can take this 
 money away from me ; that if any one should try to take 
 it from me, or even not to return it to me by a set time, 
 at which he promised to return it to me, the authorities 
 would take my part and compel him by force to return 
 the money to me. And so it is again obvious that this 
 money can in no way be called a representative of labour 
 on a par with the money which Sem^n received for saw- 
 ing wood. Thus in a society in which there is the least 
 violence which takes possession of other people's money, 
 or which defends the possession of money from others, 
 the money cannot always be a representative of labour. 
 In such a society it is sometimes a representative of 
 labour, and sometimes of violence. 
 
 Thus it would be if there appeared even one case of 
 violence exerted by one man over others among absolutely 
 free relations ; but now, when for the accumulation of 
 money there have passed centuries of the most varied forms 
 of violence ; when this violence merely changes forms and 
 does not cease ; when, as is acknowledged by everybody, 
 the money itself in its accumulation forms violence ; w^hen 
 money, as the product of direct labour, forms but a small 
 part of the money formed from every description of 
 violence, — now to say that money represents the labour 
 of him who possesses it is an obvious delusion or a con- 
 scious lie. We may say that it ought to be so, or that it 
 is desirable that it should be so, but by no means that 
 it is so. 
 
 Money represents labour. Yes. Money represents 
 labour ; but whose ? In our society money is only in the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 161 
 
 very rarest cases a representative of the labour of the 
 owner of the money, and is nearly always a representative 
 of the labour of other people, past or future. It is a rep- 
 resentative of other people's obligations to do work, as 
 established through violence. 
 
 In its most precise and, at the same time, most simple 
 definition, money is a conventional token which gives the 
 right, or, more correctly, the possibility, to exploit the 
 labour of other people. In its ideal significance, money 
 ought to give this right or possibility only when it itself 
 serves as a representative of labour, and money cduld be 
 that in a society where there is no violence. But the 
 moment there is any violence in society, that is, the pos- 
 sibility of exploiting another man's labour without one's 
 own work, this possibility of exploiting another man's 
 labour, without the determination of the person over 
 whom this violence is exerted, is also expressed by 
 money. 
 
 A proprietor imposes upon his serfs certain obligations 
 in kind, a certain number of bolts of linen, corn, cattle, 
 or a corresponding sum of money. One farm furnishes 
 cattle, but pays money in lieu of the linen. The propri- 
 etor takes a certain sum of money only because he knows 
 that for this money they will make just as many bolts of 
 linen for him (as a rule he will take a little more so as to 
 be sure that they will always produce the exact amount) 
 and to the proprietor this money obviously represents the 
 obligation of other people to do work. 
 
 The peasant gives the money as a claim against some 
 unknown person, and there are many persons who will 
 be willing for the money to produce so and so many bolts 
 of linen. The reason that the people will undertake to 
 produce the linen is this, that they have not had time 
 to fatten their sheep, and they have to pay money for the 
 sheep, and the peasant who will take the money for 
 the sheep will take it because he has to pay for the corn 
 
162 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 which did not grow well this year. The same thing 
 takes place in the state, in the whole world. 
 
 A man sells the product of his present, past, or future 
 labour, sometimes his food, as a rule not because the 
 money is for him a convenience of exchange, — he would 
 gladly exchange without money, — but because they 
 exact the money from him by force, as a claim to his 
 own labour. 
 
 When the King of Egypt demanded labour from his 
 slaves, the slaves gave it all, but they gave only their 
 past and their present labour, — they could not give their 
 future labour. But with the dissemination of monetary 
 tokens and the consequent credit, it became possible to 
 give up money for future labours. With the existence 
 of violence in society, money represents only the possi- 
 bility of a new form of an impersonal slavery, which 
 takes the place of the personal slavery. A slave-owner 
 has the right to Peter's, Ivan's, Siddr's labour. But the 
 owner of money, where money is demanded of all, has 
 the right to the labour of all those nameless men who 
 are in need of money. Money does away with all that 
 hard side of slavery, when the owner knows his right 
 to Ivdn ; at the same time it does away with all the 
 human relations between the owner and the slave, which 
 softened the hardness of personal slavery. 
 
 I do not say that such a condition is, perhaps, neces- 
 sary for the evolution of humanity, for progress, and so 
 forth. I have only tried to make clear to myself the 
 concept of money and of that common error into which I 
 had fallen when I regarded money as the representative 
 of labour. I convinced myself by experience that money 
 is not the representative of labour, but in the majority of 
 cases a representative of violence, or of especially com- 
 plex devices based on violence. 
 
 Money has in our time completely lost that desirable 
 significance as a representative of labour ; such a signifi- 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 163 
 
 cance it has only exceptionally, for as a general rule it 
 has become a right or a possibility for exploiting the 
 labour of others. 
 
 The dissemination of money, of credit, and of all kinds 
 of monetary tokens more and more confirms this mean- 
 ing of money. Money is the possibility or the right to 
 exploit the labours of others. Money is a new form of ^ 
 slavery, which differs from the old only in being imper- 
 sonal, and in freeing people from all the human relations 
 of the slave. 
 
 Money is money, a value which is always equal to 
 itself, which is always considered absolutely regular and 
 legal, and the use of which is not considered immoral, as 
 the use of the right of slavery was considered to be. 
 
 In my youth it became fashionable in clubs to play 
 lotto. Everybody rushed to play it, and, as they said, 
 many persons were ruined, families were made unfortu- 
 nate, other people's Crown money was gambled away, 
 and men shot themselves, and the game was prohibited 
 and is prohibited until this day. 
 
 I used to see, I remember, unsentimental old gamblers, 
 who would tell me that this game was particularly agree- 
 able in that a person did not see whom in particular he 
 was beating, as is the case in other games ; the lackey 
 did not even bring money, but only chips, and each 
 person lost but a small stake, and his grief could not be 
 observed. The same is true of roulette, which is every- 
 where prohibited for good reasons. 
 
 The same is true of money. I have a magic never- 
 failing double ; I cut off the coupons and am removed 
 from all the affairs of the world. Whom am I harming ? 
 I am a most innocuous and kindly man. But this is 
 only playing lotto or roulette, where I do not see the 
 man who shoots himself on account of his losses, while 
 it furnishes me those little coupons which I regularly 
 cut off at a right angle from the bonds. 
 
164 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 4 
 
 I have done nothing and will do nothing but cut off 
 those little coupons, and I believe firmly that money is 
 a representative of labour. How strange ! And they 
 talk of insane persons ! What madness can be more 
 terrible than this ? A clever and learned man, who in 
 all other things is sensible, hves senselessly and eases his 
 conscience by not enunciating the one word which it is 
 necessary to say that there may be a meaning to his 
 reflection, and considers himself righteous. The little 
 coupons are representatives of labour ! Of labour ! Yes, 
 but whose labour ? Obviously not his who owns it, but 
 his who works. 
 
 Money is the same as slavery ; it has the same aims 
 and the same consequences. Its aim is the liberation of 
 self from the original law, as a profound writer from the 
 masses has correctly said, — from the natural law of life, 
 as we call it, from the law of personal labour for the 
 gratification of one's wants. The consequences of money 
 are the same as those of slavery were for the owner : the 
 breeding and invention of new and endlessly new wants, 
 which can never be satisfied, pampered wretchedness, 
 debauch ; and for the slaves : the oppression of man, his 
 reduction to the level of an animaL 
 
 Money is a new and terrible form of slavery, and, like 
 the old form of personal slavery, it corrupts both the 
 slave and the slave-owner, but it is even much worse 
 because it frees the slave and the slave-owner from per- 
 sonal human relations. 
 
XXII. 
 
 I HAVE always to marvel at the words frequently re- 
 peated : " Yes, that is so m theory, but how is it in prac- 
 tice ? " Just as though theory were a series of fine words 
 which are needed for conversation, but not that practice, 
 that is, all activity, should inevitably be based upon it. 
 There must have existed a terrible lot of stupid theories 
 in the world, if such a remarkable reflection has passed 
 into use. Theory is what a man thinks about a subject, 
 and practice is what he does. How, then, can a man 
 think that it is necessary to do something in a certain 
 way, and do the opposite ? If the theory of bread-baking 
 is this, that the dough has first to be made and then be 
 left to rise, then, outside of crazy men, no one who knows 
 the theory will do the opposite. But it has become a 
 fashion with us to say that this is a theory, and how is it 
 in practice ? 
 
 In the subject which interests me there has been con- 
 firmed what I have always thought, that the practice 
 inevitably follows from the theory : not that it justifies it, 
 but that it cannot be anything else ; that, if I have come 
 to understand the matter of which I have been thinking, 
 I cannot do it otherwise than in the manner in which I 
 understand it. 
 
 I wanted to help the poor only because I had money 
 and because I shared the general confidence that money 
 was a representative of labour, or in general something 
 lawful and good. But, when I began to give the money, 
 I saw that what I was giving was the notes against the 
 poor which I had collected, and that I was doing what 
 
 166 
 
166 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 many proprietors used to do when they compelled certain 
 serfs to serve others. I saw that every use of money — 
 whether it be the purchase of something, or the transmis- 
 sion of the money to another for nothing — was the 
 sending to protest of a note against the poor, or the trans- 
 ference of the same to another person for the purpose of 
 sending it to protest against the poor. And so I clearly 
 saw the insipidity which I was trying to commit, — to 
 help the poor by exacting from the poor. I saw that 
 money in itself not only failed to be good, but was also 
 an obvious evil which deprived people of their chief good, 
 of labour, and of the use of this, their own labour, and 
 that I was unable to transmit this good to any one, 
 because I was myself deprived of it : I have no labour and 
 am not so fortunate as to make use of my own labour. 
 
 One would think that there was nothing peculiar in 
 this reflection as to what money is. But this reflection, 
 which I made not for the mere sake of reflecting, but in 
 order to solve the question of my life, my suffering, was 
 for me an answer to the question as to what should be 
 done. 
 
 The moment I understood what wealth was, what 
 money was, it not only became clear to me what I had 
 to do, but it also became clear and indubitable to me 
 what all others ought to do, and that they inevitably 
 would do it. In reality I understood nothing but what 
 I had known long ago, — the truth which had been trans- 
 mitted to men since the most remote times by Buddha, 
 and Isaiah, and Lao-tse, and Socrates, and was particu- 
 larly clearly and indubitably transmitted to us by Jesus 
 Christ and his predecessor, John the Baptist. In reply to 
 men's questions as to what they should do, he answered 
 simply, briefly, and clearly, He that hath two coats, let 
 him impart to him that hath none ; and he that hath meat, 
 let him do likewise (Luke iii. 10, 11). 
 
 The same, with greater clearness and frequently, was 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 167 
 
 said by Christ. He said, Blessed are the poor, and woe 
 to the rich. He said that one could not serve God and 
 Mammon. He forbade his disciples to take, not only- 
 money, but even two coats. He said to the rich young 
 man that he could not enter into the kingdom of God 
 because he was rich, and that it was easier for a camel to 
 pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man 
 to enter into the kingdom of God. He said that he who 
 would not leave everything, his house, and children, and 
 fields, in order to follow him, was not his disciple. He 
 spoke a parable about the rich man who did no wrong, 
 hke our own rich, but dressed himself well and ate and 
 drank good food, and who thus lost his soul, and about 
 poor Lazarus, who did no good, but who saved himself 
 merely by being poor. 
 
 That truth was sufficiently well known to me, but the 
 fallacious teachings of the world had dimmed it so that 
 it had become for me a theory, in the sense which people 
 are fond of ascribing to the word, that is, idle words. 
 But as soon as I succeeded in destroying in my conscious- 
 ness the sophisms of the worldly teaching, the theory 
 blended with the practice, and the reality of my life and 
 of the life of all men became its inevitable consequence. 
 
 I understood that man, in addition to his life for his 
 personal good, must inevitably also serve the good of 
 other men; that,, if we are to take an example from 
 the life of animals, as certain people are fond of doing, 
 defending violence and struggle by the struggle for exist- 
 ence in the animal kingdom, the comparison ought to be 
 taken from among the social animals, such as the bees, 
 and that, therefore, man, to say nothing of his innate love 
 for his neighbour, by reason and by his own nature is 
 called to serve other people and the common human ends. 
 I understood that the natural law of man was only that 
 which made it possible for him to fulfil his destiny, 
 and so be happy. I understood that this law had been 
 
168 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 impaired by this, that men, like the plunderer bees, free 
 themselves through violence from labour, and exploit the 
 labour of others, directing this labour, not to a common 
 aim, but to the personal gratification of multiplying 
 passions (lusts), and that, like the plunderer bees, they 
 perish from this. I understood that men's misfortune 
 was due to the slavery in which one set of men held other 
 men. I understood that the slavery of our time was pro- 
 duced by the violence of militarism, by the appropriation 
 of land, and the exaction of money. And, having come 
 to understand the meaning of all three instruments of 
 the new slavery, I could not help but wish to be freed 
 from a participation in it. 
 
 When I was a slave-owner, possessing serfs, and com- 
 prehended the immorality of this situation, I tried at 
 that time, in company with other people who understood 
 it, to free myself from that situation. My liberation con- 
 sisted in this, that, as I considered myself immoral, I 
 tried, so long as I was not able to free myself completely 
 from this situation, to urge as httle as possible my rights 
 as a slave-owner, and to live and let the people live in 
 such a way as though these rights did not exist, and 
 at the same time to use every effort in impressing the 
 other slave-owners with the lawlessness and inhumanity 
 of their imaginary rights. 
 
 I cannot help but do the same in respect to the present 
 slavery : as little as possible urge my rights, so long as I 
 am not able completely to renounce these rights, which are 
 given to me by land-ownership and by money, and which 
 are supported by the violence of militarism, and at the 
 same time with all my means impress upon other people 
 the lawlessness and inhumanity of these imaginary rights. 
 The participation in slavery on the side of the slave-owner 
 consists in the exploitation of other people's labour, no 
 matter whether the slavery is based on my right to the 
 slave, or on my ownership of land, or on money. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 169 
 
 And so, if a man indeed dislikes slavery and does not 
 wish to be a participant in it, the first thing he will do 
 will be this, that he will not make use of other people's 
 labour, either through the ownership of land, or through 
 serving the government, or through money. 
 
 But the refusal to employ any of the means in use for 
 the purpose of exploiting other people's labour will inevi- 
 tably bring such a man to the necessity, on the one hand, 
 of curtailing his needs, and, on the other, of doing for 
 himself what formerly others did for him. 
 
 This simple and inevitable inference enters into all the 
 details of my hfe, modifies it all, and at once frees me 
 from those moral sufferings which I used to experience 
 at the sight of the suffering and the debauchery of men, 
 and at once destroys all those three causes of the impossi- 
 bility of helping the poor, at which I arrived in seeking 
 the causes for my failure. 
 
 The first cause was the crowding of people into the 
 cities and the swallowing up in the cities of the wealth 
 of the country. A man need but have the desire not to 
 exploit the labours of others by means of serving the 
 government and owning land and money, and therefore to 
 satisfy his needs himself to the best of his strength and 
 abihty, in order that it should never occur to him to leave 
 the village (in which it is easiest of all to satisfy one's 
 wants) for the city, where everything is the product of 
 somebody else's labour, where everything has to be 
 bought; and then, in the country, a man will be able 
 to help the needy, and he will not experience that feeling 
 of helplessness which I experienced in the city, when I 
 tried to help people, not by means of my own labour, but 
 by that of others. 
 
 The second cause was the disunion between the rich 
 and the poor. A man need but wish not to exploit other 
 people's labour by means of service, of ownership of land, 
 and of money, in order to be put to the necessity of 
 
170 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 satisfying his own wants, and immediately the wall will 
 be destroyed which separates him from the working people, 
 and he will blend with them, and will stand shoulder to 
 shoulder with them, and will have the possibility of help- 
 ing them. 
 
 The third cause was shame, which was based on the 
 consciousness of the immorality of my possession of that 
 money with which I wanted to help others. We need 
 but wish not to exploit other people's labour by means 
 of service, of ownership of land, and of money, and we 
 shall never have that superfluous fool's money, the presence 
 of which with me has provoked in people who have no 
 money certain demands which I could not satisfy, and in 
 me — a feeling of the consciousness of my unrighteousness. 
 
XXIII. 
 
 I SAW that the cause of men's suffering and debauchery- 
 was this, that certain people were in slavery to others, 
 and so I drew the simple conclusion that, if I wished to 
 help others, I must first of all stop causing those mis- 
 fortunes which I wish to assist, that is, not take part in 
 the enslavement of men. But what had been urging me 
 to enslave people was the fact that I had been accustomed 
 from childhood not to work, but to make use of the 
 labours of other people, and that I had been living in a 
 society which not only was used to this enslavement of 
 other people, but also justified this enslavement with all 
 kinds of clever and insipid sophisms. I drew the follow- 
 ing simple conclusion that, in order that I might not 
 cause people's suffering and debauchery, I must as little 
 as possible make use of the work of others, and myself 
 work as much as possible. By a long path I came to the 
 inevitable conclusion which a thousand years ago was 
 made by the Chinese in this utterance : " If there is one 
 idle man, there is another who is starving." I came to 
 this simple and natural conclusion that, if I pitied that 
 worn-out horse which I was riding, the first thing I ought 
 to do, if I really was sorry for it, was to get off and 
 walk. 
 
 This answer, which gives such complete satisfaction to 
 the moral feeling, begged for my recognition, and begs 
 for the recognition of all of us, but we do not see it and 
 look aside. 
 
 In our search after a cure for our social diseases we 
 look about on all sides, — in governmental, and anti- 
 
 171 
 
172 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 goverD mental, and scientific, and philanthropic supersti- 
 tions, and we do not see what strikes our eyes. 
 
 We use the vessel in the house, and want others to 
 carry it out, and pretend that we suffer for them, and 
 want to make it easier for them, and invent all kinds of 
 devices, except the simplest one, that of carrying it out 
 ourselves, if we wish to use it in the house, or else going 
 back of the bam. 
 
 For him who sincerely suffers in seeing the men who 
 surround us suffer, there is a very clear, simple, and easy 
 means, the only possible one for the cure of the evils 
 which surround us and for the recognition of the lawful- 
 ness of our life, — the same that John the Baptist gave to 
 the question. What shall we do then ? and which Christ 
 confirmed : not to have more than one garment and not to 
 have money, that is, not to make use of the labours of 
 others, and so first of all to do with our own hands what 
 we are able to do. 
 
 That is so simple and so clear. But that is simple and 
 clear when the wants are clear and simple, and when a 
 man himself is fresh and not corrupted to the core through 
 laziness and idleness. I live in the village, lying on the 
 oven, and order my debtor next door to chop wood and 
 make a fire in the oven. It is very clear that I am lazy 
 and am taking my neighbour away from his work ; and 
 I shall feel ashamed, and it will be tiresome for me to 
 lie all the time, and if my muscles are strong and I am 
 accustomed to work, I shall go and chop the wood myself. 
 
 But the offence of slavery in all kinds of forms has 
 existed so long ; so many artificial wants have grown 
 up on it; so many people in various stages of habits as 
 regards these wants are interrelated ; men have been so 
 spoiled and so pampered for generations ; such complex 
 temptations and justifications in their luxury and their 
 idleness have been invented by people, that for a man 
 who is at the top of the ladder of idle people it is far 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 173 
 
 from being so easy to understand his sin, as for a peasant 
 who compels his neighbour to make a fire in his oven. 
 
 For people who are on the uppermost rung of this 
 ladder it is terribly hard to understand what it is that 
 is demanded of them. Their heads are dizzy from the 
 height of that ladder of lie on which they stand, when 
 they behold that spot on the earth to which they must 
 descend in order to begin their life, not well, but only not 
 entirely inhumanely ; and it is from this that the simple 
 and clear truth seems so terrible to them. 
 
 To a man with ten servants, hveries, coachmen, a chef, 
 pictures, pianos, it wiU appear strange and even ridiculous 
 to do what is the simplest and the first action of each 
 man, not necessarily a good man, but one who is not an 
 animal: to chop his own wood, with which his food is 
 prepared and which furnishes him heat ; to clean his 
 own overshoes or boots, with which he has carelessly 
 stepped into the mud; to fetch his own water, with 
 which he makes his ablutions, and to carry out the dirty 
 water in which he has washed himself. 
 
 But, besides the very remoteness of people from the 
 truth, there is also another cause which keeps people 
 from seeing the obligatoriness for them of the simplest 
 and most natural personal physical work : it is the com- 
 plexity, the interworking of the conditions, of the advan- 
 tages of all people who are connected with one another, in 
 which a rich man lives. 
 
 This morning I went out into the corridor where the 
 fires are made in the stoves. A peasant was making a 
 fire in the stove which heats my son's room. I went in 
 to see him : he was asleep. It was eleven o'clock in the 
 morning. It was a holiday, and so the excuse, — there 
 were no lessons. 
 
 The smooth-looking, eighteen-year-old lad with a beard, 
 having eaten a great deal in the evening, is sleeping until 
 eleven o'clock, but the peasant, who is of his age, got up 
 
174 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 in the morning, has finished a lot of work, and is making 
 a fire in the tenth stove, but he is asleep. " If only the 
 peasant did not make a fire in his stove, in order to warm 
 up his sleek, lazy body ! " I thought. But immediately I 
 recalled that this stove warmed also the room of the 
 stewardess, a woman of forty years of age, who the night 
 before had worked until three o'clock in the night, in 
 order to get everything ready for the supper, which my 
 son also ate, and had cleaned away the dishes, and still 
 had got up at seven o'clock. The peasant is making the 
 fire for her, too. And the lazy fellow is getting his heat, 
 which is to be put down to her account. 
 
 It is true, the advantages of all men are interwoven, 
 but even without any prolonged calculation the conscience 
 of each man tells him on whose side is the labour, and on 
 whose the idleness. But it is not merely conscience that 
 tells ; it is the ledger that shows it in the clearest manner 
 possible. The more money one spends, the more he causes 
 others to work for him ; the less he spends, the more he 
 works. 
 
 And industry, and public undertakings, and finally the 
 most terrible of words, — culture, and the evolution of 
 the sciences and arts? 
 
XXIV. 
 
 In March of last year I returned home late in the even- 
 ing. As I turned from Zubov Lane into Khamovnicheski 
 Lane, I saw some black spots in the snow of Virgin Field. 
 Something was moving about in that place. I should 
 have paid no attention to this, if a policeman who was 
 standing at the entrance of the lane had not called out 
 in the direction of the black spots : 
 
 " Vasili, why don't you come along ? " 
 
 " She won't go ! " a voice answered from there, and 
 thereupon the black spots moved toward the policeman. 
 
 I stopped to ask the policeman what it was. He 
 said: 
 
 "They took in the girls of Ezhanov House and led 
 them to the station, but this one fell behind, and wiU 
 not move." 
 
 A janitor in a sheepskin coat was leading her. She 
 was walking in front, and he kept pushing her from 
 behind. All of us, the janitor, the policeman, and I, 
 were wearing our winter furs, but she had only a skirt 
 on. In the darkness I could make out a brown dress, 
 and a kerchief on her head and neck. She was small of 
 stature, like an abortion : her legs were short, and her 
 figure was out of proportion, broad and unshapely. 
 
 " You, wench, keep us standing here. Go on, I say ! 
 ni teach you ! " shouted the policeman. 
 
 He was evidently getting tired, and annoyed at her. 
 She made a few steps, and stopped again. The old janitor, 
 a good-natured man (I know him), pulled her hand. 
 
 " Come now, go on ! " he pretended to be angry. 
 
 175 
 
176 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 She tottered and began to speak with a wheezing voice. 
 In every sound there was a false note, a snoring, and a 
 squeakc 
 
 " Don't push me ! I'll get there ! " 
 
 " You will freeze to death," said the janitor. V 
 
 " The kind I am do not freeze, — I am of the warm 
 kind." 
 
 She meant to be jesting, but her words sounded like 
 scolding. Near a lamp-post which is not far from the 
 gate of our house she stopped again, leaning, almost 
 throwing herself on the fence, and began to rummage 
 in her skirts with her awkward, frosted hands. Again 
 they shouted to her, but she only gurgled, and continued 
 doing something. In one hand she held a cigarette bent 
 into an arc, and in the other she had some matches. I 
 stopped behind her ; I felt ashamed to pass by her, and 
 yet ashamed to stand and gaze. Finally I made up my 
 mind and went up to her. 
 
 She was lying with her shoulder against the fence, 
 and uselessly kept striking matches against the fence, and 
 throwing them away. I scanned her face. She was 
 indeed an abortion, but, as I thought, an old woman, — I 
 gave her thirty years. The colour of her face was sallow ; 
 her eyes, small, turbid, bloodshot ; her nose knob-shaped ; 
 her lips crooked, slavering, and sunken at the corners ; 
 and a short strand of dry hair peeped out from under- 
 neath her kerchief. Her waist was long and flat, and 
 her arms and legs were short. I stopped opposite her. She 
 looked at me and smiled, as though she knew everything 
 I was thinking about. 
 
 I felt that I had to say something to her. I wanted 
 to show her that I was sorry for her. 
 
 " Have you any parents ? " I asked. 
 
 She laughed hoarsely, then suddenly stopped, and 
 raising her eyebrows, gazed at me. 
 
 « Have you any parents ? " I repeated. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 177 
 
 She smiled with an expression which seemed to say: 
 " What makes him trouble himself to ask me ? " 
 
 " I have a mother," she said. " What is that to you ? '* 
 
 " And how old are you ? " 
 
 " Going'on sixteen," she said, replying readily, evidently 
 to a habitual question. 
 
 " March ! You make me freeze, — the devil take you ! " 
 shouted the policeman ; and she tottered away from the 
 fence, and, swaying to and fro, went down Khamovnicheski 
 Lane to the station, while I turned into the gate and went 
 home, where I asked whether my daughters had returned. 
 I was told that they had been to an evening entertain- 
 ment, had had a good time, and were back home, asleep. 
 
 The next morning I wanted to go to the police station 
 to find out what became of that unfortunate woman, and 
 I got ready to go quite early, when I received the visit of 
 one of those unfortunate men of the gentry who in their 
 weakness stray from their lordly life and now rise and 
 now fall again. I had known him for three years. Dur- 
 ing these three years he had several times squandered 
 everything he had, even the garments on his back ; just 
 such a misfortune had befallen him lately, and for the 
 time being he passed his nights in Rzhanov House, in a 
 night lodging apartment, and in the daytime came to see 
 me. He met me as I was going out, and, without listening 
 to what I had to say, began to tell me what had happened 
 in the night in Rzhanov House. He did not half finish 
 his story ; he, an old man who had seen all manner of 
 people, suddenly burst out weeping and sobbing, and, 
 when he stopped, he turned his face to the wall. Every- 
 thing he told me was an absolute truth. I verified his 
 story on the spot, and learned some new details, which I 
 shall not give with the story. 
 
 In the night lodging apartment, in the lower story, 
 Number 32, in which my friend stayed, there was, among 
 the number of transient inmates, men and women, who 
 
178 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 come together with one another for five kopeks, a laun- 
 dress, of about thirty years of age, a blond, quiet, orderly, 
 but sickly woman. The landlady is the paramour of a 
 boatman. In the summer her cohabiter keeps a boat, and 
 in the winter they make a Hving by letting the room to 
 night lodgers, — three kopeks without a pillow, and five 
 kopeks with a pillow. The laundress had lived there for 
 several months, and was a quiet woman ; but of late they 
 began to dislike her, because she coughed and did not let 
 the inmates sleep. Especially a half-crazy old woman of 
 eighty years, who was also a constant inmate of this 
 apartment, took a dislike to the laundress, and nagged her 
 to death, because she would not let her sleep and kept 
 clearing her throat all night long, like a sheep. The 
 laundress kept quiet, — she was in debt for her lodging 
 and felt guilty, and so she had to be quiet. 
 
 She went less and less frequently to work, her strength 
 gave out, and so she could not pay the landlady ; the last 
 week she did not go to work at all, and with her cough- 
 ing only poisoned the lives of all, especially of the old 
 woman, who did not go out herself. Four days before, 
 the landlady had refused to give her lodging: she was 
 owing six dimes, did not pay her rent, and there was no 
 hope that she would pay it ; and the cots were all occu- 
 pied, and the lodgers complained of her coughing. 
 
 When the landlady refused to give lodging to the 
 laundress and told her to leave the room, if she did not 
 pay, the old woman was glad and pushed the laundress 
 out-of-doors. The laundress went away, but came back 
 an hour later, and the landlady did not have the heart to 
 drive her away again. " Where shall I go ? " said the 
 laundress. But on the third day the landlady's paramour, 
 a Muscovite who knew what was what, went for a police- 
 man. The pohceman, with a sabre and a pistol on a red 
 cord, came to the apartment and, politely uttering civil 
 words, led the laundress out-of-doors. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 179 
 
 It was a clear, sunshiny, but cold March day. Eunlets 
 were flowing, and janitors were chopping wood. The 
 pubKc sleighs leaped over the crusted snow and screeched 
 over the stones. The laundress went up-hill on the 
 sunny side, reached a church, and sat down at the portals 
 of the church, on the sunny side. But when the sun 
 began to go down behind the houses and the puddles 
 were sheeted with ice, the laundress began to feel cold 
 and chilly. She got up and pulled herself along. 
 Whither ? Home, to that only home in which she had 
 lived of late. Before she reached the house, resting on 
 her way, it grew dark. ' She went up to the gate, turned 
 into it, slipped, groaned, and fell down. 
 
 A man, another passed. " No doubt drunk." Another 
 passed. He stumbled over the laundress, and said to the 
 janitor : " A drunken woman is wallowing at the gate, — 
 I almost broke my head falling over her ; take her away, 
 or do something ! " 
 
 The janitor went. The laundress was dead. That was 
 what my friend told me. People may think that I have 
 picked out the facts, — the meeting with a fifteen-year- 
 old prostitute and the story of this laundress ; but you 
 must not think so : that actually happened in one night 
 in March of 1884, though I do not remember the date. 
 
 And so, after hearing my friend's story, I went to the 
 police station in order to go from there to Rzhanov House, 
 to find out the details of the story about this laundress. 
 The weather was fine, the sun shone, and again could the 
 running water be seen through the stars of the night frost 
 in the shade, while in Khamovnicheski Square everything 
 melted in the sun, and the water ran. A noise came up 
 from the river. The trees of Neskiichni Garden could be 
 seen in the blue distance across the river; the browned 
 sparrows, unnoticeable in winter, struck one's eyes with 
 their mirth ; men, too, seemed to wish to be merry, but 
 they had all too many cares. One could hear the ringing 
 
180 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 of bells, and against the background of these blending 
 sounds could be heard the sounds of firing in the barracks, 
 the whistling of rifle-balls, and their pinging against the 
 target. 
 
 I came to the police station. Here a few armed men, 
 policemen, took me to their chief. He, too, was armed 
 with a sabre and a pistol, and was busy giving orders 
 about a tattered, shivering old man, who was standing 
 before him and from weakness was unable to answer the 
 questions put to him. Having finished his business with 
 the old man, he turned to me. I asked him about the 
 girl of the evening before. At first he listened attentively 
 to me, and then smiled, both because I did not know the 
 regulation about taking them to the police station, and 
 especially because I was surprised at her youth. 
 
 "Why, there are some of twelve years, and lots of 
 thirteen and fourteen," he said, cheerfully. 
 
 In reply to my question about the girl of the evening 
 before, he explained to me that they had all of them been 
 sent to the committee (I think I am right). In reply to 
 my question as to where they had passed the night, he 
 answered indefinitely. He did not remember the one I 
 was talking about, — there were so many of them each 
 day. 
 
 In Ezhdnov House I found, in Number 32, the sexton 
 reading the prayers over the deceased woman. She had 
 been placed on what had been her cot, and the lodgers, 
 all of them people without means, had collected among 
 themselves money for the mass, the coffin, and the shroud, 
 and the old women had dressed and prepared her. The 
 sexton was reading in the darkness ; a woman in a cloak 
 was standing with a wax taper, and another taper was 
 held by a man (one would think a gentleman) in a clean 
 overcoat with an astrakhan collar, shining galoshes, and a 
 starched shirt. This was her brother. They had found 
 him. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 181 
 
 I went past the deceased woman to the landlady's 
 comer, and asked her all about it. 
 
 She was frightened at my questions; she was appar- 
 ently afraid lest she should be accused of something ; 
 later she talked more freely, and told me everything. 
 As I went back I looked at the dead woman. All dead 
 persons are beautiful, but this one was especially beauti- 
 ful and invited sympathy in her coffin : her face was clean 
 and pale, with closed, bulging eyes, sunken cheeks, and 
 soft blond hair on her high brow ; her face looked weary, 
 kind, and not sad, but surprised. Indeed, if the living do 
 not see, the dead are surprised. 
 
 On the day on which I noted this down a grand ball 
 was given in Moscow. 
 
 That night I left home at nine o'clock. I live in a 
 locality which is surrounded by factories, and I left the 
 house after the whistles of the factory had blown, which 
 after a week of unceasing work dismissed the people for 
 a free day. 
 
 Factory hands rushed by me, and I walked past factory 
 hands who were making for the inns and restaurants. 
 Many were already drunk, and many were with women. 
 
 I live among factories. Every morning at five o'clock 
 I hear a whistle, another, a third, a tenth, and so on and 
 on. That means that the work of the women, children, 
 and old men has begun. At eight o'clock there is a 
 second whistle: this is a half -hour intermission. At 
 noon — a third : this is an hour for dinner ; and at eight — 
 a fourth : the end of work. 
 
 By a strange coincidence all three factories in my 
 neighbourhood produce nothing but articles for balls. 
 
 In the one nearest to me they manufacture stockings ; 
 in another — silk stuffs; in the third — perfumes and 
 pomatum. 
 
 It is possible to hear these whistles, and not connect 
 with them any other idea than the definition of time. 
 
182 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 "Ah, there is the whistle, and so it is time to take a 
 walk!" But it is also possible to connect with these 
 whistles what there is in reality, namely, that the first 
 whistle at five in the morning means, that people who 
 have slept in a damp basement, frequently men and 
 women indiscriminately together, are getting up in the 
 dark and are hastening to the plant where the machines 
 whir, to take their places at their work, the end and per- 
 sonal use of which they do not see, and work, frequently 
 in a hot and stifling atmosphere, and in the dirt, with a 
 very short intermission, an hour, two, three, twelve, and 
 more hours in succession. They fall asleep and again 
 wake up, and again and again continue the same senseless 
 labour, which want alone compels them to do. 
 
 Thus passes one week after another, with the interrup- 
 tion of holidays, and even now I see the labourers who 
 are dismissed for one of these holidays. They come out 
 into the street: everywhere are restaurants, the Tsar's 
 inns, girls. And they are drunk and drag one another by 
 the hand, and take along girls, such as the one who the 
 day before was taken to the station, and hire cabs, and 
 ride in them, and go from restaurant to restaurant, 
 and curse, and loaf, and talk, themselves not knowing 
 what. I had seen such loafing of the labourers before, 
 and had shunned them with a feeling of loathing, and 
 had almost rebuked them ; but ever since I have been 
 hearing these whistles every day and known their mean- 
 ing, I have been wondering how it is that all the men do 
 not join those gangs of which Moscow is full, and that all 
 the women do not fall to the condition of the girl whom 
 I met near my house. 
 
 I walked about, watching these labourers, who loafed 
 in the streets until eleven o'clock. After that the anima- 
 tion began to die down Here and there a few drunken 
 persons were left, and here and there men and women 
 were being taken to the station. Then carriages began to 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 183 
 
 make their appearance, all of them moving in the same 
 direction. 
 
 On the box of each carriage there is a coachman, fre- 
 quently in a sheepskin coat, and a lackey, a dandy with a 
 cockade. The well-fed trotters in housings fly through 
 the frost at a rate of twenty versts an hour ; in the car- 
 riages are ladies, who are wrapped in capes and who are 
 guarding their flowers and their coiff'ures. Everything, 
 from the harness on the horses, the carriages, the rubber 
 tires, the cloth of the coachman's coat, to the stockings, 
 shoes, flowers, velvet, gloves, and perfume, — all that is 
 made by those people who are lying drunk on their cots 
 in sleeping apartments, or are passing their nights with 
 prostitutes in doss-houses, or are locked up in jails. And 
 the visitors to the ball ride past them in everything of 
 theirs, and it does not occur to them that there is any 
 connection between the ball to which they are hastening 
 and these drunkards at whom the coachmen shout. 
 
 These people enjoy themselves at the ball, in the calm- 
 est manner possible and with the fullest conviction that 
 what they are doing is not bad, but very good. They 
 enjoy themselves 1 They enjoy themselves from eleven 
 until six in the morning, through the deepest night, while 
 these people are tossing with empty stomachs in lodging- 
 houses, and some of them die, hke the laundress. 
 
 Their enjoyment consists in this, that women and 
 girls, baring their breasts and attaching bustles behind, 
 get themselves up in an indecent manner in which no 
 uncorrupted woman or girl would want to appear before 
 a man ; and in this half-naked condition, with protrud- 
 ing bare breasts, arms bare to the shoulder, artificial 
 bustles, and prominent hips, in the most glaring light, 
 the women and the girls, whose first virtue has always 
 been modesty, appear amidst strange men, who themselves 
 wear indecently close-fitting garments, and they embrace 
 them and circle around with them to the sounds of intox- 
 
184 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 icating music. Old women, who frequently are as much 
 bared as the younger women, sit and watch, and eat and 
 drink what tastes good; old men do the same. No 
 wonder all this takes place in the night, when all those 
 people are asleep, and no one can see them. But this is 
 not done in order to conceal anything : it seems to them 
 that there is nothing to conceal, that it is very good, 
 and that with this enjoyment, in which the painful labour 
 of thousands of people is used up, they not only do not 
 offend any one, but even support the poor people. 
 
 It may be very merry at balls ; but how did this come 
 about ? When we see in society and about us even one 
 man who has not eaten or is sutfering cold, we feel 
 ashamed to make merry, until that man gets something 
 to eat and is warmed up, to say nothing of this, that it is 
 impossible to imagine people making merry at an entertain- 
 ment which causes suffering to others. We loathe and 
 cannot understand the merriment of bad boys who pinch 
 a dog's tail with a forked stick and find fun in doing it. 
 
 How is it, then, that here, in these our entertainments, 
 we are so blind as not to see the forked stick with which 
 we are pinching the tails of all those people who suffer 
 for the sake of our entertainment ? 
 
 Not a woman who goes to this ball in a dress costing 
 150 roubles was born at a ball or at Madame Minan- 
 guoit's, but each one has lived in the country, has seen 
 peasants, and knows her nurse and chambermaid, who 
 have poor fathers and brothers, for whom the earning of 
 150 roubles with which to build a hut is the aim of a 
 long life of hard labour ; she knows this ; how, then, can 
 she make merry, knowing that at this ball she is wear- 
 ing on her bared body that hut which is the dream of 
 the brother of her good chambermaid ? 
 
 But, let us suppose that she may not have made this 
 reflection ; one would think she could not help knowing 
 that the velvet and the silk, the confectionery and the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 185 
 
 flowers, and the laces, and the dresses do not grow of 
 their own accord, but are made by men ; she cannot help 
 knowing what kind of people make all these things, under 
 what conditions, and why. She cannot help knowing 
 that the seamstress, whom she scolded, did not make that 
 dress for her out of love for her ; and so she cannot help 
 knowing that all this was done for her from want, that, like 
 her dress, the laces, and the flowers, and the velvet were 
 done in the same way. But, maybe, they are so befogged' 
 that they do not see this ; but the woman certainly cannot 
 fail to have observed that five or six respectable, often 
 sickly, old lackeys and maids lost sleep while busy with 
 her. She saw their gloomy faces. She cannot help 
 knowing that this night the frost reached 28 degrees 
 Eeaumur, and that the old coachman passed the whole 
 night on the box. But I know that they, indeed, do not 
 see any of these things. And if they, these young women 
 and girls, who on account of the hypnotism produced on 
 them by this ball do not see all this, they cannot be con- 
 demned. These poor women do everything which is 
 regarded as good by their elders ; but how will the elders 
 explain their cruelty to the people ? 
 
 The elders will always give this one explanation : " I do 
 not force a soul ; I buy the things, and I hire the serv- 
 ants, the maids, and the coachmen. There is nothing 
 bad in buying and hiring. I do not force a soul, — I hire 
 them, — so where is the wrong ? " 
 
 The other day I called on an acquaintance of mine. 
 As I passed through the first room, I was surprised to find 
 two women there at the table, for I knew that my acquaint- 
 ance was a bachelor. A lean, sallow, old-looking woman, 
 of about thirty years of age, with a kerchief thrown over 
 her shoulders, was doing something very rapidly on the 
 table, jerking her body nervously, as though in a fit. 
 Diagonally across from her sat a little girl, who was 
 doing something in the same way, jerking aU the time. 
 
186 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 Both women seemed to be subject to the St. Vitus*s dance. 
 I went up to them, and took a glance at what they were 
 doing. They cast tbeir eyes up at me, but continued 
 their work in the same concentrated manner. Before 
 them lay a loose heap of tobacco and paper shells : they 
 were making cigarettes. The woman rubbed the tobacco 
 in the palms of her hands, filled the mould with it, stuck 
 a shell over it, pushed the tobacco in, and threw the 
 cigarette to the girl. The girl rolled up a piece of paper, 
 and stuck the wad into the cigarette, which she threw 
 down, to pick up another. All this was done with such 
 rapidity and with such tension that it is impossible to 
 describe it to a man who has not seen it. I expressed 
 my surprise at their rapidity. 
 
 " Have been doing nothing else for fourteen years," 
 said the woman. 
 
 « WeU, is it hard ? " 
 
 " Yes. It hurts in the chest, and the odour is hard 
 to bear." 
 
 Indeed, she did not have to teU me so. It was enough 
 to look at her and at the girl. The girl has been working 
 at it for more than two years ; but any one who sees her 
 at her work will say that it is a strong organism which 
 is beginning to decompose. My acquaintance, a good and 
 liberal man, hired them for two roubles and fifty kopeks 
 per thousand. He has money, and he pays them for their 
 work, so where is the harm ? My acquaintance gets up at 
 noon. The evenings, from six until two, he passes playing 
 cards, or at the piano, and he eats and drinfcs savoury 
 food ; all his work is done by others. He is trying a 
 new pleasure, smoking. He began to smoke within my 
 memory. 
 
 There are a woman and a girl who can barely support 
 themselves by changing themselves into machines and all 
 their lives inhaling tobacco, and who thus ruin their lives. 
 He has money, which he has not earned, and he prefers 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 187 
 
 to play vint to making cigarettes for himself. He gives 
 these women money on condition that they continue to 
 live just as wretchedly as before, that is, that they make 
 cigarettes for him. 
 
 I love cleanliness and give money on this condition 
 alone, that the laundress shall wash the shirt which I 
 change twice a day, and this shirt has worn out the 
 laundress, and she has died. 
 
 Where is the wrong here ? People who buy and hire 
 will continue without me to compel others to make velvet 
 and confections, and will buy them, and without me men 
 will hire people to make cigarettes and wash shirts. Why, 
 then, should I deprive myself of velvet, and confections, 
 and cigarettes, and clean shirts, if such is the order of 
 things ? I frequently, almost always, hear this reflection. 
 It is the same kind of a reflection that a maddened crowd 
 makes when it destroys something. It is the same kind 
 of a reflection that dogs are guided by, when one of them 
 knocks down another, and all the others rush upon the 
 under dog and tear it to pieces. " If the others have begun 
 to ruin the thing, why can't I do it also ? Well, what 
 wiU happen if I wear a dirty shirt and make my own 
 cigarettes ? Will anybody be better off from it ? " ask 
 people who want to justify themselves. If we were not 
 so far from the truth, it would be a shame to answer such 
 a question ; but we are so mixed up that this question 
 seems very natural to us, and so, though we feel ashamed, 
 we must answer it. 
 
 What difference will there be if I wear a shirt a week, 
 and not a day, and make my own cigarettes, or stop 
 smoking altogether ? 
 
 It will be this, that some laundress and some maker of 
 cigarettes will strain themselves less, and this, that what 
 before I spent for laundry and the making of cigarettes, I 
 can give to the laundress, or to other laundresses and 
 labourers, who are tired by their work, and who, instead 
 
188 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 of working above their strength, will be able to rest and 
 to have some tea. But I have heard objections to this. 
 (Eich and elegant people are so ashamed to understand 
 their position.) To this they say : " If I wear dirty linen 
 and stop smoking, and give this money to the poor, the 
 poor will none the less be despoiled of everything, and 
 your drop in the ocean will do no good." 
 
 One feels even more ashamed to answer this objection, 
 but the answer has to be given. It is such a common 
 objection. The answer to it is simple. 
 
 If I come to savages, and they treat me to cutlets, which 
 seem savoury to me, and I on the following day learn 
 (perhaps I see it myself) that the savoury cutlets are made 
 of the flesh of a captive man, who was killed for the 
 purpose of furnishing savoury cutlets, and I find it wrong 
 to eat men, — then, no matter how good the cutlets may 
 taste, no matter how common the custom of devouring 
 men may be among my fellows, no matter how little the 
 captives who are prepared as food may profit from my 
 refusal to eat the cutlets, I shall not and cannot eat them 
 again. Maybe I shall devour human flesh when driven to 
 it by hunger, but I shall not feast any one and shall not 
 take part in a feast at which human flesh is eaten, and 
 shall not look for such feasts, or be proud of taking part 
 in them. 
 
XXV. 
 
 But what shall we do ? We certainly did not do this ? 
 If not we, who did ? We say that we did not do it ; it just 
 did itself, as children say, when they break something, 
 that it just broke itself. We say that so long as cities 
 exist and we live in them, we support people by buying 
 their labour for the purpose of serving them. 
 
 But that is not true, and that is the reason why we 
 need only look at ourselves, to see how we live in the 
 country, and how we there support people. 
 
 The winter is past in the city, and Easter week comes. 
 In the city the same orgy of the rich is continued : in the 
 boulevards, the gardens, and the parks, and on the river 
 there are music, theatres, rides, promenades, all kinds of 
 illuminations, and fireworks ; but in the country it is 
 better: the air is better, and the trees, the fields, the 
 flowers, are fresher. We must go where all this is budding 
 and flowering. And the majority of the rich people, who 
 exploit the labours of others, go into the country, to 
 breathe this better air and to look at these better fields 
 and woods. 
 
 And so the rich people settle in the country, amidst 
 dirty-looking peasants, who live on bread and onions, 
 work eighteen hours a day, go nights without getting 
 enough sleep, and wear coarse clothes. Here no one has 
 tempted the people: there have been no factories here, 
 and there are none of those unemployed hands, of whom 
 there are so many in the city, and whom we are supposed 
 to be feeding by giving them work. Here the people never 
 get enough time in the summer to do all their work, and 
 
 189 
 
190 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 not only are there here no unemployed hands, but much 
 property goes to ruin from lack of working hands, and a 
 mass of men, children, old men, and women with children 
 perish from overstraining themselves. How do the rich 
 arrange their lives here ? 
 
 Like this. If there was an old house, which was built 
 in the days of serfdom, it is renovated and beautified ; if 
 there is none, a new one, two or three stories high, is 
 built. The rooms, of which there are from twelve to 
 twenty, and more, are all about six arshins in height. 
 The floors are of parquetry, the windows have large panes ; 
 there are costly carpets, costly furniture, and a buffet 
 costing from two hundred to six hundred roubles. 
 
 The walks near the house are made with gravel, the 
 ground is levelled off and provided with garden beds, and 
 croquet grounds are laid out; they put up reflecting 
 globes, frequently greenhouses, hotbeds, and high stables, 
 always with ornaments on the ridge-piece. Everything is 
 painted with oil-colours, the oil being what the old men 
 and the children do not get in their porridge. 
 
 If the rich man is able, he settles in such a house ; if 
 not, he hires one ; but no matter how poor or how liberal 
 a man from our circle may be, when he settles in the 
 country, he settles in a house, for the building and clean- 
 Hness of which it is necessary to take dozens of people 
 away from their work, though they have not time enough 
 to attend to the corn for their own sustenance. 
 
 It is impossible to say here that there are factories and 
 that it will be all the same, whether I make use of them 
 or not. Here we directly introduce factories of things 
 which we need, and directly, by exploiting the want of 
 the people who surround us, tear them away from the 
 work which is necessary for them and for us and for all 
 men, and thus we corrupt one set of men and ruin the 
 lives and the health of other men. 
 
 Let us say, a cultured and honourable family from 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 191 
 
 the gentry or from the official classes is living in the 
 country. 
 
 All the members of the family and the guests come 
 down there in the middle of June, because until then they 
 have been studying and passing examinations, that is, 
 they arrive in the beginning of mowing-time. The mem- 
 bers of this family (like nearly all people of this circle) 
 stay in the country from the beginning of the busy sea- 
 son, the haying-time, not to its end, for in September the 
 sowing and the potato-digging is still going on, but to 
 the time of slackening the intensity of the labour. 
 
 During the whole time of their stay in the country 
 there is going on around them, by their side, that summer 
 work of the peasants, of the tension of which we cannot 
 form any idea, no matter how much we may have heard 
 of it, or how much we may have read about it, or looked 
 at it, unless we experience it ourselves. 
 
 The members of the family, about ten of them, live as 
 badly as in the city, even worse, if such thing is possible, 
 than in the city, because here in the country it is 
 assumed that the members of the family are resting (from 
 doing nothing) and so have no simiHtude of work, no 
 excuse for their idleness. 
 
 About St. Peter's Day, — during hungry Lent, when the 
 peasants' food consists of kvas, bread, and onions, — 
 the mowing begins. The gentlemen who live in the 
 country see this work, partly order the men about, partly 
 enjoy looking at it, smelling the odour of the wilting hay, 
 hearing the songs of the women and the clanking of the 
 scythes, and seeing the rows of mowers and raking women. 
 
 They see this near the house, and when the younger 
 people and the children, who have been doing nothing 
 the whole day, are sure to be driven on well-fed horses, a 
 distance of half a verst, in order to bathe in the river. 
 
 The work which is being done at the mowing is one of 
 the most important in the world. Nearly every year the 
 
192 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 lack of hands and of time causes the mowings to remain 
 partly nnmown, and for the same reason the meadows are 
 liable to be spoiled by the rain ; the more or less tense 
 work decides the question whether twenty or more per 
 cent, of hay will be added to the wealth of the people, or 
 whether this amount will rot, or harden on the root. If 
 there is more hay, the old men will get meat to eat, and 
 the children milk to drink. Thus it is in general, and in 
 particular the question is here being solved for every 
 mower as to the bread and milk for himself and the 
 children in the winter. Every labouring man and woman 
 knows this, and even the children know that this is an 
 important work and that it is necessary for them to work 
 with all their might and main, — to carry the pitcher 
 with kvas to their fathers in the field, and, changing the 
 heavy pitcher from hand to hand, to run with bare feet 
 and as fast as possible the two versts from the village, in 
 order to get there in time, and keep their fathers from 
 scolding. Everybody knows that from mowing-time 
 until the harvest there will be no interruption in the 
 work and no time for resting. 
 
 And it is not the mowing alone, for everybody has, in 
 addition to the mowing, other work to do; the ground 
 has to be turned up and harrowed ; the women have to 
 attend to the making of the linen, and the bread, and the 
 washing ; and the men have to go to mill, and to the city, 
 and to attend to the business of the Commune, and go to 
 the judge and to the captain, and look after the wagons, 
 and feed the horses at night, — and all, the old, and the 
 young, and the sick, work with all their might. The 
 peasants work so hard that, before the end of the dayja 
 work, the weak, the striplings, and the old walk the last 
 rows with great difl&culty, tottering as they walk, and 
 with difficulty get up after a rest; similarly work the 
 women, who are often pregnant or nursing babies. 
 
 The work is tense and incessant. All work with all 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 193 
 
 their might, and during this work not only eat up all 
 the supplies of their scanty food, but also all their for- 
 mer supplies : all of them, never any too stout, grow 
 lean after their summer's work. 
 
 Here is a small company working a-mowing: three 
 peasants, — one old man, another, his nephew, a young 
 married lad, and a shoemaker of the manor, a muscular 
 man. This mowing decides the fate of the winter for 
 them all, whether they can keep a cow, and pay their 
 taxes. They have been working without cessation and 
 without rest for two weeks. The rain has retarded their 
 work. After the rain, when the grass dried in the wind, 
 they decided to finish the work and, to do the work more 
 quickly, they determined to have two women to each 
 scythe. With the old man comes out his wife, fifty years 
 of age, worn out from work and eleven childbirths, and 
 deaf, but still a good worker, and his thirteen-year-old 
 daughter, a rather small, but strong and quick girl. With 
 the nephew comes out his wife, a powerful and tall 
 woman, as strong as any peasant, and his sister-in-law, 
 the pregnant wife of a soldier. With the shoemaker 
 comes his wife, a good worker, and her mother, an old 
 woman, finishing her eighth decade, who otherwise is out 
 begging alms. They start out in a row and work from 
 morning until night, in the sweltering heat of the June sun. 
 They hate to stop their work to fetch some water or kvas. 
 
 A tiny boy, the old woman's grandchild, fetches the 
 water. The old woman, who seems to be worrying lest 
 she be driven away from the work, holds on to the rake 
 and moves on with difficulty, but still keeps up with the 
 rest. The boy is all bent up, and takes short steps with 
 his bare feet, dragging along the pitcher of water, which 
 is heavier than he himself, and changing it from hand to 
 hand. The girl shoulders a load of hay, which is also 
 heavier than she ; she takes a few steps, and stops, and 
 throws down the load, unable to carry it any longer. The 
 
194 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 fifty-year-old woman is raking without cessation and, with 
 her kerchief knocked to one side, is dragging along the hay, 
 breathing heavily and tottering in her walk ; the eighty- 
 year-old woman does nothing but rake, but even that is 
 above her strength; she slowly shuffles her bast shoe 
 covered feet and, scowling, looks gloomily in front of her, 
 like a dangerously sick or dying man. The old man pur- 
 posely sends her away from the rest to rake near the 
 cocks, so that she may not keep in a row with the rest, 
 but she does not give up, and with the same dead, gloomy 
 face works while the others work. 
 
 The sun is setting behind the forest, and the cocks are 
 not yet all cleared away : there is still much work ahead. 
 
 All feel that it is time to take a rest, but nobody speaks, 
 waiting for the others to say it is. Finally the shoemaker, 
 feeling that he has no more strength, proposes to the 
 old man to leave the cocks until the next day, and the old 
 man consents to it, and immediately the women run after 
 their clothes, after the pitchers, and after the forks, and 
 the old woman sits down at once, and then lies down, still 
 looking ahead of her with the same dead glance. But 
 the women walk away, and she gets up, groaning, and 
 drags herself away after them. 
 
 And here is the gentleman's house. That same even- 
 ing, while from the village are heard the sounds of the 
 whetstones of the weary luowers, returning from the mow- 
 ing, the sounds of the hammer against the scythe-blade, 
 the shouts of the women and girls who, having barely put 
 down their rakes, are already running to drive the cattle 
 home, — in the house of the gentleman other sounds are 
 heard : the banging of the piano is heard, there resounds 
 a Hungarian song, and now and then, through the song, 
 one catches the sound of the mallets striking the croquet 
 balls. At the stable stands a carriage drawn by four well- 
 fed horses. It is the carriage of the foppish driver. 
 
 Guests have arrived: they paid ten roubles for being 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 195 
 
 driven fifteen versts. The horses, standing at the car- 
 riage, tinkle with their little bells. There is hay in their 
 trough, and they trample it under foot, that hay which 
 the peasants gather with such difficulty there in the field. 
 There is a commotion in the yard of the manor : a healthy- 
 looking, well-fed lad in a pink shirt, given him by the 
 janitor for his service, is calling to the coachmen to hitch 
 and saddle the horses. Two peasants, who live here as 
 coachmen, come out of the coachmen's room and walk 
 leisurely, swaying their arms, to saddle the horses for the 
 gentlemen. 
 
 Still nearer to the house the sounds of another piano 
 are heard. A conservatory graduate, who is living with 
 the gentlefolk, to teach the children music, is practising 
 Schumann. The sounds of one piano break in on those 
 of the other. Near the house two nurses are walking: 
 one of them is young, the other old. They are leading 
 and carrying children, of the same age as those who were 
 carrying the pitchers from the village, to put them to bed. 
 One of the nurses is an Englishwoman, who cannot talk 
 Eussian. She was imported from England, not because 
 she is supposed to have any special qualifications, but 
 because she cannot talk Eussian. Farther down a peasant 
 and two women are watering the flowers near the 
 house, while another is cleaning a gun for the young 
 master. 
 
 Here two women are carrying a basket with clean un- 
 derwear ; they have washed the linen of the family and 
 of the English and the French assistants. In the house 
 two women with difficulty manage to wash all the dishes 
 for the gentlefolk, who have just had their meal, and two 
 peasants in dress coats are running up and down on the 
 staircase, passing coffee, tea, wine, Seltzer. On the porch 
 a table is set: they have just finished eating, and soon 
 they will eat again until cockcrow, until midnight, until 
 three o'clock, often until daybreak. 
 
196 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 Some sit and smoke, playing cards; others sit and 
 smoke, carrying on liberal conversations ; others walk 
 from place to place, eating and smoking, and, not knowing 
 what to do, decide to go out riding. There are fifteen 
 able-bodied men and women there, and they are served 
 by about thirty able-bodied men and women servants. 
 
 And this is taking place where every hour, every lad, is 
 valuable. And this will take place in July, when the 
 peasants, without getting enough sleep, will mow the oats 
 at night, to keep them from sheUing out, and the women 
 will get up at night in order to thresh the straw for sheaf 
 ropes, when the old women, and the pregnant women, and 
 the young children will overwork and get sick from too 
 much drinking, and when there will not be enough hands, 
 nor horses, nor wagons, to take to the bam the corn which 
 feeds all men, of which milHons of puds are needed a day 
 in Eussia, in order that people may not die ; and at this 
 time this Hfe of the gentlefolk will be continued, — there 
 will be theatres, picnics, hunts, drinking, eating, pianos, 
 singing, dancing, — an unceasing orgy. 
 
 Here it is impossible to give the excuse that such is 
 the order of things : nothing of the kind is the case. We 
 ourselves introduce this life, taking the bread and the 
 labour away from the men who are worn out by labour. 
 We live as though there were no connection between 
 the dying laundress, the fourteen-year-old prostitute, the 
 women who are fagged out by the making of cigarettes, 
 and the old women and children about us who work 
 intensely, above their strength, without sufficient food ; 
 we live, — enjoying ourselves in luxury, as though there 
 were no connection between that and our life ; we do not 
 want to see this, that, if it were not for our idle, luxurious, 
 and debauched life, there would be none of this work above 
 their strength, and if there were none of that work, there 
 would not be our hfe. 
 
 It seems to us that sufferings are one thing, and our 
 

WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 197 
 
 life another thing, and that we, living as we do, are as 
 innocent and pure as doves. 
 
 We read the descriptions of the lives of the Eomans 
 and marvel at the inhumanity of the soulless Luculli, 
 who stuffed themselves with food and drink, while the 
 people died of hunger ; we shake our heads and marvel at 
 the savagery of our ancestors, the serf-owners, who intro- 
 duced domestic theatres and orchestras, and who appointed 
 whole villages to maintain their gardens, and from the 
 height of our greatness we marvel at their inhumanity. 
 We read the words of Isaiah, Chapter V. : 
 8. Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay 
 field to field, till there be no place, that they may be 
 placed alone in the midst of the earth ! 
 
 11. Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, 
 that they may follow strong drink ; that continue until 
 night, till wine inflame them ! 
 
 12. And the harp and the viol, the tabret and pipe, and 
 wine, are in their feasts : but they regard not the work of 
 the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands. 
 
 18. Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of 
 vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope : 
 
 20. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil ; 
 that put darkness for light, and light for darkness ; that 
 put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter ! 
 
 21. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, 
 and prudent in their own sight! 
 
 22. Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and 
 men of strength to mingle strong drink : 
 
 23. Which justify the wicked for reward, and take 
 away the righteousness of the righteous from him ! 
 
 We read in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter III, 10 : 
 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the 
 
 treeg : therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good 
 
 fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 
 
 And we are absolutely convinced that we are the good 
 
198 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 tree which brings forth fruit, and that these words are not 
 said to us, but to somebody else, to some bad people. 
 We read the words of Isaiah, Chapter VI. : 
 
 10. Make the heart of this people fat, and make 
 their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ; lest they see 
 with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and under- 
 stand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. 
 
 11. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, 
 Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the 
 houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate. 
 
 We read this, and are absolutely convinced that this 
 remarkable work was not done to us, but to some other 
 people. The reason why we do not see it, is because 
 this remarkable work has been done to us: we do not 
 hear, nor see, nor comprehend with our hearts. How did 
 this happen ? 
 
XXVI. 
 
 How can a man who considers himself, I shall not 
 say a Christian, nor even a cultured or humane man, but 
 simply a man who is not completely deprived of reason 
 and of conscience, live in such a way that, without taking 
 part in the struggle for the life of all humanity, he only 
 swallows the labours of the men who are struggling for 
 life, and by his demands increases the labour of those who 
 struggle and of those who perish in this struggle ? Our 
 so-called Christian and cultured world is full of such 
 people. Not only is our world full of such men, but 
 the ideal of the men of our Christian cultured world is 
 the acquisition of the greatest possible possessions, that 
 is, of the possibility of wealth which gives comfort and 
 idleness, that is, a liberation from the struggle for hfe, 
 and the greatest possible exploitation of the labour of 
 one's brothers, who are perishing in this struggle. How 
 could people have fallen into such a remarkable delusion ? 
 
 How could they have reached such a point as not to 
 see, to hear, and to comprehend with their hearts what 
 is so clear, so obvious, and so indisputable ? 
 
 We need but stop for a moment and think, in order to 
 be frightened at that remarkable contradiction between 
 our life and what we profess, we, I do not say the Chris- 
 tians, but the humane and cultured people. 
 
 I do not know whether that God, or that law of Nature, 
 by which the world and people exist, is good or bad ; but 
 the position of men in the world, from the time we know- 
 it, is such that naked men, without wool on their bodies, 
 without holes in which to hide themselves, without food 
 
 199 
 
200 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 which they may find in the fields, like Robinson on his 
 island, are all put to the necessity of struggling with 
 Nature constantly and without cessation in order to cover 
 their bodies, make clothes for themselves, defend them- 
 selves, put a roof over their heads, and work for their 
 food, with which two or three times a day to still their 
 hunger and the hunger of their children and old men who 
 cannot work. 
 
 Wherever, at whatever time, and in whatever numbers 
 we may observe the life of people, whether in Europe, in 
 China, in America, or in Russia, whether we shall view 
 all humanity, or a small part of it ; whether in ancient 
 times, in the nomad state, or in our time, with steam 
 motors, sewing-machines, electric light, and perfected 
 agriculture, we shall see one and the same thing, — that 
 people, working constantly and intensely, are not able to 
 acquire food, protection, and clothing for themselves and 
 for their little ones and their old men, and that a con- 
 siderable part of men is now perishing, as it perished 
 before, from a want of the means of life and from their 
 excessive labour to obtain them. 
 
 No matter where we may Hve, — if we draw about us 
 a circle of one hundred thousand, or of one thousand, or 
 of ten versts, or of one verst, and look at the lives of those 
 whom this circle takes in, — we shall see in this circle : 
 children born before their time, old men and women, sick 
 lying-in women, and weak persons, who have not enough 
 food and rest to be able to live and so die before their 
 time ; we shall see people who m the full strength of 
 their growth are killed outright by perilous and harmful 
 work. 
 
 Ever since the world has existed, we see men with 
 terrible tension, privations, and sufferings struggling with 
 their common want, unable to vanquish it. We know 
 besides that each of us, no matter where he may live and 
 how he may live, every day, every hour involuntarily 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 201 
 
 absorbs for himself part of the labours which are worked 
 out by humanity. No matter where and how he may- 
 live, the house and the roof have not grown over him of 
 their own accord. The wood did not walk into his stove, 
 nor did the water come, nor did the baked bread, the 
 dinner, the clothes, the footgear fall down from the sky : 
 all that was done for him not only by the men of the 
 past, but is being also done by the men of the present, 
 hundreds and thousands of whom are wasting away and 
 dying in vain endeavours to earn for themselves and for 
 their children the necessary roof, food, and clothing, — 
 the means for saving themselves and their children from 
 sufferings and premature death. All men struggle with 
 want. They struggle with so much tension that every 
 moment their like, their fathers, mothers, children, are 
 perishing all around them. 
 
 People are in this world as in a sea-washed ship with 
 a small supply of food : all are placed by God, or by 
 Nature, in such a situation that they are compelled, while 
 economizing on their food, constantly to struggle against 
 want. Every stoppage of each of us ia this labour, every 
 absorption of the labours of others, which is useless for 
 the common good, is ruinous for ourselves and for our 
 kind. 
 
 How, then, does it happen that the majority of the 
 cultured people of our time, though doing no work, calmly 
 absorb other men's labours, which are necessary for life, 
 and regard such a life as most natural and rational ? 
 
 In order that men may free themselves of the labour 
 which is proper and natural to all, may transfer it to 
 others, and with all that not consider themselves traitors 
 and thieves, two suppositions only are possible: first, 
 that we, the men who do not take part in the general 
 labour, are beings distinct from the labouring men and 
 have a special purpose in society, like the drones or queen 
 bees, which have a different purpose than the working 
 
202 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 bees ; and second, that the work which we, the men who 
 are freed from the struggle for life, are doing for the 
 other men is so useful for all men that it certainly redeems 
 the harm which we do to other people by making their 
 situation harder. 
 
 In former days people who exploited the labours of 
 others asserted that, in the first place, they were a special 
 breed, and, in the second, were specially designated by 
 God to care for the good of individual men, that is, to 
 govern them and teach them, and so they assured others 
 and frequently believed themselves that the work which 
 they were doing was more important and more necessary 
 for the people than the labours which they exploited. 
 And so long as there was no doubt as to the immediate 
 interference of the Divinity in human affairs and in the 
 distinction of races, this justification was sufficient. But 
 with Christianity and the consequent consciousness of 
 the equality and unity of all men, this justification could 
 not be advanced in its older form. It was impossible to 
 assert that men are born of different breeds and distinctions 
 and with different destinies, and the old justification, 
 though supported by some people, has slowly been abol- 
 ished and hardly exists now. 
 
 The justification of the distinctness of the human 
 breeds was destroyed ; but the fact itself of the liberation 
 of self from labour and of the exploitation of the labour 
 of others has remained the same for those who have the 
 power to do so, and for the existing fact they have always 
 invented new justifications, with which, even without the 
 acknowledgment of the distinctness of the breeds of men, 
 the Hberation of self from work, as practised by those 
 who could do so, might appear just. They have invented 
 very many such justifications. However strange it may 
 appear, the chief activity of what at a given time was 
 called science, of what formed the ruling tendency of 
 science, has been and even now continues to consist in 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 203 
 
 the discovery of such justifications. This has heen the 
 aim of the activity of the theological sciences ; this has 
 heen the aim of the juridical sciences ; this has been the 
 aim of the so-called philosophy, and this has become of 
 late (however strange it may appear to us contemporaries, 
 who make use of this justificatiou) the aim of the activity 
 of the contemporary experimental science. 
 
 All the theological finesses, which try to prove that a 
 given church is the one true successor of Christ, and 
 so has full and- infinite power over the souls and even 
 the bodies of men, has this aim for the chief motive of its 
 activity. 
 
 All the juridical sciences, the political, the criminal, the 
 civil, the international laws, have this one purpose ; the 
 majority of the philosophical theories, especially Hegel's 
 theory, which has been reigning for so long a time, with 
 its thesis of the rationahty of everything which exists, 
 and that the state is a necessary form of the perfection of 
 personality, have the same purpose. 
 
 A very poor English publicist, whose works have all 
 been forgotten and acknowledged to be the most insignifi- 
 cant of the insignificant, writes a treatise on population, in 
 which he invents a law about the increase of the pop- 
 ulation which is out of proportion with the means of 
 existence. This imaginary law the writer decks out 
 mathematically with baseless formulas and lets out into 
 the world. To judge from the frivolity and vapidity of 
 this work, one would suppose that it would not attract 
 anybody's attention and would be forgotten, like all the 
 subsequent writings of this author ; but something quite 
 different takes place. The publicist who has written this 
 work at once becomes a learned authority and is kept on 
 this height for almost half a century. Malthus ! Malthus's 
 theory, — the law of the increase of the population in 
 a geometric, and of the means of existence in an arith- 
 metical proportion, and the natural and sensible means 
 
204 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 for limiting the population, all that became scientific, 
 unquestionable truths, which were not verified and were 
 used as axioms, for the purpose of building further deduc- 
 tions upon them. Thus acted learned, cultured men; but 
 among the masses of idle men there was expressed a 
 respectful confidence in the newly discovered great laws 
 of Malthus. 
 
 Why did that happen ? One would think that those 
 were scientific deductions which had nothing in common 
 with the instincts of the crowd. 
 
 But this can only appear so to him who believes that 
 science is something original, like the church, which is not 
 subject to errors, and not simply the inventions of feeble, 
 erring men, who only for importance' sake substitute 
 the word " science " in the place of men's thoughts and 
 words. 
 
 It was sufficient to make practical deductions from 
 Malthus's theory, in order to see that this theory was 
 most human, with most definite aims. 
 
 The deductions which resulted directly from this 
 theory were as follows: the wretched condition of the 
 labouring people is not due to the cruelty, egotism, and 
 ignorance of the rich and of those in power, but it is so 
 in consequence of an unchangeable law, which is inde- 
 pendent of men, and if any one is to blame for it, it 
 is the starving working men themselves: why are these 
 fools born, if they know that they will have nothing to 
 eat ? And so the rich and the classes in power are not 
 to blame for anything, and may continue to live as 
 before. 
 
 And this deduction, so valuable to the crowd of idle 
 men, had, this effect, that all the scientists overlooked the 
 baselessness, irregularity, and complete arbitrariness of 
 the deductions, and the crowd of the learned, that is, idle 
 men, knowing instinctively to what these deductions 
 would lead, enthusiastically hailed this theory, imposed 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 205 
 
 upon it the stamp of truth, that is, of science, and held 
 on to it for half a century. 
 
 Kant's positive philosophy and the resulting doctrine 
 about humanity being an organism, — Darwin's doc- 
 trine of the law of the struggle for existence, which is 
 supposed to govern life, and of the consequent distiQction 
 of the human races, — the now favourite anthropology, 
 biology, and sociology, have the same purpose. All these 
 have become favourite sciences, because they all serve for 
 the justification of the existing self-liberation of one set of 
 men from the human obligation of labour, and of their 
 absorption of the labour of others. 
 
 All these theories, as is always the case, are worked 
 out in the mysterious sanctuaries of the high priests and 
 are in indefinite, obscure expressions disseminated among 
 the masses, which accept them. As in antiquity all the 
 theological intricacies, the justifications of ecclesiastic and 
 political violence, remained a special knowledge of the 
 priests, while among the masses there were current 
 the ready deductions, taken on faith, that the power 
 of the kings, the clergy, and the nobility was sacred; 
 even so later the philosophical and juridical intricacies of 
 the so-called science were the possession of the priests 
 of this science, while among the masses were current 
 the deductions, taken on faith, that the structure of 
 society has to be such as it is, and cannot be other- 
 wise. 
 
 Even so now the laws of life and of the evolution of 
 the organisms are analyzed only in the sanctuaries of the 
 priests ; but among the masses are current the deductions, 
 taken on faith, that the division of labour is a law which 
 is confirmed by science, and that so it must be : that some 
 should die from starvation, and work, while others must 
 eternally be idle, and that this perdition of some and 
 idleness of others are an unquestionable law of humanity, 
 to which we must submit. 
 
206 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN ? 
 
 The current justification of this idleness among the 
 mass of all so-called cultured people, with their various 
 activities, from the railroad man to the writer and artist, 
 is now as follows : 
 
 We, who have freed ourselves from the universal 
 human obligation of participating in the struggle for 
 existence, serve progress, and so benefit the whole society 
 of men, thus redeeming the whole harm which is done to 
 the same people by exploiting their labour. 
 
 This reflection seems to the men of our time quite dis- 
 similar to those reflections by which the former leisure 
 classes used to justify themselves ; just as the reflection 
 of the Roman emperors and citizens as to this, that with- 
 out them the cultured world would perish, seemed to 
 them quite apart from the reflection of the Egyptians and 
 the Persians, and just as a similar reflection of the mediae- 
 val knights and clergy seemed to them quite distinct from 
 the reflection of the Romans. 
 
 But that only seems so. It is enough to enter into the 
 comprehension of the essence of the justification of our 
 time, in order to become convinced that there is nothing 
 new in it. 
 
 It is only a little differently clothed, but it is the same, 
 being based on the same. Every justification of a man 
 who, without working, absorbs the labour of others — the 
 justification of Pharaoh and the priests, of the Roman and 
 mediaeval emperors and their citizens, the knights, priests, 
 and the clergy — is always composed of two propositions : 
 (1) we take the labour of the rabble because we are spe- 
 cial people, predetermined by God to govern the rabble 
 and to teach them the divine truths; (2) the people of 
 the masses cannot be the judges of the measure of the 
 labours which we take from them for the good which we 
 do them, because the Pharisees said long ago (John vii. 
 49), This people who knoweth not the law are cursed. 
 The people do not understand wherein their good Hes, and 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 207 
 
 SO they cannot be the judges of the benefit conferred on 
 them. 
 
 The justification of our time, in spite of its seeming 
 peculiarity, is by its essence composed of the same two 
 propositions: (1) we, the special people, the cultured 
 people, are serving progress and civilization, and so 
 confer a great benefit on the masses ; (2) the uneducated 
 masses do not understand the benefit which we are con- 
 ferring upon them, and so cannot be the judges of it. 
 
 We free ourselves from labour, make use of the labour 
 of others, and thus burden the condition of our brothers, 
 and we affirm that in place of the labour we confer upon 
 them a great benefit, of which they cannot be the judges. 
 
 Is it not the same ? The only difference is this, that 
 formerly it was the Eoman citizens, the priests, the 
 knights, the nobility, that had the right to other people's 
 labour ; now it is only the caste of people who call them- 
 selves cultured. The lie is the same, for the proposition 
 of the men who justify themselves is equally false. The 
 lie consists in this, that before reflecting on the benefit 
 conferred on the people by the men who are freed from 
 labour, certain people, the Pharaohs, the priests, or we, 
 the cultured men, put ourselves in this position and 
 maintain it, and only then invent a justification for it. 
 
 This condition of violence, which one set of men exerts 
 upon others, as before, so even now serves as a foundation 
 for everything. 
 
 The difference between our justification and the most 
 ancient one is only this, that it is more fallacious and 
 less substantial than the former. 
 
 The ancient emperors and the Popes could, if they 
 themselves and the people believed in their divine calling, 
 explain simply why they were those people who should 
 make use of the labours of others: they said that they 
 were destined for it by God, and that God had also pre- 
 scribed to them to transmit to the people the divine 
 
208 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 truths which were revealed to them, and to govern the 
 people. 
 
 But the cultured people of our time, who do not work 
 with their hands, by recognizing the equality of men, can 
 no longer explain why they and their children (for educa- 
 tion is obtained only by means of money, — of power) 
 are those chosen fortunate people who are called to con- 
 fer a certain light benefit, and not other people among the 
 milHons who perish by the hundred and the thousand, 
 while supporting the possibility of their culture. 
 
 Their only justification is this, that they — the men 
 of the present time, in place of the evil which they do to 
 the people by freeing themselves from labour and absorb- 
 ing theirs, confer on the people a benefit which is incom- 
 prehensible to them, and which redeems all the harm that 
 is done to them. 
 
XXVIL 
 
 The proposition by which men who have liberated 
 themselves from labour justify their liberation, will in 
 its simplest and at the same time its most precise ex- 
 pression be like this: we, the people who are in a 
 position, by having freed ourselves from labour, to make 
 use through violence of the labour of other men, in con- 
 sequence of this position of ours confer a benefit on them, 
 those other people; or, in other words: certain people, 
 in return for the palpable and comprehensible harm 
 which they do to others in forcibly making use of 
 their labours and thus increasing the difficulty of their 
 struggle with Nature, confer upon them a benefit, which 
 is impalpable and incomprehensible to them. This prop- 
 osition is very strange ; but the people of former times 
 and of the present, who sit on the necks of the working 
 people, believe in it and ease their consciences with it. 
 
 Let us see in what manner this proposition is in our 
 day justified among the various classes who have eman- 
 cipated themselves from labour. 
 
 I serve people by my political or ecclesiastic activity, 
 as a king, a minister of state, a bishop; I serve people 
 by my commercial or industrial labour ; I serve people by 
 my scientific or artistic activity. We are all with our 
 activity as indispensable to the masses as they are in- 
 dispensable to us. 
 
 Thus say the various men of our time, who have 
 emancipated themselves from labour. 
 
 Let us successively analyze the bases on which they 
 assert the usefulness of their activities. 
 
 209 
 
210 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 There can be but two signs of the usefulness of one 
 man's activity for another : the external one, — the rec- 
 ognition of the usefulness of the activity by him who 
 is benefited, and the internal one, — the desire of be- 
 ing useful to another, which lies at the base of the 
 activity of him who confers the benefit. 
 
 The men of the state (I include among this number 
 the ecclesiastics who are established by the government) 
 are useful to those men whom they govern. 
 
 An emperor, king, president of a republic, prime minis- 
 ter, minister of justice, minister of war, of education, a 
 bishop, and all their subordinates, who serve the state, 
 live, by having freed themselves from the struggle of 
 humanity for life and by imposing the whole burden 
 of the struggle on the other people, on the ground that 
 their activity redeems them. 
 
 Let us apply the first sign : is the benefit conferred by 
 this activity recognized by those labouring people upon 
 whom the activity of the men of state is directly 
 exerted ? 
 
 Yes, it is : the majority of men regard the political 
 activity as indispensable to themselves, — the majority 
 recognize the usefulness of this activity in principle ; but 
 in all its known manifestations, in all the known special 
 cases, every one of the institutions and of the actions of 
 this activity meets, in the midst of those men for whose 
 benefit it is exercised, not only a denial of a benefit con- 
 ferred, but also the assertion that this activity is harmful 
 and disastrous. 
 
 There is no political and no social activity which by 
 many men is not considered harmful : the courts, banks. 
 County Councils, township offices, police, clergy, every 
 political activity from that of the highest power down to 
 that of the rural officer and policeman, from that of the 
 bishop to that of the sexton, is by one part of men con- 
 sidered useful, and by the other harmful And this does 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 211 
 
 not take place in Eussia alone, but in the whole world 
 also, in France, and in America. 
 
 The whole activity of the Kepublican party is con- 
 sidered harmful by the Eadical party, and vice versa, the 
 whole activity of the Eadical party, if the power is in its 
 hands, is considered harmful by the Eepublican party and 
 by others. 
 
 And not only is the whole activity of the men of state 
 never considered useful by all men, — this activity has 
 also this property, that it has always to be exerted by the 
 use of violence, and that, to obtain this benefit, there are 
 necessary murders, capital punishments, jails, compulsory 
 taxes, and so forth. 
 
 And so it turns out that the usefulness of the political 
 activity is not recognized by all men and is always denied 
 by one part of men, and that moreover this usefulness has 
 the property of always finding its expression in violence. 
 And so the usefulness of the political activity cannot be 
 confirmed by the fact that it is recognized by those men 
 for whom it is intended. 
 
 Let us apply the second sign. Let us ask the men of 
 state, from the king down to the policeman, from the 
 president down to the secretary, and from the patriarch 
 down to the sexton, inviting their sincere answer, whether 
 they, in holding their offices, have in view the benefit 
 which they wish to confer on people, or whether they 
 have other aims ; whether, in their desire to occupy the 
 post of king, president, minister, or rural oflicer, of a sex- 
 ton, or a teacher, they are impelled by a striving for other f 
 people's benefit or for their own personal advantage. 
 
 The answer of conscientious men will be that their chief- 
 impulse is their personal advantage. 
 
 And so it turns out that one class of men, which ex- 
 ploits the labours of others, who perish in this labour, 
 is redeeming this unquestionable harm with an activity 
 which by many people is always regarded as harmful, and 
 
212 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 not useful, which cannot be freely received by the people, 
 but must always be enforced by violence, and the aim 
 of which is not the benefit of others, but the personal 
 advantage of those men who exert it. 
 
 What, then, is confirmed by the assumption that the 
 poHtical activity is useful to men? 
 
 Only this, that those men who exert it are firmly con- 
 vinced that it is useful, and that this activity has always 
 existed ; but there have always existed, not only ex- 
 tremely useless, but even harmful institutions, such as 
 slavery, prostitution, and wars. Industrialists — includ- 
 ing in this term merchants, manufacturers, railroad men, 
 bankers, and agriculturists — beheve in this, that they 
 confer a benefit which unquestionably redeems the harm 
 done by them. 
 
 On what grounds do they think so ? 
 
 In reply to the question as to who and what people 
 recognize the usefulness of their activity, the men of state, 
 with the inclusion of the clericals, could point to thou- 
 sands and millions of working people, who in principle 
 recognize the usefulness of the political and clerical 
 activity ; but who will be pointed out to us by the bank- 
 ers, manufacturers of whiskey, velvet, bronzes, mirrors, 
 to say nothing of cannon ? Who will be pointed out 
 by the merchants, agriculturists, when we ask these 
 whether the benefit which they confer is recognized by 
 public opiuion ? 
 
 If some people are found who recognize the production 
 of cottons, rails, beer, and similar articles as useful, there 
 wiU be found an even greater number of men who recog- 
 nize the production of these articles as harmful. The 
 activity of the merchants, who advance the price of 
 articles, and of the landed proprietors, will not even be 
 defended by any person. Besides, this activity is always 
 connected with harm to the labourers and with violence, 
 which, though less direct than the political violence, is as 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 213 
 
 cruel in its consequences, since the industrial and com- 
 mercial activities are all based on the exploitation of want 
 in every form : on its exploitation for the purpose of com- 
 pelling the labourers to do hard and undesirable work; 
 on the exploitation of the same want for the purpose of 
 purchasing commodities at a low price and selling articles 
 of necessity to the people at the highest price; on the 
 exploitation of this want for the purpose of exacting 
 interest on money. No matter from what side we may 
 view their activity, we shall see that the benefit exerted 
 by the industrialists is not recognized by those for whom 
 it is exerted, either in principle, or in special cases, and in 
 general is directly recognized as harmful. 
 
 But if we apply the second sign, and ask what the 
 impelHng cause of the activity of the industrialists is, we 
 shall receive an even more definite answer than in respect 
 to the activity of the men of state. 
 
 If a man of state says that in addition to his personal 
 advantage he has in view the common good, it is impossi- 
 ble to disbelieve him, and each of us knows such men, 
 but an industrialist by the very essence of his business 
 cannot have in view the common good, and will be con- 
 sidered ridiculous in the eyes of his fellows if in his busi- 
 ness he shall pursue any other aim than the increase of 
 his wealth or its maintenance. 
 
 Thus the labouring people do not consider the activity 
 of the industrialists useful to themselves. 
 
 This activity is connected with violence against the 
 labourers, and the aim of this activity is not the benefit 
 of the working people, but always personal advantage, 
 and suddenly — strange to say — these industrialists are 
 so convinced of the benefit which they confer on people 
 by their activity that in the name of this imaginary benefit 
 they do undoubted, obvious harm to these labourers by 
 emancipating themselves from labour and absorbing the 
 labour of the working classes. 
 
214 What shall we do then? 
 
 The men of science and of art have freed themselves 
 from labour and have imposed this labour on others and 
 live with a calm conscience, being firmly convinced of 
 this, that they confer on others a benefit which redeems 
 all that. 
 
 On what is their conviction based ? 
 
 We shall ask them, as we asked the men of state and 
 the industrialists, whether the labouring people, all of 
 them, or even a majority of them, recognize the benefit 
 which art and science confer upon them. 
 
 The answer will be a very lamentable one. 
 
 The activity of the men of state and of the church is 
 recognized as useful in principle by nearly everybody, and 
 in application by the greater half of those working people 
 upon whom it is directed ; the activity of the industrialists 
 is recognized by a small number of working people ; but 
 the activity of the men of science and of art is not recog- 
 nized as useful by anybody among the labouring people. 
 The usefulness of this activity is recognized only by those 
 who exert it or wish to exert it. The working people — 
 those who carry on their shoulders the whole labour of 
 life and feed and clothe the men of science and of art — 
 cannot recognize the activity of these men as useful for 
 themselves, because they cannot even have any conception 
 about this activity which is so useful to them. This 
 activity presents itself to the labouring people as useless 
 and even corrupting. 
 
 Thus the labouring people look without exception upon 
 the universities, libraries, conservatories, picture-galleries, 
 museums, and theatres, which are built at their expense. 
 A labouring man looks so definitely upon this activity as 
 harmful that he does not send his children to school, and, 
 to compel the masses to take part in this activity, it 
 became necessary everywhere to introduce the law of 
 compulsory school attendance. A labouring man always 
 looks inimically upon this activity, and will stop looking 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 215 
 
 upon it in such a way only when he himself ceases to 
 be a labourer and, by means of his earnings and later 
 by the means of the so-called culture, passes from 
 the labouring class into that of men who live by 
 sitting on the shoulders of others. And although the 
 activity of the men of sciences and of arts is not recog- 
 nized and cannot be recognized by any one among the 
 labouring people, the labourers are none the less compelled 
 to bring sacrifices in favour of this activity. 
 
 A man of state sends another directly to the guillotine 
 or to jail ; an industrialist, making use of the labours of 
 another, takes the last away from him, leaving him the 
 choice between starvation and pernicious work; but a 
 man of science or of art apparently does not compel, but 
 only ofifers his wares to those who want to take them; 
 but, in order to produce his wares, which are undesirable 
 to the working people, he takes from them by force, 
 through the men of state, the greater part of their labour 
 for buildings and their maintenance, for academies, univer- 
 sities, gymnasia, schools, museums, libraries, conservatories, 
 and for the support of the men of science and of art. 
 
 And if we ask the men of science and of art about the 
 aim which they pursue in their activities, we get the most 
 remarkable answers. A man of state could have answered 
 that his aim is the common good, and there is in this a 
 grain of truth which is confirmed by public opinion. But 
 the answer of the men of science and of art at once 
 startles us by its groundlessness and impudence. 
 
 The men of the sciences and of the arts say, without 
 adducing any proof for it, just as the priests used to say 
 in antiquity, that their activity is most important and 
 most necessary for all men, and that without this activity 
 all humanity would perish. They affirm that it is so, 
 although no man but they themselves understands or 
 recognizes their activity, and although true science and 
 true art, by their own definition, ought to have no aim 
 
216 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 of usefulness. The men of science and of art abandon 
 themselves to their favourite occupation, without caring 
 what benefit people will derive from it, and are always 
 convinced that they are doing a most important and 
 necessary work for humanity ; so that, while a sincere 
 man of state, in recognizing the fact that the chief motive 
 of his activity is his personal impulses, tries as much as 
 possible to be useful to the labouring people, and the 
 industrialist, in recognizing the selfishness of his activity, 
 tries to give it the character of a common good, the men 
 of the arts and the sciences do not even consider it 
 necessary to cloak themselves with a tendency for what 
 is useful : they even deny the aim of the useful ; so con- 
 vinced are they, not of the usefulness, but of the sacred- 
 ness, of their occupation. 
 
 And so it turns out that a third division of men, who 
 have emancipated themselves from labour and have im- 
 posed it upon others, are busying themselves with subjects 
 which are completely incomprehensible to the labouring 
 people, and which the masses regard as trifles and fre- 
 quently as harmful trifles; and they busy themselves 
 with these subjects without the least consideration of their 
 usefulness to men, but only for their own amusement, 
 being for some reason completely convinced that their 
 activity will always be such that the labouring people 
 cannot live without it. 
 
 Men have emancipated themselves from labour for life 
 and have unloaded this labour on people who are perishing 
 in this labour; men exploit this labour, and affirm that 
 their occupations, which are incomprehensible to all other 
 men and are not directed upon the usefulness of men, 
 redeem all the harm which they do to men by eman- 
 cipating themselves from the labour for life and by 
 absorbing the labour of others. 
 
 To redeem that unquestionable and obvious harm 
 which the men of state do to people by their emancipa- 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 217 
 
 tion from the struggle with Nature and the exploitation 
 of the labour of others, they do to people another obvious, 
 unquestionable harm, — all kinds of violence. 
 
 To redeem that unquestionable and obvious harm 
 which the industrialists do to people by exploiting their 
 labour, they strive to acquire for themselves, consequently 
 to take away from others, as much wealth as possible, 
 that is, as much of the labour of others as possible. 
 
 The men of science and of the arts, in return for that 
 unquestionable and obvious harm which they do to the 
 labouring people, busy themselves with matters which are 
 incomprehensible to the labouring people, and which, 
 according to their own assertion, to be real, must not 
 have usefulness in view, but that toward which they 
 feel themselves drawn. And so all these men are fully 
 convinced that their right to exploit other people's labour 
 is unshakable. 
 
 It would seem to be obvious that all those people who 
 have emancipated themselves from the labour of life have 
 no grounds for this. But strange to say, these people 
 believe firmly in their righteousness and live as they do 
 with a calm conscience. 
 
 There must be some foundation, there must be some 
 false creed, at the basis of such a terrible delusion. 
 
xxvin. 
 
 Indeed, at the basis of the position in which people 
 are who live by the labour of others, Hes not only a 
 belief, but a whole creed, and not one, but three creeds, 
 which during the ages have grown up by superposition 
 and have been compacted into one monstrous deception, 
 — humbug, as the English say, — which conceals from 
 men their unrighteousness. 
 
 The oldest creed in our world, which justified men's 
 defection from their fundamental duty of the labour of 
 life, was the church-Christian creed, according to which 
 men are by God's will differentiated from one another, as 
 the sun differs from the moon and the stars, and the 
 stars among themselves ; some people are commanded by 
 God to have power over all men, others over many, 
 others again over a few, while others are commanded 
 by God to obey. 
 
 This creed, though now tottering on its foundations, 
 still continues to act on people from inertia, so that many, 
 who do not recognize the doctrine itself, none the less are 
 guided by it. 
 
 The second justificatory creed of our world is the one 
 which I cannot call otherwise than the poHtico-philosoph- 
 ical creed. According to this creed, which was perfectly 
 expressed in Hegel, everything which exists is rational, 
 and the order of things which was estabhshed and is 
 maintained by people was not estabhshed and is not main- 
 tained by people but is the one possible form of the 
 manifestation of the spirit, or in general of the hfe of 
 humanity. And this creed is in our time no longer 
 
 218 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 219 
 
 shared by men who guide public opinion, and maintains 
 itself only through inertia. 
 
 The last, now reigning creed, the one on which the 
 justification of the leading men of state, of industry, of 
 science, and of art is based in our day, is the scientific 
 creed, not in the simple meaning of this word, which des- 
 ignates knowledge in general, but in the sense of one 
 special kind of knowledge, both as to form and to con- 
 tents. 
 
 On this new creed, which is called science, is mainly 
 based the justification which in our day conceals from 
 the idle people their defection from their calling. 
 
 This new creed made its appearance in Europe simul- 
 taneously with the appearance of a large class of rich and 
 idle people, who serve neither the church, nor the state, 
 and who needed a justification corresponding to their 
 position. 
 
 Not very long ago, previous to the French Eevolution, 
 all the leisure people in Europe, to have the right to ex- 
 ploit the labours of others, were compelled to have some 
 very definite occupations : they had to serve the church, 
 the government, and the army. The men who served 
 the government ruled the people; those who served the 
 church taught them the divine truths ; those who served 
 the army defended the people. 
 
 Only three classes, the clergy, the rulers, the mihtary, 
 regarded themselves as having the right to make use of 
 the labours of the masses, and could always bring forward 
 their service to the people ; all the other rich people, who 
 did not have this justification, were despised and, feeling 
 their unrighteousness, were ashamed of their wealth and 
 idleness. 
 
 But the time came when this class of the rich, who 
 were subject neither to the clergy, nor to the government, 
 nor to the army, multiphed, thanks to the vices of the 
 three estates, and became a power, and these men needed 
 
220 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 a justification. And the justification made its appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Less than a century passed, when all these men, who 
 serve neither the government, nor the church, and who take 
 no part in these matters, not only acquired the same rights 
 for the exploitation of the labours of others, as the former 
 estates had possessed, and so stopped being ashamed of 
 their wealth and idleness, but also began to consider their 
 position fully justified. There has in our day evolved an 
 enormous number of such men, and their number is all 
 the time growing. And what is remarkable is this, that 
 these new men, the legality of whose emancipation from 
 labour was even recently not recognized, now are the only 
 ones who consider themselves fully justified, and they at- 
 tack the three former classes, the servants of the church, 
 of the state, and of the army, recognizing their hberation 
 from labour as irregular and their activity even as harmful 
 
 And what is still more remarkable is this, that the 
 former servants of the state, the church, and the army no 
 longer fall back on their divine election or even on the 
 philosophical significance of the state, which is supposed 
 to be necessary for the manifestation of individuahty, but 
 even throw down these supports, which have held them 
 up for so long a time, and seek those supports on which 
 stands the now ruling class, which has discovered this new 
 justification, and at the head of which stand the learned 
 and the artists. If now a man of state occasionally 
 through his old reminiscence defends his position by say- 
 ing that he was destined for it by God, or that the state 
 is a form of the evolution of the individual, he does so 
 because he has fallen behind the times, and he feels him- 
 self that nobody beheves him. In order firmly to defend 
 himself, he has now to find, not theological or philosoph- 
 ical, but new scientific supports. It is necessary to ad- 
 vance the principle of the nationalities or of organic 
 evolution, — it is necessary to keep on the good side of 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 221 
 
 the ruling class, as in the Middle Ages it was necessary 
 to keep on the good side of the clergy, as at the end of 
 last century it was necessary to keep on the good side of 
 the philosophers (Frederick, Catherine). 
 
 If a rich man now at times, from old habit, speaks of 
 the divine providence which chose him to become a rich 
 man, or of the significance of aristocracy for the good of 
 the state, he speaks so because he is behind the times. 
 In order firmly to justify himself, he must advance his 
 cooperation with the progress of civihzation by the per- 
 fection of the means of production, the cheapening of the 
 necessary commodities, the establishment of international 
 amity. A rich man must think and speak in scientific 
 language, and, as formerly sacrifices were brought to the 
 clergy, so now he brings them to the ruling class, — he 
 must publish periodicals and books, found galleries, musical 
 societies, or a kindergarten, or technical schools. 
 
 But the ruhng class is that of the learned and the 
 artists of a given tendency : they have the complete 
 justification of their emancipation from labour, and on 
 their justification, as formerly on the theological and 
 later on the philosophical justification, is now based every 
 justification, and they now distribute to the other classes 
 the diplomas for justification. 
 
 The class which now has a full justification in its 
 emancipation from labour is the class of the men of 
 science, especially of experimental, positive, critical, evolu- 
 tionary science, and the class of artists who work in the 
 same direction. 
 
 If a learned man or an artist from old habit now speaks 
 of prophecy, revelation, or the manifestation of the spirit, 
 he does so because he has fallen behind the times, and he 
 does not justify himself : in order to stand firmly, he must 
 in some way articulate his activity with the experimental, 
 positive, critical science, and place this science at the 
 foundation of his activity. 
 
222 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 In that case alone will the science or the art with 
 which he busies himself be real, and he himself in our 
 day be able to stand on imperturbable foundations, and 
 no doubt exist any longer as to the benefit which it 
 confers on humanity. 
 
 On the experimental, critical, positive science is now 
 based the justification of all men who have emancipated 
 themselves from labour. 
 
 The theological and philosophical justifications have 
 outlived their usefulness, and they diffidently and bashfully 
 make themselves known and try to give way to the scien- 
 tific justifications ; but the scientific justification boldly 
 overturns and destroys what is left of the former justifica- 
 tions, everywhere takes their place, and, with the con- 
 viction of its imperturbability, raises its head high. 
 
 The theological justification said that men according 
 to their destination are called, some to command, others 
 to obey, some to live in abundance, others in want ; and 
 so he who believes in the revelation of God cannot doubt 
 the legality of the state of those men who by the will of 
 God are called to command and be rich. 
 
 The philosophico-political justification said : " The state 
 with all its institutions and different classes of men accord- 
 ing to privileges and to property is that historic form 
 which is necessary for the regular manifestation of the 
 spirit in humanity, and so the position by privilege and 
 property, which one occupies in the state and in society, 
 must be such for the regular life of humanity." 
 
 The scientific theory says : " All that is nonsense and 
 superstition ; one is the fruit of the thought of the 
 theological period of the life of humanity, the other is that 
 of the metaphysical period. For the study of the laws of 
 the life of human societies there is only one unquestionable 
 method, — the method of the positive, experimental, crit- 
 ical science. Nothing but sociology, which is based on 
 biology, which in its turn is based on all the other positive 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 223 
 
 sciences, can give us the laws of the life of humanity. 
 Humanity, or the human societies, are organisms, all ready 
 or in the act of formation and subject to all the laws of the 
 evolution of the organisms. One of these chief laws is the 
 division of the functions of labour among the particles of 
 the organs. If some people command and others obey, 
 if some live in abundance and others in want, this takes 
 place, not by the will of God, not because the state is a 
 form of the manifestation of the individual, but because 
 in the societies, as in the organisms, takes place the 
 division of labour which is indispensable for the life of 
 the whole: some men perform in societies the muscular 
 labour, while others do the mental labour." 
 
 On this creed is based the reigning justification of our 
 time. 
 
XXIX. 
 
 A NEW teaching is preached by Christ and is recorded 
 in the gospels. This teaching is persecuted, and is not 
 accepted, and they invent the history of the fall of the 
 first man and of the first angel, and this invention is 
 accepted as Christ's teaching. This invention is insipid, 
 has no foundation, but from it inevitably results the con- 
 clusion that a man may live badly and yet consider him- 
 self justified by Christ, and this conclusion is so opportune 
 for those feeble men who do not like any moral labour, 
 that this invention is immediately accepted as a truth 
 and even as a divine, revealed truth, although nowhere 
 in what is called revelation is there even a hint concern- 
 ing this, and the invention is put at the base of the 
 millennial labour of the learned theologians, who upon it 
 construct their theories. 
 
 The learned theologians break up into sects and begin 
 to deny the structures of one another, and they begin to 
 feel that they themselves are becoming entangled and do 
 not understand what they say ; but the crowd demands 
 of them a confirmation of their favourite doctrine, and 
 they pretend that they understand and believe what they 
 say, and continue to preach. But the time comes when 
 the arguments prove useless, the crowd looks into the 
 sanctuaries of the priests, and to its astonishment sees, in 
 place of the solemn and undoubted truths that the- theo- 
 logical mysteries seemed to it to be, that there has never 
 been there anything but the grossest deception, and 
 marvels at its blindness. 
 
 The same has happened with philosophy, not in the 
 224 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 225 
 
 sense of the wisdom of a Confucius, a Socrates, an Epic- 
 tetus, but with the professorial philosophy, whenever it 
 pandered to the instincts of the idle rich. 
 
 Not long ago there reigned in the learned world the 
 philosophy of the spirit, according to which it appeared 
 that everything which existed was rational, that there 
 was neither bad nor good, and that a man must not 
 struggle with evil, but only manifest his spirit, — one in 
 military service, another in a court, a third on the violin. 
 
 There have been many different expressions of human 
 wisdom, and these manifestations have been known to 
 the men of the nineteenth century. They have known 
 Eousseau, and Pasqual, and Lessing, and Spinoza, and all 
 the wisdom of antiquity, but nobody's wisdom has taken 
 possession of the crowd. It cannot even be said that the 
 success of Hegel's philosophy depended on the harmony 
 of his theories. There have been other harmonious 
 theories, such as those of Fichte and Schopenhauer, 
 There was but one reason why this teaching for a short 
 time became the creed of the whole world ; the reason 
 was, like the reason of the success of the theory of the 
 fall and redemption of man, that the deductions from this 
 philosophical theory pandered to the weaknesses of men. 
 They said: everything is rational, everything is good, 
 nobody is to blame for anything. And just as the theo- 
 logians did with the theory of redemption, so the philoso- 
 phers built their tower of Babel on Hegelian foundations 
 (and even now a few men who are behind the times are 
 sitting on it), and in the same way their tongues became 
 confused, and they felt that they themselves did not 
 know what they were saying, and, without carrying the 
 dirt out^of their house, tried just as carefully to maintain 
 their authority before the crowd, and the crowd asked as 
 much as before for a confirmation of what was opportune 
 for it, and believed that what to it appeared obscure and 
 contradictory was as clear as day up there, on the philo- 
 
226 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 sophical heights. And again the time came when even 
 this theory was worn out, and in its place there appeared 
 a new theory, and the old one became useless, and the 
 crowd peeped into the mysterious sanctuaries of the priests, 
 and saw that there was nothing there, and never had been 
 anything but very obscure and senseless words. This 
 took place within my memory. 
 
 When I began to live, Hegehanism was the foundation 
 of everything : it was in the air, found its expression in 
 newspaper and periodical articles, in novels, in treatises, 
 in art, in history, in sermons, in conversations. A man 
 who did not know Hegel had no right to speak : he who 
 wanted to know the truth studied Hegel. Everything 
 leaned on him, and suddenly forty years have passed, 
 and nothing is left of him, and there is no mention even 
 made of him, as though he had never existed. And what 
 is most remarkable is that, like pseudo-Christianity, Hege- 
 lianism fell, not because somebody overthrew it, — no, as 
 it was, so it still is, — but because it suddenly became 
 evident that the learned, cultured world had no use for 
 either. 
 
 If we now talk to a modern cultured man about the 
 fall of the angel and of Adam, and about the redemption, 
 he will not even try to dispute and prove the injustice of 
 it, but will ask in perplexity: "What angel? Why 
 Adam ? What redemption ? What do I want with it ? " 
 The same is true of Hegelianism. The modern man will 
 not dispute, but will only marvel. " What spirit ? Where 
 does it come from ? Why is it manifested ? What do I 
 want with it ? " 
 
 " Yes," the learned men of the present will say, " that 
 was due to the fact that it was the delirium of the theo- 
 logical and of the metaphysical periods ; now we have 
 the critical, positive science, which will not deceive us, 
 because it is all based on induction and experience. Now 
 our knowledge is not shaky as it used to be, and only 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEK ? 227 
 
 on our path lies the solution of all the questions of 
 humanity." 
 
 But it is precisely what the theologians used to say, 
 and they were certainly no fools ; — we know that there 
 were among them people of very great intellect; and 
 precisely the same, and not with less conviction, and not 
 with less recognition on the part of the crowd of the so- 
 called cultured people, did the Hegelians say within my 
 memory. And certainly such men as our Hertzen, Stan- 
 k^vich, and Byelinski were no fools. Why, then, has this 
 remarkable phenomenon happened that clever people have 
 with the greatest conviction preached, and the crowd 
 has with awe received, such unfounded and barren doc- 
 trines ? There is just one reason for it, and it is this, 
 that the doctrines preached justified the people in their 
 bad hves. 
 
 Is not the same the reason of the self-confidence of the 
 men of the positive, critical, experimental science, and of 
 the awed relation of the crowd to what they preach ? At 
 first it appears strange how the theory of evolution (like 
 the redemption in theology, it serves for the majority as 
 a popular expression of the whole new creed) can justify 
 people in their unrighteousness, and it seems that the 
 scientific theory has to do with facts only, and does 
 nothing but observe facts. 
 
 But that only seems so. Even so it seemed in the 
 case of the theological doctrine that the theology busied 
 itself only with dogmas and had no relation to the life of 
 men : even so it seemed in philosophy : it seemed to be 
 occupied only with its transcendental ratiocinations. 
 
 But that only seemed so. Even so it seemed in the 
 case of the Hegehan doctrine on a large scale, and in 
 particular in the case of the Malthusian theory. 
 
 Hegelianism seemed to be occupied only with its log- 
 ical constructions and to have no relation to the life of 
 men ; the same seemed to be the case with the Malthusian 
 
228 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 theory : it seemed to be occupied only with the facts of 
 statistical data. But that only seems so. 
 
 Modern science investigates facts. But what facts ? 
 Why such facts, and no others ? 
 
 The men of modern science are very fond of saying 
 with solemnity and conviction : " We investigate noth- 
 ing but facts," imagining that these words have some 
 meaning. 
 
 It is impossible to investigate nothing but facts, be- 
 cause of the facts which are subject to our investigation 
 there is an infinite number (in the exact sense of the 
 word). Before investigating facts it is necessary to have 
 a theory, on the basis of which such or such facts are 
 chosen out of the endless number. And this theory 
 exists, and is even very definitely expressed, though 
 many of the men of modem science either ignore it, that 
 is, do not want to know, or indeed do not know it, or 
 pretend that they do not know it. Even so it has always 
 been with all the reigning, guiding creeds, — with theology 
 and with philosophy. 
 
 The foundations of every creed are always given in 
 the theory, and the so-called learned men only invent the 
 further deductions from the original data, sometimes with- 
 out knowing them. But there is always a fundamental 
 theory. Even so modern science now chooses its facts 
 on the basis of a very definite theory, which at times it 
 knows, at times does not want to know, at times indeed 
 does not know ; but that theory exists. 
 
 This theory is : all humanity is an undying organism, 
 and men are the particles of the organism, each of whom ; 
 has his special calling in order to serve the whole. 
 
 Just as the cells, composing the organism, divide the 
 labour among themselves for the struggle for existence of 
 the whole organism, strengthen one quality and weaken 
 another, and form themselves into one organ in order the 
 better to satisfy the needs of the whole organism, and just 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 229 
 
 as with the social animals, with the ants and bees, the 
 separate individuals divide the labour among themselves, — 
 the queen laying eggs, the drone fertilizing them, the bees 
 workiDg for the life of the whole, — even so in humanity 
 and human societies takes place the same differentiation 
 and integration of the parts. 
 
 And so, in order to find the law of man's life, it is 
 necessary to study the laws of life and of the evolu- 
 tion of the organisms ; in the life and evolution of 
 the organisms we find the following laws: the law 
 that every phenomenon is accompanied by something 
 more than the immediate consequences; another law 
 about the instability of the homogeneous; and a third 
 law about heterogeneity and homogeneity, and so forth. 
 All this seems very innocent, but it is enough to make 
 the deductions from all these investigations of facts in 
 order to see at once whither these facts tend. All these 
 facts tend to one thing, namely, to recognizing humanity 
 or human society as an organism, and so to recognizing 
 the division of activities which exists in human societies 
 as organic, that is, as necessary ; and since in human 
 societies there are manifested very many cruelties and 
 abominations, these phenomena are not to' be regarded as 
 cruel and abominable, but to be viewed as undoubted 
 facts, which confirm the general law, namely, the law of 
 the division of labour. 
 
 The philosophy of the spirit also justified every cruelty 
 and abomination ; there it was philosophical, and so — 
 irregular ; but according to science it all turns out to be 
 scientific, and so — unquestionable. 
 
 How can one help accepting such a beautiful theory ! 
 It is enough for me to view human society as an object 
 of observation, in order calmly to devour the labours of 
 others who are perishing, consoling myself with the 
 thought that my activity as a dancer, lawyer, doctor, 
 philosopher, actor, investigator of mediumism and of the 
 
 %\brahY 
 
230 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 form of atoms is a functional activity of the organism of 
 humanity, and so there cannot even be a question as 
 to the justice of my exploiting the labours of others, — I 
 am only doing what is pleasant for me, — as there can be 
 no question as to the justice of the activity of the brain 
 cell which is making use of the muscular labour. 
 
 • We cannot help but admit such a practical theory, in 
 order that we may for ever hide our conscience in our 
 pocket, and live a completely unbridled animal life, feeling 
 under our feet the imperturbable support of our modern 
 science. It is on this new creed that the justification of 
 the idleness and the cruelty of men is now based. 
 
XXX. 
 
 This creed began but recently, some fifty years ago. 
 Its chief founder, the French savant Comte, a system- 
 atizer and at the same time a religious man, was, under 
 the influence of the then new physiological investigations 
 of Bichat, struck by an old idea, which had been expressed 
 long ago by Menenius Agrippa, that human societies, even 
 all humanity, might be considered as one whole, as an 
 organism, and men as the living particles of separate 
 organs, each of which had its definite purpose to serve the 
 whole organism. Comte took such a liking to this idea 
 that he began upon it to construct a philosophic theory, 
 and this theory so carried him away that he entirely for- 
 got that his point of departure was nothing more than a 
 pretty comparison, which is proper in a fable, but in no 
 way can serve as a foundation for science. As often hap- 
 pens, he accepted his favourite assumption as an axiom, 
 and imagined that his whole theory was based on the 
 firmest and most experimental foundations. According 
 to his theory it turned out that, since humanity is an 
 organism, the knowledge of what a man is, and what his 
 relation to the world ought to be, is possible only through 
 the knowledge of the properties of this organism. In 
 order to discover these properties, man is able to make 
 observations on other, lower organisms, and from their 
 life to make his inferences. 
 
 And so, in the first place, the only true method of 
 science, according to Comte, is the inductive, and all 
 science is only that which has experiment for its founda- 
 tion ; in the second, the aim and apex of science now is 
 
 231 
 
232 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 the new science of the imaginary organism of humanity, 
 or of the superorganic being, humanity : this new imag- 
 inary science is sociology. From this view of science in 
 general it appeared that all former knowledge had been 
 false, and all history of humanity in the sense of its self- 
 knowledge was divided into three, or really two, periods, 
 
 (1) the theological and the metaphysical period, which 
 lasted from the beginning of the world until Comte, and 
 
 (2) the present period of the one, true science, the positive, 
 which began with Comte. 
 
 All that was very nice ; there was but one mistake 
 here, namely, this, that the whole building was reared on 
 the sand, on the arbitrary assertion that humanity is 
 an organism. 
 
 This assertion was arbitrary, because we have just as 
 little right to acknowledge the existence of an organism 
 of humanity, which is not subject to observation, as to 
 assume the existence of a triune God and similar theo- 
 logical propositions. 
 
 This assertion was irregular, because to the concept of 
 humanity, that is, of men, there was irregularly added 
 the definition of an organism, whereas hutnanity lacks the 
 essential sign of an organism, a centre of sensation and of 
 consciousness. We call an elephant or a bacterion an 
 organism, only because from analogy we assume in these 
 beings the same unification of sensation and of conscious- 
 ness which we know in ourselves ; but in human societies 
 and in humanity this essential sign is absent, and so, no 
 matter how many other common signs we may find in 
 humanity and in the organism, without this essential sign 
 the acknowledgment of humanity as an organism is 
 irregular. 
 
 But in spite of the arbitrariness and irregularity of the 
 fundamental proposition of positive philosophy, it was ac- 
 cepted by the so-called cultured world with the greatest 
 sympathy, on account of its justification of the existing 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 233 
 
 order of things, so important for the crowd, by acknowl- 
 edging the legality of the existing violence in humanity. 
 What is remarkable in this respect is this, that of Comte's 
 works, which consist of two parts, of positive philosophy 
 and of positive politics, the learned world accepted the 
 first only, the one which justified on the new CKperimen- 
 tal principles the existing evil of human societies ; but the 
 second part, which dealt with the moral obligations of 
 altruism which resulted from acknowledging humanity as 
 an organism, was considered not only unimportant, but 
 even insignificant and unscientific. 
 
 The same was repeated as with the two parts of Kant's 
 teaching. The critique of sound reason was accepted 
 by the learned crowd ; but the critique of practical reason, 
 the part which contains the essence of the moral teaching, 
 was rejected. In Comte's teaching they recognized as 
 scientific what pandered to the reigning evil. But even 
 the positive philosophy which the crowd accepted, being 
 based on an arbitrary and irregular proposition, was in 
 itself too groundless and therefore unstable, and so was 
 unable to hold itself for any length of time. 
 
 Suddenly, among the many idle speculations of the 
 men of the so-called science, there appears again a new, 
 and just as arbitrary and irregular an assertion that living 
 beings, that is, organisms, have been derived one from the 
 other, — not only one organism from another, but one 
 organism from many, that is, that in a very long interval 
 of time, in a million years, a fish and a duck, for example, 
 may have not only been derived from one and the same 
 ancestor, but that also one organism may have been de- 
 rived from many separate organisms, so that, for example, 
 a whole swarm of bees may produce one animal. This 
 arbitrary and incorrect assertion was accepted by the 
 learned world with still greater sympathy. This assertion 
 was arbitrary, because no one has ever seen how one or- 
 ganism is produced from others, and so the assumption 
 
234 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 about the origin of species will always remain an assump- 
 tion, and not an experimental fact. And this assumption 
 was incorrect, because the solution of the question about 
 the origin of species by saying that they originated in 
 consequence of the law of heredity and adaptation during 
 an infinitely long period of time, is not at all a solution, 
 but only a repetition of the question in a new form. 
 
 According to the solution of the question by Moses 
 (the whole significance of the theory consists in a polemic 
 with him) it turns out that the diversity of the species of 
 living beings is due to God's will and infinite power ; but 
 according to the theory of evolution it turns out that the 
 diversity of the living beings originated from itself in 
 consequence of infinitely diversified conditions of heredity 
 and surroundings in an infinite period of time. The 
 theory of evolution, speaking in simple language, asserts 
 only that in an infinite period of time anything you please 
 may originate from anything you please. 
 
 There is no answer to the question, but the same ques- 
 tion is differently put: instead of the will, accident is 
 put, and the coefficient of the infinite is transferred from 
 power to time. But this new assertion, intensified by 
 Darwin's followers in the sense of arbitrariness and incor- 
 rectness, strengthened the former assertion of . Comte, and 
 so it became the revelation of our time and the foundation 
 of all the sciences, even of history, philology, and religion, 
 and, besides, according to the naive confession of the 
 founder of the theory himself, of Darwin, his idea was 
 called forth by Malthus's law and so advanced the theory 
 of the struggle of the living beings and of men for exist- 
 ence as the fundamental law of everything living. But 
 that was all the crowd of idle people needed for their 
 justification. 
 
 Two unstable theories, which could not stand on their 
 legs, supported one another and assumed a semblance of 
 stability. Both theories bore in themselves a meaning 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 235 
 
 which was precious to the crowd, namely, that men are 
 not to blame for the existing evil of human societies, but 
 that the existing order is precisely what it ought to be ; 
 and the new theory was accepted by the crowd in the 
 sense in which it was needed, with full faith and unheard 
 of enthusiasm. And on these two arbitrary and incorrect 
 propositions, which were accepted as dogmas of faith, the 
 new scientific creed was firmly grounded. 
 
 In subject and in form this new creed has an unusual 
 resemblance to the Christian creed of the church. 
 
 In subject this resemblance consists in this, that in 
 either an unreal, fantastic meaning is ascribed to reality, 
 and this unreal meaning is made a subject for investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 In the church - Christian creed the real Christ has 
 assumed the fantastic meaning of God himself; in the 
 positive creed the fantastic meaning of an organism is 
 ascribed to an actual being, — to living men. 
 
 In form the resemblance of the two creeds is striking 
 in this, that in either a certain comprehension of one set 
 of men is acknowledged to be the one infallibly correct 
 and true comprehension. 
 
 In the Christianity of the church the comprehension of 
 divine revelation by the people who called themselves the 
 church is recognized as sacred and exclusively true ; ac- 
 cording to the positive creed the comprehension of science 
 by the men who call themselves scientific is recognized as 
 unquestionable and true. Just as the Christians of the 
 church recognized the beginning of the true knowledge of 
 God only from the foundation of their church, and only, 
 as it were, out of civiHty, said that the former believers 
 were also the church ; even so the positive science, accord- 
 ing to its assertion, began only with Comte, and the men 
 of science, again only out of civility, admit the existence of 
 science before their day, but only in the person of some 
 of its representatives, such as Aristotle ; just like the church, 
 
236 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 SO the positive science completely excludes the knowledge 
 of all the rest of humanity, recognizing all such knowl- 
 edge as erroneous. 
 
 The resemblance goes even farther: just as to the 
 aid of the fundamental dogma of theology, of the divinity 
 of Christ and of the trinity, there comes the old dogma of 
 man's fall and of his redemption through Christ's death, 
 which receives a new meaning, and of these two dogmas 
 the popular ecclesiastic doctrine is composed, — so in our 
 time, to the aid of Comte's fundamental dogma about the 
 organism of humanity comes the old dogma of evolution, 
 which receives a new meaning, and from both the popular 
 scientific creed is composed. 
 
 In either creed the new dogma is necessary for the sup- 
 port of the old one, and is comprehensible only in connec- 
 tion with the fundamental dogma. If to the believer in 
 Christ's divinity it is not clear and not comprehensible 
 why God came down upon earth, the dogma of redemption 
 gives this explanation. 
 
 If to the behever in the organism of humanity it is not 
 clear why an aggregate of individuals may be considered 
 an organism, the dogma of evolution furnishes this expla- 
 nation. 
 
 The dogma of redemption is necessary in order to 
 harmonize the contradiction with the actuality of the 
 first dogma. 
 
 God came down upon earth in order to save men, and 
 men are not saved, — how is this contradiction to be 
 harmonized ? The dogma of redemption says : " If you 
 believe in the redemption, you are saved." 
 
 Similarly the dogma of evolution is necessary in order 
 to solve the contradiction with the actuality of the first 
 dogma : humanity is an organism, and yet we see that it 
 does not answer the first sign of an organism, — how is 
 this to be harmonized ? And so the dogma of evolution 
 says : " Humanity is an organism in formation. If 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 237 
 
 you believe in this, you can view humanity as an 
 organism." 
 
 And just as for a man who is free from the supersti- 
 tion of the trinity and the divinity of Christ it is even 
 impossible to comprehend wherein the interest and mean- 
 ing of the doctrine of redemption lies, and this meaning 
 is explained only by acknowledging the fundamental 
 dogma about Christ being God himself, — even so for 
 humanity, which is free from the positive superstition, it 
 is even impossible to comprehend in what lies the interest 
 of the teaching about the origin of species of evolution, 
 and this interest is explained only when one knows the 
 fundamental dogma about humanity being an organism. 
 
 And just as all the finesses of theology are compre- 
 hensible to him only who believes in the fundamental 
 dogmas, even so all the finesses of sociology, which now 
 occupy all the minds of the men of the very latest and 
 profoundest science, are comprehensible to the believer 
 only. 
 
 The resemblance of the two creeds consists further in 
 this, that the propositions once accepted on faith and no 
 longer subject to investigation serve as a foundation 
 for the strangest of theories, and the preachers of these 
 theories, having appropriated to themselves the method 
 of asserting their right to recognize themselves as holy in 
 theology and as scientific in knowledge, that is, infallible, 
 reach the most arbitrary, incredible, and groundless 
 assertions, which they express with the greatest solemnity 
 and seriousness, and which with the same seriousness and 
 solemnity are disputed in detail by those who do not 
 agree on particular points, but equally recognize the 
 fundamental dogmas. 
 
 The Basil the Great of this creed, Spencer, for example, 
 in one of his first writings expresses these creeds as fol- 
 lows : societies and organisms, he says, differ in this : 
 
 (1) That, beginning as small aggregates, they imper- 
 
238 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 ceptibly grow in mass, so that some of them reach a size 
 which is ten thousand times as large as the original. 
 
 (2) That, while in the beginning they are of such a 
 simple structure that they may be regarded as deprived 
 of all structure, they during the time of their growth 
 acquire a constantly increasing complexity of structure. 
 
 (3) That, although in their early, undeveloped period 
 there exists between them hardly any mutual relation 
 of the particles between themselves, this relation finally 
 becomes so powerful that the activity and the life of each 
 particle becomes possible only with the activity and the 
 life of the rest. 
 
 (4) That the life and the development of society are 
 independent and more prolonged than the life and the 
 development of any of its component units, which are 
 born, grow, act, reproduce, and die separately, while the 
 body politic, which is composed of them, continues to live 
 generation after generation, developing in the mass, on ac- 
 count of the perfection of the structure and the functional 
 activity. 
 
 After that follow the points of difference between 
 organisms and society, and it is proved that these dif- 
 ferences are only seeming ones, and that organisms and 
 societies are completely alike. 
 
 To a fresh man there presents itself the direct question : 
 "What are you talking about? Why is humanity an 
 organism ? or why does it resemble it ? 
 
 " You say that societies according to these four signs 
 are like organisms, but there is nothing of the kind. You 
 only take a few of the signs of the organism, and classify 
 human societies according to them. 
 
 " You adduce four signs of resemblance, then take the 
 signs of difference, but only the seeming ones (as it appears 
 to us), and you conclude that human societies may be 
 viewed as organisms. But this is an idle play of dialec- 
 tics and nothing else. On such a foundation it is possible 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 239 
 
 to classify anything you please according to the signs of 
 the organism." 
 
 I shall take the first thing that occurs to me, let us say 
 the forest, as it is sowed in the field and grows up : 
 
 (1) Beginning as a small aggregate, etc. ; precisely the 
 same takes place in the fields, when the seeds slowly take 
 root in them, and the forest grows up. 
 
 (2) In the beginning the structure is simple, then the 
 complexity grows, etc. ; precisely the same is true of 
 the forest : first there are nothing but little birches, then 
 willows and hazel bushes are added; at first they grow 
 straight, and later their branches intertwine. 
 
 (3) The interrelation of the particles increases to such 
 an extent that the life of each particle depends on the 
 life and the activity of the rest ; precisely the same is true 
 of the forest : the hazel bushes warm the trunks (cut them 
 out, and the other trees will freeze), the border under- 
 brush guards it against the wind, the seed trees continue 
 the species, the tall and leafy trees furnish shade, and the 
 life of one tree depends on the other. 
 
 (4) The separate parts may die, but the whole lives ; 
 the same is true of the forest : as the proverb says. The 
 forest does not lament a tree. 
 
 Precisely the same is true with the example generally 
 adduced by the advocates of the theory, that if the arm is 
 chopped off, the arm will die; plant a tree beyond the 
 shade and the forest soil, and it will die. 
 
 There is also a remarkable resemblance between this 
 creed and the Christian dogma of the church and any 
 other which is based on dogmas that are taken upon 
 faith, on account of its impermeability against the proofs 
 of logic. Having shown that the forest may, according to 
 this theory, with equal right be considered an organism, 
 you think that you have proven to them the incorrectness 
 of their definition, — but that is where you are mistaken. 
 
 The definition which they give to the organism is so 
 
240 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 inexact and so extensible that they can classify under 
 their definition anything they please. 
 
 " Yes," they will say, " a forest may be regarded as an 
 organism. A forest is a peaceful interaction of individuals 
 which do not destroy one another, — an aggregate, — 
 and its parts may also come into a closer union and, like 
 a bee swarm, may become an organisno." 
 
 Then you will say that if it is so, the birds, and the 
 insects, and the grasses of this forest, which interact and 
 do not destroy one another, may also be viewed with the 
 trees as one organism. 
 
 They will agree even to that. Every aggregate of liv- 
 ing beings which interact and do not destroy one another 
 may, according to their theory, also be viewed as an 
 organism. You may assume a union and cooperation 
 between any things you please, and from evolution you 
 may affirm that out of anything you please there will in 
 a very long time be produced anything you please. 
 
 It is impossible to prove to those who believe in the 
 trinity of God that that is not so, but it is possible to 
 show them that their assertion is an assertior not of 
 knowledge, but of faith, and that if they assert that there 
 are three Gods, I with the same right may assert that 
 there are seventeen and a half of them ; the same, with 
 even greater assurance, may be proved to the followers 
 of the positive and evolutionary science. On the basis 
 of this science I will undertake to prove anything you 
 please. And what is most remarkable is this, that this 
 same positive science recognizes the scientific method as a 
 sign of true knowledge, and has itself defined what it 
 calls a scientific method. What it calls the scientific 
 method is common sense, and it is this common sense 
 which accuses it at every step. 
 
 The moment those who occupied the places of the 
 saints began to feel that there was nothing saintly left in 
 them, and that they were all cursed, like the Pope and 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 241 
 
 our Synod, they immediately called themselves, not only 
 holy, but also most holy. The moment science felt that 
 there was nothing of common sense left in it, it called 
 itself the science of common sense, that is, scientific 
 science. 
 
XXXI. 
 
 The division of labour is the law of everything in exist- 
 ence, and so it must be also in human societies. It is 
 very likely that it is so, but the question still remains 
 whether the division of labour which is now in human 
 societies is that division of labour which there ought to 
 be. And if people consider a certain division of labour 
 irrational and unjust, no science can prove to people that 
 that which they regard as irrational and unjust ought to 
 exist. 
 
 The theologic^ theory has proved that the power is 
 from God, and it is very likely that it is, but the question 
 is still left : whose power is from God, Catherine's or 
 Pugach^v's ? And no finesses of theology have been able 
 to solve this doubt. 
 
 The philosophy of the Spirit has proved that the state 
 is a form of the evolution of individuals ; but the question 
 was still left : can the state of a Nero or of a Dzhingis- 
 khan be regarded as a form of the evolution of individu- 
 als ? And no transcendental words have been able to 
 solve this. 
 
 The same is true of the scientific science. 
 
 The division of labour is a condition of the life of 
 organisms and of human societies ; but what is it in these 
 human societies that must be regarded as an organic 
 division of labour? And no matter how much science^, 
 may study the division of labour in the cells of rain- 
 worms, all these observations will not make a man regard 
 as correct a division of labour which is not recognized as 
 such by his reason and his conscience. 
 
 No matter how convincing the proofs may be in the 
 
 242 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 243 
 
 case of the division of labour of the cells in organisms 
 under observation, a man, if he is not yet deprived of rea- 
 son, will none the less say that it is not right for a man 
 to be weaviug cottons all his life, and that this is not a 
 division of labour, but an oppression of men. 
 
 Spencer and the rest say that there are whole settle- 
 ments of weavers, and that, therefore, the weavers' activ- 
 ity is an organic division of labour, — but saying this, 
 they say precisely what the theologians have said. 
 
 There is a power, and so it is from God, no matter 
 what it may be. There are weavers, consequently such 
 is the division of labour. It would be well to say so, if 
 the power and the population of the weavers were made 
 by themselves, but we know that they are not made by 
 themselves, but by us. And so we have to find out 
 whether we made this power by God's will or by our 
 own, and whether we made these weavers according to 
 an organic law or according to something else. 
 
 People live and support themselves by agriculture as is 
 proper for all men : a man puts up a blacksmith's forge 
 and mends his plough, and his neighbour comes and asks 
 him to mend his, and promises labour or money for it. A 
 third, a fourth come, and in the society of these men the 
 following division of labour takes place : a blacksmith is 
 created. Another man teaches his children well, and his 
 neighbour brings his children to him, and asks him to 
 teach them, — and a teacher is created. But the smith 
 and the teacher became and still are such because they 
 were asked, and they remain such only so long as they 
 are asked to be a smith or a teacher. If it should happen 
 that there should be many smiths and teachers, or that 
 their labour is not wanted, they would, as common sense 
 demands, and as always happens where there are no 
 causes for violating the regularity of the division of 
 labour, at once give up their professions and return to 
 agriculture. 
 
244 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 People who act in this manner are guided by their rea- 
 son and their conscience, and so we, the men who are 
 endowed with reason and conscience, assert that such a 
 division of labour is regular. But if it should happen 
 that the smiths could compel others to work for them, and 
 should continue to make horseshoes, when they were not 
 needed, and the teachers should teach when there was no 
 one to teach, every fresh man, as a man, that is, as a 
 being endowed with reason and with conscience, would 
 plainly see that that would not be a division, but a 
 seizure of somebody else's labour, because such an activ- 
 ity would depart from that one measure by which we can 
 tell the regularity of the division of labour : the demand 
 for this labour by other men, and a freely offered remu- 
 neration for this labour. And yet just such activity is 
 what according to the scientific science is called division 
 of labour. 
 
 People do what others do not even think of demanding, 
 and demand to be fed for it, saying that this is just, be- 
 cause it is a division of labour. 
 
 What forms the chief pubhc calamity of the masses, — 
 not in our country alone, — is the government, the num- 
 berless officials ; what forms the cause of the economic 
 wretchedness of our time is what the English call over- 
 production (the manufacturing of a mass of articles which 
 cannot be got rid of, and which nobody wants) : all this 
 comes from the strange comprehension of the division of 
 labour. 
 
 It would be strange to see a shoemaker, who thought 
 that people were obliged to support him, because he 
 never stopped making boots, which people have long 
 stopped wanting ; but what is to be said of those men of 
 the government, the church, science, the arts, who d,o not 
 make boots, who do not produce anything tangible or 
 useful for the people, for whose commodities there is no 
 demand, and who, on the basis of -the division of labour, 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 245 
 
 demand just as boldly that they should be given palatable 
 food and drink, and be comfortably clothed ? 
 
 There may be, and there are, wizards for whose activity 
 there is a demand, and to whom people carry for this 
 pancakes and half-stoups ; but it is hard to imagine that 
 there should be wizards whose witchery is not wanted, 
 and who none the less demand boldly to be given good 
 food, because they would practise their magical art. 
 
 And yet it is this that happens in our world with the 
 people of the government, the church, science, and art. 
 
 And all this takes place on the basis of that false 
 comprehension of the division of labour, which is not 
 determined by one's conscience, but by observation, which 
 with such unanimity is professed by the men of science. 
 
 The division of labour has indeed existed at all times, 
 but it is regular only when man decides by his reason and 
 his conscience what it is to be, and not when he shall 
 observe it ; but the conscience and the reason of all men 
 decide this question in a very simple, unquestionable, and 
 unanimous manner. 
 
 They decided that the division of labour is regular only 
 when the special activity of a man is so necessary to men 
 that they, asking him to serve them, themselves offer to 
 support him for what he will do for them. But when 
 a man can from childhood to his thirtieth year sit on the 
 neck of others, promising, after he has learned it, to do 
 something useful, which nobody asks him to do, and when 
 he later, from his thirtieth year until his death, can pro- 
 ceed living in the same way, all the time with only the 
 promise to do something which nobody asks him to do, 
 that will not be any division of labour (as, indeed it does 
 not exist in our society), but, what it really is, only a 
 seizure by the strong of the labour of others; it is the 
 same seizure of other men's labour by the strong which 
 formerly the theologians used to call divine destination, 
 and the philosophers later called necessary forms of life. 
 
246 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 and now the scientific science calls organic division of 
 labour. 
 
 The whole significance of the reigning science is only 
 in this. 
 
 It has now become a distributer of diplomas for 
 idleness, because it alone analyzes and decides in its 
 sanctuaries which is a parasitical and which an organic 
 activity of man in the social organism, — as though a 
 man could not find out this same thing much more cor- 
 rectly and more quickly by consulting his reason and his 
 conscience. 
 
 And as formerly for the clergy and later for the men 
 of the State there could have been no doubt as to who 
 were most useful to others, so it seems now to the scien- 
 tific science that there can be no doubt as to the fact that 
 its activity is unquestionably organic : they, the scientific 
 and the artistic actors, are the most precious brain cells 
 of the org' nism. But God be with them ! Let them 
 reign, eat and drink what is good, and live idly, as lived 
 and reigned the priests and the sophists, if only, as priests 
 and sophists, they did not corrupt people. 
 
 Ever since there have been people, rational beings, 
 they have distinguished between good and evil and have 
 made use of what the men before them have distinguished 
 in this respect: they have struggled against the evil, 
 sought the true and best path, and slowly but unyieldingly 
 advanced on this path. And always, barring this path, 
 there have risen before men all kinds of deceptions which 
 have for their aim to show that this must not be done, 
 and that it is necessary to live the best way one can. 
 There arose the terrible, old deceptions of the ecclesiastics ; 
 with a terrible struggle and labour men slowly emanci- 
 pated themselves from them, but before they managed to 
 free themselves, a new deception, the politico-philosoph- 
 ical, took the place of the old ones. Men freed them- 
 selves even from this. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 247 
 
 And a new, a still worse, deception grew out on the 
 path of men, — the scientific deception. 
 
 This new deception is just like the older ones : its 
 essence consists in substituting something external for the 
 activity of our reason and of our conscience and of those 
 who have lived before us : in the church teaching this 
 external matter was revelation, in science it is observation. 
 
 The trap of this science consists in this, that, pointing 
 out to men the grossest deviations of the activity of men's 
 reason and conscience, it destroys in them their faith 
 in reason and conscience, and, concealing its deception, 
 which is clothed in a scientific theory, it assures them 
 that they, studying the external phenomena, are studying 
 undoubted facts, such as will reveal to them the law of 
 man's hfe. But the mental demoralization consists in 
 this, that, by acquiring the belief that the objects, which 
 in reahty are subject to the conscience and to reason, are 
 subject to observation, these people lose the consciousness 
 of good and evil and become incapable of understanding 
 those expressions and definitions of good and evil which 
 have been worked out by the whole preceding life of 
 humanity. All this in their jargon is conventional and 
 subjective. All this has to be abandoned, they say ; it is 
 impossible through reason to understand the truth, be- 
 cause it is possible to err, and there is another path which 
 is faultless and almost mechanical : it is necessary to 
 study facts. But facts have to be studied on the basis of 
 scientific science, that is, of two groundless propositions, 
 — of positivism and of evolution, — which are given out 
 as most unquestionable truths. 
 
 And the reigning science declares, with a not less decep- 
 tive solemnity than does the church, that the solution of 
 all the questions of life is possible only through the study 
 of the facts of Nature and especially of the organisms. 
 
 The credulous multitude of youths, overcome by the 
 novelty of this authority, which is not only not yet 
 
248 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 destroyed, but even not yet touched by criticism, throws 
 itself with avidity on the study of these facts in the 
 natural sciences, on that only path which, according to 
 the assertion of the reigning doctrine, can lead to the 
 elucidation of the questions of life. 
 
 But the farther the disciples move in this study, the 
 farther and farther removed from them becomes, not only 
 the possibility, but even the idea itself of the solution 
 of the questions of life, and the more and more do they 
 become accustomed, not so much to observe, as to take on 
 trust the observations of others (to believe in cells, in pro- 
 toplasm, in the fourth state of matter, and so forth) ; the 
 more and more does the form shield the contents from 
 them ; the more and more do they lose the consciousness 
 of good and evil and the ability to understand those expres- 
 sions and definitions of good and evil which are worked 
 out by the whole preceding life of humanity ; the more 
 and more do they acquire a special scientific jargon of 
 conventional expressions, which has no universal human 
 significance ; the more and more do they enter into ravines 
 of unenlightened observations ; the more and more are they 
 deprived of the ability, not only to think independently, but 
 even to understand a fresh, human thought which is found 
 outside their Talmud ; and, above all else, they pass their 
 best years in becoming dissociated from life, that is, from 
 labour, get accustomed to regard their condition 'as justi- 
 fied, and grow even physically to be worthless parasites. 
 And just like the theologians and Talmudists, they com- 
 pletely wrench their brains and become eunuchs of 
 thought. And just hke them, in proportion with their 
 dulling, they acquire a self-confidence which deprives 
 them for ever of the possibility of a return to the simple, 
 clear, and universally human manner of thinking. 
 
XXXII. 
 
 The division of labour in human society has always 
 existed and, no doubt, will always exist ; but for us the 
 question is not whether it is and will be, but what we 
 must be guided by, in order that the division may be regu- 
 lar. Now if we take observation as a standard, we shall 
 in this manner at once renounce all standards, and then 
 every division of labour which we shall see among 
 people, and which will appear regular to us, will be re- 
 garded as regular by us, — and to this indeed the reigning 
 scientific science leads us. 
 
 Division of labour ! Some busy themselves with men- 
 tal, spiritual labour, others with muscular, physical labour. 
 With what assurance these people speak ! They want to 
 believe so, and it seems to them that there is indeed taking 
 place a completely regular exchange of services, where in 
 reality it is only a very simple and old form of violence. 
 
 " Thou, or rather you " (for it is always a number of 
 people who feed one), " feed and clothe me and do for me 
 all the coarse labour which I shall demand, and which 
 we are accustomed to receive from childhood, and I will 
 do for you that mental labour which I can and to which 
 I am accustomed. You give me the physical food, and I 
 will furnish you with your spiritual pabulum." (The cal- 
 culation seems quite correct, and it would be quite correct, 
 if this exchange of services were voluntary, if those who 
 furnish the physical food were not compelled to furnish it 
 before they receive the spiritual pabulum.) 
 
 The producer of the spiritual food says : " In order that 
 
 249 
 
250 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 I may be able to give you the spiritual food, feed and 
 clothe me, and carry out my impurities." 
 
 The producer of the physical food is compelled to do 
 this, without uttering any demands, and has to give the 
 physical food, though he may not receive any spiritual 
 food. If the exchange were voluntary, the conditions of 
 the two would be the same. 
 
 We agree to this, that the spiritual food is as necessary 
 for man as the physical food. The savant, the artist, says : 
 " Before we can begin to serve men by means of the spir- 
 itual food, it is necessary for men to provision us with 
 the physical food." But why should not the producer of 
 physical food say that before he is to serve them with 
 the physical food he needs the spiritual food, and that, if 
 he does not receive it, he is unable to work ? 
 
 You say : " I need the work of the ploughman, smith, 
 shoemaker, carpenter, mason, privy cleaner, and others in 
 order that I may be able to prepare my spiritual food." 
 Every labourer ought equally to say : " Before I go out to 
 work in order to prepare the physical food for you, I must 
 possess the fruits of the spiritual food. To have strength 
 for the work there are indispensable to me : the religious 
 teaching, the order in the social life, the application of 
 knowledge to labour, the joys and the consolations which 
 the arts give. I have no time to work out my teaching 
 about the meaning of life, — give it to me. I have no 
 time to think out statutes of social life, such that justice 
 would not be impaired, — give it to me. I have no time 
 to busy myself with mechanics, physics, chemistry, tech- 
 nology, — give me the books with the indications of how 
 to improve my tools, my methods of work, my dwelling, 
 my heating, my lighting. I have no time to busy myself 
 with poetry, plastic art, music, — give me the necessary 
 incitements and consolations for life ; give me the prod- 
 ucts of the arts. You say that you cannot busy your- 
 self with your important and necessary works, if you shall 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 251 
 
 be deprived of the labour which the labouring people are 
 bearing for you, but I say," the labourer will say, " that I 
 cannot possibly busy myself with my not less important 
 and necessary labours, — ploughing, hauling manure, and 
 cleaning up your impurities, — if I shall be deprived of the 
 religious guidance and of what corresponds to the demands 
 of my mind and conscience, of a rational government which 
 will make my labour secure, of the indications of knowl- 
 edge for the alleviation of my work, of the joy of art for 
 the ennoblement of my labour. Everything which you 
 heretofore have offered me in the form of spiritual food is 
 not only of no use to me, but I even fail to understand 
 to whom it can be of any use. And so long as I do not 
 get this food, which is proper for me, as it is for any man, 
 I cannot feed you with the physical food, which I pro- 
 duce."* 
 
 What if the labourer should say so ? 
 
 If he should, it would not be a conceit, but the sim- 
 plest justice. 
 
 If a labourer should say this, there would be more 
 justice on his side than on the side of the man of mental 
 labour. There is more justice on his side, because the 
 labour which is supplied by the labourer is more impor- 
 tant, more indispensable, than the labour of the producer 
 of mental labour, even for this reason, that nothing keeps 
 a man of the mental labour from giving to the labourer 
 that spiritual food which he has promised him ; but what 
 keeps the labourer from giving the physical food is the 
 fact that he himself has not enough of this physical food. 
 
 What are we, the men of the mental labour, going to 
 answer, if such simple and lawful demands are made on 
 us ? How do we satisfy them ? With Filar^t's Catechism, 
 with Sokolov's Sacred History, with sheets from all kinds 
 of monasteries and from the Cathedral of St. Isaac, — 
 for the gratification of his religious demands ; with the 
 Qode of laws, with cassation decrees of all kinds of de- 
 
252 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 partments, and with all kinds of statutes of committees 
 and commissions, — for the gratification of the demands 
 for order ; with spectral analysis, the measurement of the 
 milky ways, imaginary geometry, microscopic investiga^ 
 tions, disputes about spiritism and mediumism, the ac- 
 tivity of the academy of sciences, — for the gratification 
 of his demands for knowledge. With what shall we 
 satisfy his artistic demands ? With Pushkin, Dostoevski, 
 Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, with pictures of the French Salon 
 and of our artists, representing nude women, satin, vel- 
 vet, landscapes, and genre, with Wagner's music and our 
 musicians ; none of these things are any good, or can be 
 any good, because we, with our right to exploit the labour 
 of the masses and with the absence of all obligations in 
 our preparation of the spiritual food, have entirely lost 
 from view that one purpose which our activity ought to 
 have. We do not even know what the working people 
 need, we have even forgotten their manner of life, their 
 view of things, their language ; we have even forgotten 
 the labouring people, and we study them as an ethno- 
 graphic rarity or as a newly discovered America. 
 
 And so we, demanding the physical food for ourselves, 
 have undertaken to furnish the spiritual food ; but in 
 consequence of that imaginary division of labour, which 
 entitles not only us to dine first, and work later, but also 
 whole generations to dine sumptuously without working 
 at all, we have prepared, in the shape of a retribution to 
 ^the masses for our sustenance, what, as we imagine, is 
 good only for us, for science, and for art, but useless 
 and quite incomprehensible and disgusting, like Lim- 
 burger cheese, to those people whose labours we devour 
 under the pretext of furnishing them with spiritual food. 
 
 In our blindness we have to such an extent let out of 
 view the obligation which we have taken upon ourselves 
 that we have even forgotten in the name of what our 
 labour is produced, and have made the people, whom 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 253 
 
 we undertook to serve, a subject for our scientific and 
 artistic activity. 
 
 We study and represent them for our amusement and 
 distraction, and we have entirely forgotten that we are 
 not to study and represent them, but to serve them. 
 
 We have to such an extent let out of sight this obliga- 
 tion which we have taken upon ourselves that we have 
 not even noticed that what we have undertaken to do in 
 the sphere of the sciences and arts has been done not by 
 us, but by others, and our place seems to be occupied. 
 It turns out that while we have been disputing — as the 
 theologians did about the germless generation — about 
 the spontaneous generation of the organisms, or about 
 spiritism, or about the form of the atoms, or about pan- 
 genesis, or about what there is in the protoplasm, and so 
 forth, the failures and apostates of the sciences and arts 
 have begun, by order of the business men, who have in 
 view nothing but their own gain, to furnish this spiritual 
 food to the masses. It is now forty years in Europe and 
 ten with us in Eussia that there have been circulated 
 millions of books and pictures and song-books, and shows 
 have been opened, and the people look on and sing and 
 receive their spiritual food, but not from us who have 
 undertaken to furnish it, and we, who justify our idleness 
 by the spiritual food which we are supposed to be fur- 
 nishing, sit and flap our eyes. But we ought not to flap 
 our eyes, for the last justification is slipping out from 
 underneath us. 
 
 We have specialized ourselves. We have our special 
 functional activity. We are the brain of the people. They 
 feed us, and we have undertaken to teach them. Only 
 in the name of this have we emancipated ourselves from 
 labour. Now what have we taught them ? They waited 
 a year, tens, hundreds of years. And still we discuss 
 and teach and amuse one another, and have entirely for- 
 gotten them. We have forgotten them to such an extent 
 
254 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 that others have undertaken to teach and amuse them, 
 and we have not even noticed with how little seriousness 
 we spoke of the division of labour, and how obvious it is 
 that what we say of the benefit which we confer on the 
 masses has been nothing but a shameless excuse ! 
 
xxxm. 
 
 There was a time when the church guided the spiritual 
 life of the people of our world ; the church promised the 
 good to people, and for this freed itself from participation 
 in humanity's struggle for life. And the moment it did 
 so, it departed from its calUng, and people turned away 
 from it. It is not the errors of the church that have 
 ruined it, but the departure of its servants from the law 
 of labour, which was secured in the time of Constantine 
 with the help of the temporal power ; their privilege of 
 idleness and luxury has begot the errors of the church. 
 With this privilege began the church's care for the 
 church, and not for the people whom it undertook to 
 serve, and the servants of the church abandoned them- 
 selves to idleness and debauch. 
 
 The state undertook to guide the lives of men. The 
 state promised men justice, peace, security, order, gratifi- 
 cation of general spiritual and material needs, and for this 
 the people who served the state emancipated themselves 
 from participation in humanity's struggle for life. And 
 the servants of the state, the moment they acquired the 
 possibility of exploiting the labour of others, did the same 
 that the servants of the church did. Their end was no 
 longer the people, but the state, and the servants of the 
 state, — from the kings down to the lowest officials, — in 
 Eome and in France, and in England and in Eussia and 
 in America, abandoned themselves to idleness and de- 
 bauch. 
 
 And people lost their faith in the state, and anarchy 
 consciously presents itself as an ideal. 
 
 The state has lost its enchantment for the people, only 
 256 
 
256 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 because its servants recognized their right to exploit the 
 labours of the people. 
 
 The same was done by science and by art, with the aid 
 of the power of the state, which they undertook to sup- 
 port. And they stipulated for themselves the right to be 
 idle and exploit the labours of others, and similarly became 
 false to their calling. 
 
 And similarly their error was due only to this, tha€ the 
 servants of science, by advancing the falsely raised prin- 
 ciple of the division of labour, recognized the right to ex- 
 ploit the labours of others and lost the meaning of their 
 calling, making as their aim not the benefit of the people, 
 but the mysterious benefit of science and of the arts, and, 
 like their predecessors, they abandoned themselves to 
 idleness and debauch, — not so much sensuous as mental 
 debauch. 
 
 They say that science and the arts have given much to 
 humanity. That is quite true. 
 
 The church and the state have given much to human- 
 ity, but not because they have misused their power and 
 because their servants have departed from the eternal 
 obligation of labour for life, which is common to all men, 
 but in spite of it. 
 
 Even so science and the arts have given much to hu- 
 manity, not because the men of science and of art, under 
 the form of the division of labour, live on the backs of the 
 labouring class, but in spite of it. The Roman republic 
 was not powerful because her citizens were able to lead a 
 life of debauch, but because among her citizens there were 
 virtuous men. The same is true* of science and of art. 
 
 Science and art have given much to humanity, not be- 
 cause their servants formerly had occasionally a chance, 
 and now always have a chance, to free themselves from 
 labour, but because there have existed men of genius, 
 who, without making use of this right, have promoted 
 humanity. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 257 
 
 The class of the learned and of the artists, which, on 
 the basis of the false division of labour, makes demands 
 on the exploitation of the labour of others, cannot cooper- 
 ate with the success of true science and of true art, be- 
 cause the lie cannot produce any truth. 
 
 We have become so accustomed to those our pampered, 
 fat, and enfeebled representatives of mental labour that 
 it appears monstrous to us to see a savant or an artist 
 plough or haul manure. It seems to us that everything 
 will perish, and that all his wisdom will be shaken up on 
 a cart, and that all those great artistic pictures, which 
 he harbours in his breast, will become soiled in the ma- 
 nure ; but we have become so accustomed to this that it 
 does not seem strange to us that our servant of science, 
 that is, the servant and teacher of truth, in causing others 
 to do for him what he can do himself, passes half his 
 time in eating sweet food, smoking, chattering, liberal 
 gossips, reading of newspapers and novels, and going to the 
 theatres ; it does not appear strange to us to see our phi- 
 losopher in the restaurant, in the theatre, at the ball, and 
 we are not surprised to hear that the artists who delight 
 and ennoble our souls have passed their lives in drunken- 
 ness, in playing cards, and with women, if not worse. 
 
 Science and art are beautiful things, and for the very 
 reason that they are beautiful they ought not to be spoiled 
 by adding to them debauch, that is, the liberation from 
 man's obligation by means of labour to serve his life and 
 the lives of others. 
 
 Science and art have advanced humanity, yes ! but not 
 because the men of science and of art, under the form of 
 the division of labour, have in words and, what is more 
 important, with their deeds taught others to make use of 
 violence, and to exploit the poverty and sufferings of men 
 for the purpose of freeing themselves from the very first and 
 unquestionable human obligation of working with their 
 hands in the general struggle of humanity with Nature. 
 
XXXIV. 
 
 " But it is only the division of labour, the emancipation 
 of the men of science and of art from the necessity of 
 working for their food, that has made possible that prog- 
 ress of the sciences which we see in our time," they say 
 to this. 
 
 " If all were obhged to plough, there would not have 
 been attained those enormous results which have been 
 arrived at in our time ; there would not be that striking 
 progress which has so increased man's power over Nature ; 
 there would not be those astronomical discoveries, which 
 so startle the human mind and which have made navi- 
 gation more secure, nor steamers, railways, wonderful 
 bridges, tunnels, steam-engines, telegraphs, photographs, 
 telephones, sewing-machines, phonographs, electricity, 
 telescopes, spectroscopes, microscopes, chloroform, anti- 
 septics, carbolic acid." 
 
 I cannot count out everything of which our age is so 
 proud. 
 
 Such a list and the raptures over oneself and over one's 
 exploits may be found in almost any newspaper and pop- 
 ular book. These raptures over oneself are so frequently 
 repeated, we are so overrejoiced at ourselves, that we are 
 seriously convinced with Jules Verne that science and 
 art never made such progress as in our time. 
 
 Now all this wonderful progress we owe to the division 
 of labour, so how can we help acknowledging it ? 
 
 Let us admit that the progress made in our century is 
 indeed striking, wonderful, unusual ; let us admit that we 
 are such peculiarly fortunate men as to live in an unusual 
 
 268 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 259 
 
 time. But let us try and value this progress, not in the 
 light of our self-contentment, but of the principle defended 
 by this progress of the division of labour, that is, by that 
 mental labour of the men of science for the benefit of the 
 people, which is ta redeem the emancipation from labour, 
 of the men of science and of art. All this progress is 
 very remarkable, but by some unfortunate accident, which 
 is acknowledged by the men of science, this progress has 
 so far not improved the condition of the labourer, but 
 has rather made it worse. 
 
 If a labourer, instead of walking, can travel on the 
 railway, the railway has, on the other hand, burned his 
 forest, taken the grain away from under his nose, and 
 brought him to the condition resembling slavery, — to 
 that of the railway labourer. 
 
 If, thanks to steam engines and machines, a labourer 
 can purchase wretched cottons, these engines and ma- 
 chines, on the other hand, have deprived him of earnings 
 at home and have brought him to the state of complete 
 slavery to the manufacturer. 
 
 If there are telegraphs, which he is not kept from 
 using, but which his means do not permit him to make 
 use of, every product of his, as soon as it rises in price, 
 is bought up under his nose by the capitahsts at a low 
 price, thanks to the telegraph, before the labourer finds 
 out about the demand for this commodity. 
 
 If there are telephones and telescopes, verses, novels, 
 theatres, ballets, symphonies, operas, picture-galleries, and 
 so forth, the life of the labourer has not improved from 
 these, because, by the same unfortunate accident, these 
 are not accessible to him. 
 
 Thus, in general, — and in this the men of science 
 agree, — all these unusual inventions and productions of 
 art have so far not in the least improved the life of the 
 labourer, if they have not made it worse. 
 
 Thus, if to the question about the reality of the prog- 
 
260 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 ress achieved by the sciences and the arts, we do not 
 apply our rapture over ourselves, but the same standard 
 on the basis of which the division of labour is defended, 
 that is, the benefit conferred on the labouring people, we 
 shall see that we have not yet any firm foundations for 
 that self-contentment to which we so readily abandon 
 ourselves. 
 
 A peasant will travel on the railway, a woman will buy 
 cottons, in the hut there will be a lamp, and not a torch, 
 and a peasant will light his pipe with a match, — that is 
 convenient ; but by what right can I say that the rail- 
 ways and factories have benefited the people ? 
 
 If a peasant travels on the railway and buys a lamp, 
 cottons, and matches, he does so because he cannot be 
 prohibited from doing so ; but we all know that railways 
 and factories were never built for the benefit of the 
 masses, so what sense is there in adducing accidental 
 comforts, which the labourer uses fortuitously, as a proof 
 of the usefulness of these institutions for the people ? 
 
 We all know that if the engineers and capitalists, who 
 built the railway or the factory, thought of the labouring 
 man, they did so only in the sense of squeezing the last 
 strength out of him. And, as we see, both in our country 
 and in Europe, and in America, they have fully accom- 
 plished this. 
 
 In everything harmful there is something useful. After 
 a conflagration we may warm ourselves at the fire and 
 light our pipe with a coal; but what sense is there in 
 saying that a conflagration is useful ? 
 
 Let us at least not deceive ourselves. We all know 
 the motives by which roads and factories are built and 
 coal-oil and matches are obtained. 
 
 An engineer builds a road for the government, for 
 military purposes, or for the capitalists, for financial pur- 
 poses. He makes machines for the manufacturer, for his 
 own gain and for that of the capitalist. Everything which 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 261 
 
 he makes or invents, he makes or invents for the purposes 
 of the government, of the capitalist, of the rich. All his 
 most cunning devices of engiQeering are directed outright 
 either to the harm of the people, as in the case of guns, 
 torpedoes, solitary cells, appliances for the monopolies, 
 telegraphs, and so forth ; or to articles which fail not only 
 to be useful, but even apphcable, to the masses, such as 
 the electric light, telephones, and all the endless improve- 
 ments of comfort ; or, finally, to such objects as can cor- 
 rupt the people and extort the last money, that is, the 
 last labour, from them, such as, above all, whiskey, wine, 
 beer, opium, tobacco, then cottons, kerchiefs, and all kinds 
 of trifles. 
 
 But if it happens that the inventions of the men of 
 science and the labours of the engineers now and then 
 are useful to the people, as, for instance, the railway, cot- 
 tons, iron pots, scythes, this proves only that in the world 
 everything is connected and out of every harmful activity 
 there may come an accidental benefit for those to whom 
 this activity was harmful. 
 
 The men of science and of art could say that their 
 activity is useful for the people only if the men of science 
 and of art make it their purpose to serve the people as 
 now they make it their purpose to serve the governments 
 and the capitalists. 
 
 We could say this only if the men of science and of 
 art made it their purpose to attend to the people's wants, 
 but there do not exist such. 
 
 All the learned people are busy with their priestly 
 occupations, from which follow investigations of proto- 
 plasms, spectral analyses of stars, and so forth. But 
 science has never thought of this, with what kind of an 
 axe head and helve it is more advantageous to chop ; what 
 kind of a saw does the best work ; how it is better to 
 prepare the dough for the bread', out of what flour, and 
 how it is to be set ; how to make a fire, what stoves to 
 
262 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 put up, what food, what drink, what dishes to use, what 
 mushrooms may be eaten, and what is the best way to 
 prepare them. And yet all this is the business of science. 
 
 I know, according to its definition, science must be 
 useless, but this is an obvious and too bold an excuse. 
 The business of science is to serve the people. We have 
 invented telegraphs, telephones, phonographs, but what 
 have we advanced in life, in the labour of the masses? 
 They have counted two millions of bugs ! But have they 
 domesticated a single new animal since Biblical times, 
 when all our animals were already domesticated ? The 
 elk, the stag, the partridge, the quail, the grouse, are still 
 wild. The botanists have found the cell, and the proto- 
 plasm in the cell, and something else in the protoplasm, 
 and something else inside of that. These occupations 
 will apparently not end for a long time, because appar- 
 ently there can be no end to them, and so they will never 
 have the time to busy themselves with what people need. 
 And so again, since Egyptian and Jewish antiquity, when 
 the wheat and lentils were already cultivated, up to our 
 time not one plant has been added to the food of the 
 people, unless it be the potato, which, however, was not 
 acquired through science. 
 
 They have invented torpedoes, appliances for the mon- 
 opolies and for privies, but the spinning-wheel, the weaver's 
 loom, the plough, the axe handle, the flail, the rake, the 
 sweep, the vat, — all these are precisely as they were in 
 the time of Eiirik. And if anything has been changed, it 
 has not been changed by scientific men. 
 
 The same is true of art. We have raised a mass of 
 men to the level of great writers, have analyzed these 
 writers down to the minutest details, and have written 
 mountains of criticism, and criticisms on the criticisms, 
 and again criticisms on the criticisms of the criticisms, and 
 have collected picture-galleries, and have studied all kinds 
 of &chools of art down to the finest points, and we have 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 263 
 
 symphonies and operas such as give even us trouble to 
 listen to. And what have we added to the popular epics, 
 legends, fairy-tales, songs ? What pictures and what 
 music have we given to the masses ? At Nikolskaya they 
 make books and pictures for the people, and in Tula 
 accordions, and in neither have we taken any part. 
 
 Most striking and obvious is the falseness of the direc- 
 tion of our science and our arts in those very branches 
 which, one would think, from their very problems ought 
 to be useful to the people, but which, in consequence of 
 the false direction, present themselves as rather pernicious 
 than useful. 
 
 An engineer, physician, teacher, artist, author, to judge 
 from his calling, ought to serve the people, and what 
 happens ? With the present tendencies they can do 
 nothing but harm to the people. 
 
 An engineer, a mechanician, has to work with a capital 
 Without a capital he is not good for anything. All his 
 knowledge is such that in order to manifest it he needs 
 capital and the exploitation of the labourer on a large 
 scale, and, to say nothing of the fact that he has been 
 taught to spend at least fifteen hundred or two thousand 
 a year, and so cannot go to the country where nobody can 
 give him any remuneration, he by his very occupation is 
 no good for serving the people. He can by means of 
 higher mathematics figure out the span of a bridge and 
 the transmission of a motor, and so forth, but he is non- 
 plussed in the presence of the simple demands of the 
 people's labour. How to improve a plough or a cart, 
 how to make a brook fordable, — problems which exist 
 in those conditions of life in which the labourer finds him- 
 self, — of all that he knows nothing and understands less 
 than the very lowest peasant. Give him shops, all the 
 working people he wants, order machines from abroad, 
 and then he will fix everything. But he knows nothing, 
 and can know nothing, about finding, under certain condi- 
 
264 WHAT SUALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 tions of the labour of millions of people, the means for 
 making this labour easier, and by his occupations, habits, 
 and demands made on him by Hfe he is no good for this 
 work> 
 
 The physician is in a still worse condition. His whole 
 imaginary science is so placed that he is able to cure only 
 those who do nothing and are able to make use of the 
 labours of others. He needs an endless number of costly 
 appliances, of rooms, food, privy, in order that he may be 
 able to act scientifically ; in addition to his salary he 
 needs such expenses that, in order to cure a single patient, 
 he has to starve to death a hundred of those who will 
 bear these expenses. He has studied with celebrities in 
 the capitals, who make a practice only of such patients as 
 can be cured in clinics, or who, curing themselves, are 
 able to buy the necessary machines for their cure, and 
 even to go at once from the north to the south, or to 
 such and such watering-places. 
 
 Their science is such that each county physician com- 
 plains of not having the means for curing the labouring 
 people, that they are so poor that it is impossible to place 
 the patient in hygienic conditions, and, at the same time, 
 this physician complains that there are no hospitals, that 
 he cannot manage all the work, and that he needs more 
 assistants, doctors, and surgical help. What conclusion 
 do we come to ? To this, that the chief calamity of the 
 masses, from which originate and spread their diseases, 
 and remain uncured, is the insufficiency of the means for 
 life. 
 
 And here science under the banner of the division of 
 labour calls its champions to the aid of the masses. AU 
 the science has been adapted for the wealthy classes and 
 puts the problem as to how to cure those people who can 
 get everything for themselves, and send those who have 
 nothing superfluous to be cured in the same way. 
 
 But the means are wanting, and so it is necessary to 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 265 
 
 take them from the masses, who have aihnents and be- 
 come infected, but are not cured, for lack of means. 
 
 And the defenders of medicine for the people say that 
 this business has so far been httle developed. 
 
 It is evident that it has been little developed, because 
 if, God forfend, it should be developed, and the people 
 were shouldered with twenty instead of two doctors, mid- 
 wives, and surgical assistants to each county,- — there 
 would soon be no persons to cure. The scientific coopera- 
 tion, of which the defenders of the science speak, ought 
 to be of a very different kind.. The cooperation which 
 ought to be has not yet begun. It will begin when the 
 man of science, the engineer or the physician, shall not 
 regard as legal that division, that is, seizure of other 
 people's labour, which now exists; when he shall not 
 consider it his right to take from people, I do not say 
 hundreds of thousands, but even a modest one thousand 
 or five hundred roubles for his cooperation, and shall live 
 among the labouring people in the same conditions as 
 they, and then shall apply their knowledge to questions 
 of mechanics, engineering, hygiene, and the curing of the 
 labouring masses. But now the science, which grows fat 
 at the expense of the labouring people, has entirely for- 
 gotten the conditions of the life of these people, ignores 
 (as it expresses itself) these conditions, and most seriously 
 feels offended because its supposed knowledge finds no 
 application among the people. 
 
 The sphere of medicine, hke that of engineering, still 
 lies untouched. All the questions as to how best to 
 divide the time of labour, how best to nourish oneself, 
 how, in what manner, when to dress oneself and counter- 
 act the dampness and cold, how best to wash, nurse the 
 children, swaddle them, and so forth, especially in the con- 
 ditions in which the labouring people are, — aU these 
 questions have not yet been put. 
 
 The same is true of the activity of the scientific, the 
 
266 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 pedagogical teachers. Here science has put the matter 
 in such a shape that according to science it is possible to 
 teach rich people only, and the teachers, like the engineers 
 and physicians, involuntarily cling to money, and with us 
 more particularly to the government. 
 
 And this cannot be otherwise, because a model school 
 (as a general rule, the more scientific the arrangement 
 of the school, the more expensive it is), with adjustable 
 benches, globes, and maps, and libraries, and methodics for 
 teacher and pupils, is such that it demands the doubling 
 of the taxes for each village. So science demands. 
 
 The masses need the children for work, and the more 
 they need them, the poorer they are. The scientific 
 defenders say : Pedagogy even now benefits the people, 
 and when it is developed it will be better stilL Yes, peda- 
 gogy will be developed, and, instead of twenty, there will be 
 one hundred schools to each county, and all of them scien- 
 tific, and the masses will support these schools, — then 
 they will grow poorer still and will need the work of 
 their children even more than before. 
 
 " What is to be done ? " people say to this. 
 
 The government will build the schools and will make 
 instruction compulsory, as in Europe ; but the money will 
 again be taken from the people, and they will work harder 
 than ever, and will have less leisure from work, and there 
 will be no compulsory education. Again there is this one 
 salvation, and this is, that the teacher should live in the 
 conditions of the labourer and should teach for the remu- 
 neration which will voluntarily and gladly be given him. 
 
 Such is the false tendency of science, which deprives it 
 of the possibility of fulfilling its obligation, which is, to 
 serve the masses. Still more obvious is this false tend- 
 ency of our intellectual classes in the case of the activity 
 of art, which from its very purpose ought to be accessible 
 to the masses. 
 
 Science may fall back on its silly excuse that science 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 267 
 
 acts for science, and that, when it has been worked out by 
 the learned, it will become accessible to the masses also ; 
 but art — if it is art — must be accessible to all, espe- 
 cially to those in whose name it is produced. Our con- 
 dition of art strikingly arraigns the workers of art for not 
 wanting, nor knowing how, nor being able to be useful to 
 the masses. 
 
 A painter, to prepare his great productions, must have 
 a studio, which is to be large enough for an association 
 of forty joiners or shoemakers to work in, who are freezing 
 and choking to death in miserable purlieus; but that is 
 not enough: he needs Nature, costumes, travels. The 
 Academy of Arts has spent milHons, collected from the 
 people, for the encouragement of the arts, and the pro- 
 ductions of this art hang in palaces and are incompre- 
 hensible and useless to the masses. 
 
 Musicians, to express their great ideas, have to bring 
 together some two hundred men in white neckties or in 
 costumes, and to spend hundreds of thousands in order 
 to stage an opera. And the productions of this art cannot 
 call forth among the people, even if they ever could make 
 use of them, anything but perplexity and ennui. 
 
 Writers, composers, it would seem, are in no need of 
 immediate surroundings, in studios, Nature, orchestras, 
 and actors ; but even here it appears that a writer, a 
 composer, to say nothing of the comforts of his apart- 
 ments, and of all the enjoyments of life, needs, for the 
 preparation of his great productions, travel, palaces, cabi- 
 nets, the enjoyment of the arts, the attendance at theatres, 
 concerts, balls, and so forth. If he does not himself earn 
 a competence, he gets a pension, that he may compose 
 better. And again, these compositions, so much esteemed 
 by us, remain rubbish for the people, and are absolutely 
 useless to them. 
 
 What if, as the men of the sciences and arts wish, there 
 will breed even more such purveyors of spiritual pabulum, 
 
268 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 and we shall have in each village to build a studio, intro- 
 duce orchestras, and maintain a composer in those con- 
 ditions which the men of the arts regard as indispensable 
 for themselves ? 
 
 I assume that the labouring people will forego the 
 pleasure of ever seeing a picture, hearing a symphony, or 
 reading verses or novels, only not to be obliged to feed all 
 these drones. 
 
 But why could not the men of the arts serve the 
 people ? In every hut there are images and pictures ; 
 every peasant, man or woman, sings ; many of them have 
 musical instruments, and all tell stories and recite verses, 
 while many read. How is it that the two things, which 
 are made one for the other, like a key and a lock, have 
 gone so far apart that there is not even a chance for 
 bringing them together ? 
 
 TeU a painter without a studio. Nature, or costumes to 
 paint pictures worth five kopeks each, and he will tell you 
 that this means renouncing art, as he understands it. Tell 
 a musician to play the balaMyka, accordion, or guitar, and 
 to teach the women to sing songs. Tell the poet to throw 
 away his poems, his novels, his satires, and to compose 
 song-books, stories, and fairy-tales which the unlettered 
 may understand — and they will tell you that you are 
 crazy. But is it less insanity for people, who, only in the 
 name of serving as spiritual pabulum to those men who 
 have brought them up, and feed and clothe them, have 
 emancipated themselves from labour, so to forget their 
 obligation as to become unaccustomed to prepare this food 
 which is so useful to the masses, and to regard this very 
 departure from their obhgation as their special distinc- 
 tion? 
 
 " But so it is everywhere," you are told. 
 
 It is irrational everywhere, and it wiU remain so as 
 long as people, under the pretext of the division of labour 
 and of the promise of serving as spiritual food for the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 269 
 
 masses, will only absorb the labour of the masses. There 
 will be a ministration to the masses by means of the 
 sciences and the arts only when the people who live 
 among the masses and like the masses, without claiming 
 any privileges, will offer them their scientific and artistic 
 services, which to accept or reject will depend on the will 
 of the masses. 
 
XXXV. 
 
 To say that the activity of the sciences and arts has 
 cooperated with the forward movement of humanity, 
 comprehending by this activity what is now called by 
 this name, is the same as to say that the clumsy, inter- 
 feriQg plashing of the oars in a vessel which is going 
 down the stream is cooperating with the motion of the 
 vessel. It only interferes with it. 
 
 The so-called division of labour, that is, the seizure of 
 other people's labour, which in our day has become a con- 
 dition of the activity of the men of science and of art, has 
 been and still remains the chief cause of the slow forward 
 movement of humanity. The proof of this is found in 
 that confession of aU. men of science that the acquisitions 
 of science and of the arts are iaaccessible to the labour- 
 ing masses, on account of the unequal distribution of 
 wealth. 
 
 But the inequality of this distribution does not diminish 
 proportionately with the progress of the sciences and arts, 
 but only keeps increasing. No wonder that it is so, 
 because this unequal distribution of wealth arises only 
 from the theory of the division of labour, which is preached 
 by the men of science and of art for their personal, selfish 
 ends. Science defends the division of labour as an un- 
 changeable law, sees that the distribution of wealth, which 
 is based on the division of labour, is incorrect and per- 
 nicious, and asserts that its activity, which recognizes the 
 division of labour, will make people happy. It turns out 
 that one set of men make use of the labours of others ; 
 but, if they will for a very long time and in still greater 
 
 270 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 271 
 
 measure make use of the labours of others, this unequal 
 distribution of wealth, that is, the exploitation of the 
 labours of others, will come to an end. 
 
 Men are standing at an ever-increasing source of water, 
 and are busy leading it aside from the thirsting people, and 
 assert that it is they who are producing this water, 
 and that very, very soon there will be enough of it to 
 suffice for all. But this water, which has been flowing 
 without interruption, and which supports all humanity, 
 is not only not the consequence of the activity of those 
 men who, standing at the source, are leading it aside, but 
 it flows and spreads, in spite of the efforts of these men 
 to arrest this flow. 
 
 There has always existed the true church in the sense 
 of people who are united in the highest truth attainable 
 at a certain period of humanity, and always it has been 
 different from the church which called itself so, and there 
 has always existed science and art, but not what called 
 itself by that name. 
 
 To those who recognize themselves as representatives 
 of science and of art of a certain period, it always seems 
 that they have done, and, above all, will this very minute 
 do, some remarkable miracles, and that outside of them 
 there has never been any science or any art. Thus it 
 seemed to the sophists, scholastics, alchemists, Cabalists, 
 Talmudists, and to our scientific science, and to our art 
 for art's sake. 
 
XXXVI. 
 
 " But science and art ! You deny science and art, that 
 is, what humanity lives by." They do not exactly offer 
 this objection to me, but always use this method in order 
 to reject my arguments, without analyzing them. 
 
 " He denies science and art, — he wants to bring people 
 back to that savage state, — so what use is there of 
 listening to him or speaking with him ? " 
 
 But that is not true. I am not only far from denying 
 science, that is, the rational human activity, and art, — 
 the expression of this rational activity, but in the name 
 of this rational activity and its expressions do I say what 
 I do ; only in order that humanity may have a chance to 
 get out of that savage state into which it is rapidly fall- 
 ing, thanks to the false teaching of our time, do I speak 
 as I do. 
 
 Science and art are as indispensable for men as food, 
 and drink, and raiment, and even more indispensable than 
 these ; but they do not become such because we decide 
 that what we call science and art is indispensable, but 
 because it is really indispensable to men. 
 
 If they should prepare hay for the physical food of 
 men, my conviction that hay is a food for men will not 
 make the hay be a food for men. I cannot say : " Why 
 do you not eat hay, since it is an indispensable food ? " 
 It may happen that what is offered by me is no food. 
 
 Precisely the same has happened with science and art. 
 But we imagine that if to a Greek word we shall add the 
 word " logy " and call it science, it will really be a sci- 
 ence ; and if some abominable work, as the painting of 
 
 272 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 273 
 
 nude women, shall be called by a Greek word, and we 
 shall say that it is art, it will really be art. But no mat- 
 ter how much we say this, the thing with which we busy 
 ourselves, counting bugs and investigating the chemical 
 composition of the milky way, drawing nymphs and his- 
 torical pictures, composing stories and symphonies, our 
 thing will become neither science nor art so long as it 
 is not gladly accepted by those people for whom it is 
 being done. But so far it is not being accepted. 
 
 If only one class of men were permitted to produce 
 food, and all the others were forbidden to do that, or 
 were placed in an impossible position for the production 
 of food, I imagine that the quality of the food would 
 deteriorate. If people who had a monopoly for the pro- 
 duction of food were Eussian peasants, there would exist 
 no other food than black bread, kvas, potatoes, and onions, 
 nothing but what they like and what pleases them. The 
 same would happen with that highest activity of science 
 and of art, if one caste appropriated to itself the monopoly, 
 — but with this difference, that in physical food there 
 cannot be any very great deviation from naturalness: 
 though bread and onions are not very palatable food, 
 still they are edible ; but in the spiritual food there can 
 be the greatest deviations, and some people can for a long 
 time exist on useless, or even harmful, poisonous spiritual 
 food, and can slowly kill themselves with opium or alco- 
 hol, and offer the same food to the masses. 
 
 It is this that has happened with us. And it has 
 happened because the position of the men of science and 
 of art is privileged, because science and art in our world 
 are not the rational activity of all humanity without 
 exception, which secretes its best forces in order to serve 
 science and art, but the activity of a small circle of men 
 having a monopoly of these occupations and calling 
 themselves men of science and of art, and so having 
 perverted the very concepts of science and of art, and 
 
274 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 having lost the meaning of their calling, and busy amus- 
 ing and saving from torturing ennui their small circle of 
 drones. 
 
 Ever since men have existed, they have always had 
 science in its simplest and broadest sense. Science, in 
 the sense of all the knowledge of humanity, has always 
 been and always will be, and without it life is unthink- 
 able: there is no need of attacking or of defending it. 
 But the point is that the sphere of this knowledge is so 
 varied, and there enter into it so many various branches 
 of knowledge, — from the knowledge of how to mine iron 
 to the knowledge about the motion of the luminaries, — 
 that a man is lost in these various branches of knowledge, 
 if he has no guiding thread by which he can decide which • 
 of all the branches of knowledge is most important and 
 which least important for him. 
 
 And so the highest wisdom of men has always con- 
 sisted in finding that guiding thread along which is to 
 be located the knowledge of men: which is first, and 
 which of less importance. 
 
 And this human knowledge, which guides all the other 
 knowledge, has always been called science in the narrower 
 sense. Such science has, until our own time, always ex- 
 isted in those human societies which have emerged from 
 the original savage state. 
 
 Ever since humanity has existed, there have always, 
 among all nations, appeared teachers who composed 
 science in its narrower sense, the science as to what is 
 most important for men to know. This science has 
 always had for its object the knowledge of what the 
 purpose, and so the true good, of each man and all men 
 is. This science has served as a guiding thread in the 
 definition of the meaning of all other knowledge and in 
 its expression, — art. 
 
 Those branches of knowledge and those arts which 
 have cooperated with and approached most the fundamen- 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN ? 275 
 
 tal science about the purpose and good of all men have 
 stood highest in public opinion, and vice versa. 
 
 Such was the science of Confucius, Buddha, Moses, 
 Socrates, Christ, Mohammed, the science as it has been 
 understood by all men, with the exception of the men of 
 our circle of so-called cultured people. 
 
 Such a science has not only always occupied a leading 
 place, but has been the one science from which the mean- 
 ing of all others has been determined. 
 
 And this was not at all the case because, as the so- 
 called learned men of our time think, the cheats, priests, 
 and teachers of this science gave it such a significance, 
 but because, indeed, as anybody may find out by his 
 inner experience, without the science of that wherein lies 
 the destiny and good of man there can be no estimation 
 and no choice of the sciences and arts. 
 
 And so there cannot even be any study of the sciences, 
 for there is an endless number of subjects for the sciences ; 
 I underline the word " endless," because I mean it in its 
 exact sense. 
 
 Without the knowledge of that wherein lies the destiny 
 and the good of men, all the other sciences and arts be- 
 come, as indeed they are with us, an idle and harmful 
 plaything. Humanity has hved, and it has never lived 
 without the science of that wherein is the destiny and 
 the good of men. It is true that the science of the good 
 of men seems to a superficial observer to be different with 
 the Buddhists, Brahmins, Jews, Christians, Confucianists, 
 Taoists (though it is enough for one to look more carefully 
 at these teachings in order to see their identical essence), 
 but wherever we know men who have come out of 
 their savage state, we find this science, and suddenly it 
 turns out that the men of our time have decided that this 
 very science, which heretofore was a guide to all human 
 knowledge, is in the way of everything. 
 
 People put up buildings, and one builder makes one 
 
276 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 calculation, another — another, and a third — a third. 
 The calculations vary somewhat, but they are correct, so 
 that each of them sees that if everything shall be done 
 according to the calculation, the building will be buUt. 
 
 Such builders are Confucius, Buddha, Moses, Christ. 
 
 Suddenly people come and affirm that the main thing 
 is not to have any calculation, but to build everything at 
 random, trusting to the eyes. And this " at random " 
 these people call a most exact science, just as the Pope is 
 called most holy. People deny every science, the very 
 essence of science, — the determination of that wherein 
 lies the destiny and the good of men, — and this denial 
 they call science. Ever since men have existed, there 
 have bred among them great minds which, in the struggle 
 with the demands of reason and of conscience, have asked 
 themselves in what consists the destiny and the good not 
 of themselves alone, but also of every man. 
 
 "What does the force which has produced me and 
 which guides me want of me and of every other man ? 
 And what must I do in order to satisfy the demands of 
 the personal and of the common good, which are inherent 
 in me ? " 
 
 They asked themselves : " I am a whole and a part of 
 something immeasurable, something infinite : what are 
 my relations to similar parts, — to men, — and to the 
 whole ? " 
 
 And from the voice of conscience, and from reason, 
 and from the consideration of what those who have lived 
 before them and their contemporaries have told them, 
 those who have given themselves these questions, these 
 great teachers, deduce their teachings, which are simple, 
 clear, comprehensible to all men, and always such as 
 could be fulfilled. 
 
 Such men were of the first, the second, the third, and 
 the very last magnitude. Of such people the world is full. 
 
 All living men put to themselves the question : " How 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 277 
 
 shall I harmonize my demands for the good of my 
 personal life with my conscience and my reason, which 
 demand the common good of men ? " And from this 
 common labour there are slowly, but uninterruptedly, 
 worked out new forms of life, which are nearer to the 
 demands of reason and of conscience. 
 
 Suddenly there appears a new caste of men, who say : 
 « All this is nonsense, and has to be given up." Such is 
 the deductive method of reasoning (no one has ever been 
 able to comprehend wherein the difference is between 
 the deductive and the inductive methods), such are the 
 methods of the theological and the metaphysical periods. 
 "Everything which men reveal through their inner ex- 
 perience and communicate to one another concerning the 
 cognition of the law of their life " (of the functional activ- 
 ity, as they say in their jargon), " everything which the 
 greatest minds of humanity have done on this path since 
 the beginning of the world, — all that is nonsense and of 
 no consequence." 
 
 According to this new teaching it turns out like this : 
 you are a cell of an organism, and the problem of your 
 rational activity consists in determining your functional 
 activity ; and in order to determine this functional activ- 
 ity of yours, you need only observe outside of yourself. 
 The fact that you are a thinking, suffering, talking, com- 
 prehending cell, and that, therefore, you can ask another 
 similar talking cell whether it suffers, rejoices, and feels 
 like you, and thus verify your own experience ; that you 
 are able to , utilize that which suffering, reasoning, and 
 talking cells who have lived before you have recorded; 
 that you have millions of cells which confirm your obser- 
 vations by .their agreement with the ceUs which have 
 recorded their observations ; that, above all, you yourself 
 are living cells which by their immediate inner experience 
 recognize the regularity or irregularity of their functional 
 activities, — all that has no meaning, all that is a bad, 
 
278 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 a false method. The true, the scientific method is like 
 this : if you want to know wherein consists your func- 
 tional activity, that is, wherein is your destiny and your 
 good, and the destiny and the good of all humanity and 
 of all the world, you must first of all stop Hstening to the 
 voice and to the demand of your conscience and of your 
 reason, which make themselves known in you and in 
 your like ; you must stop believing in all that the great 
 teachers of humanity have said about their reason and 
 their conscience, must consider all that nonsense, and be- 
 gin anew. And in order to understand everything from 
 the beginning, you must look through a microscope at the 
 motion of the amoebas and the cells in rain-worms, or, 
 more comfortably still, you must believe in everything 
 which men with the diploma of infallibility will tell you 
 about these things. And looking at the motion of these 
 amoebas and cells, or reading about what others have seen, 
 you must ascribe to these cells their human feelings and 
 calculations as to what they wish, whither they tend, 
 what they reflect and calculate on, and what they are 
 used to ; and. from these observations (in which every 
 word is an error of thought or of expression) judge by 
 analogy what you are, what your destiny is, and in what 
 lies your good and that of other similar cells. In order 
 to understand yourself you must study not only the rain- 
 worm, which you see, but also the microscopic beings, 
 which you almost do not see, and the transformations 
 from one being into another, which no man has ever seen, 
 and you certainly will never see. 
 
 ' The same is true of art. Where there has been true 
 science, art has always been an expression of the knowl- 
 edge of man's destiny and good. Ever sinqe men have 
 existed they have out of the whole activity of the expres- 
 sions of every kind of knowledge extracted the chief 
 expression, the knowledge of the destiny and the good, 
 and the expression of this knowledge was art in its nar- 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 279 
 
 row sense. Ever since there have been men, there have 
 been those who are particularly sensitive and responsive 
 to the teaching about the good and the destiny of man, 
 and who on harps and timbrels, in representations and in 
 words, have expressed their human struggle with the de- 
 ceptions which drew them away from their destiny, their 
 sufferings in this struggle, their hopes in the triumph of 
 goodness, their despairs on account of the triumph of evil, 
 and their raptures at the consciousness of this approaching 
 good. 
 
 Ever since there have been men, true art, the one 
 which has been highly valued by men, has had no mean- 
 ing except as an expression about the destiny and the 
 good of man. 
 
 At all times, and down to our day, art has served the 
 teaching about life, what later was called religion, and 
 only then is it what is so highly valued by men. But at 
 the same time that the place of the science about the 
 destiny and the good was occupied by the science about 
 everything that might come to one's mind, science lost 
 its meaning and significance, and the true science was 
 contemptuously called religion, and at the same time 
 there disappeared art as an important human activity. 
 
 So long as there was a church, as a teaching about the 
 destiny and the good, art served the church and was 
 the true art ; but ever since art has left the church and 
 begun to serve science, while science serves anything that 
 may occur to it, art has lost its meaning and, in spite of 
 the assertion of the rights, based on ancient memory, and 
 of the insipid claim, which only proves the loss of its 
 calling, that art serves art, it has become a trade which 
 furnishes men with what is pleasing, and inevitably 
 blends with the choreographic, culinary, tonsorial, and 
 cosmetic arts, the producers of which call themselves 
 artists with the same right as do the poets, painters, and 
 musicians of our time. 
 
280 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN ? 
 
 You look back, and you see : in the course of thousands 
 of years out of the number of billions of people are 
 segregated dozens of men like Confucius, Buddha, Solon, 
 Socrates, Solomon, Homer, Isaiah, David. Evidently they 
 occur but rarely among men, although at that time they 
 were not chosen from one caste only, but from among all 
 men ; apparently these true scholars, artists, producers of 
 spiritual food, are rare, and humanity has had good reason 
 to value them so highly. Now it turns out that all these 
 past great actors of science and of art are no longer of 
 any use to us. Now the scientific and artistic actors may, 
 according to the law of the division of labour, be produced 
 by machine work, and we in one decade can produce more 
 great men of science and of art than were bom among all 
 men since the creation of the world. 
 
 Now there is a guild of scholars and of artists, and they 
 manufacture in an improved manner all that spiritual food 
 which humanity needs. 
 
 And they have produced such a lot of it, that there is 
 no need even of mentioning all the ancient and even all 
 the more modern men of genius, — for all that was the 
 activity of the theological and the metaphysical periods ; 
 all that has to be wiped out ; the real rational activity 
 began only fifty years ago. And in these fifty years we 
 have manufactured such a lot of great men that there are 
 more of them in one German university than there were 
 before in the whole world ; and we have produced such a 
 mass of sciences, — luckily they are easily produced (all 
 you have to do is to add to a Greek appellation the word 
 " logy," and to arrange matters according to given speci- 
 fications, and the science is all fixed), — that one man not 
 only cannot know them, but cannot even remember the 
 names of all the existing sciences, — the names alone 
 would form a stout dictionary, and they produce new 
 sciences every day. 
 
 They have produced a lot of them, in the way in which 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 281 
 
 a Finnish teacher taught the children of a proprietor to 
 talk Finnish instead of French. They have taught us 
 beautifully ; but the one trouble is that none but us under- 
 stand a thing about it, and that the others consider aU this 
 to be useless bosh. 
 
 However, there is an explanation for all that: the 
 people do not understand the whole usefulness of the 
 scientific science, because they are under the influence 
 of the theological period of knowledge, of that stupid 
 period when the whole nation of the Jews, and of the 
 Chinese, and of the Hindoos, and of the Greeks, under- 
 stood everything which their great teachers told them. 
 
 But no matter what the cause of it may be, the point 
 is that the sciences and the arts have always existed with 
 humanity, and that, when they actually existed, they were 
 necessary and comprehensible to all men. 
 
 We are doing things which we call sciences and arts, 
 and it turns out that what we do we have no right to call 
 sciences and arts. 
 
XXXVII. 
 
 " But you are only giving a different, more narrow 
 definition of science and of art, which is not in conformity 
 with science," I am told, " but this does not exclude 
 them, for there is still left the scientific and the artis- 
 tic activity of a Galileo, Bruno, Homer, Michelangelo, Beet- 
 hoven, Wagner, and all the scholars and artists of lesser 
 magnitudes, who have devoted all their lives to the service 
 of science and of art." 
 
 This they generally say in their attempt to establish 
 the succession, which they in other cases deny, between 
 the activity of the former scholars and artists and the 
 present, and also in their attempt at forgetting that 
 special, new principle of the division of labour on the 
 basis of which science and the arts now occupy their 
 privileged position. 
 
 In the first place, it is impossible to establish a succes- 
 sion between the present and the former representative 
 men ; as the holy life of the first Christians has nothing 
 in common with the life of the Popes, so the activity of 
 a Galileo, a Shakespeare, a Beethoven, has nothing in 
 common with the activity of a Tyndal, a Hugo, a Wagner. 
 As the holy fathers would have rejected any kinship with 
 the Popes, so the ancient men of science would have 
 rejected any kinship with the men of the present. 
 
 In the second place, thanks to the meaning which the 
 sciences and arts now ascribe to themselves, we have a 
 very clear standard, given by science itself, by means of 
 which we are able to determine their correspondence 
 or lack of correspondence, to their purpose ; and thus we 
 
 282 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 283 
 
 are able, not boldly, but by the given standard, to deter- 
 mine whether the activity which calls itself science and 
 art has any grounds, or not, to call itself by that name. 
 
 When the Egyptian or Greek priests produced their 
 mysteries which no one understood, and said of these mys- 
 teries that in them lay all science and art, I was not able 
 on the basis of a benefit conferred by them on the people 
 to verify the reality of their science, because science, 
 according to their assertion, was supernatural ; but now 
 we aU have a very clear and simple standard, which 
 excludes the supernatural : science and art promise to do 
 the brain activity of humanity for the good of society 
 or of all humanity. And so we have the right to call 
 only such activity science and art as will have this aim 
 and will attain it. 
 
 And so, no matter what the scholars and artists may 
 call themselves, who invent the theory of criminal, polit- 
 ical, and international rights, who invent new guns and 
 explosives, who compose salacious operas and operettas, 
 or just as salacious novels, we have no right to call all 
 this activity an activity of science and of art, since this 
 activity has not for its aim the good of societies or of 
 humanity, but, on the contrary, is directed to the harm 
 of men. All this is, consequently, neither science nor 
 art. Similarly, no matter what the scholars may call 
 themselves, who in the simplicity of their hearts are 
 all their lives busy investigating microscopic animals and 
 telescopic and spectral phenomena, or what the artists 
 may call themselves, who, after a careful study of the 
 monuments of antiquity, are busy preparing historical 
 novels, pictures, symphonies, and pretty verses, — all these 
 men, in spite of their zeal, cannot, according to the sci- 
 entific definition itself, be called men of science and of 
 art, in the first place, because their activity of science 
 for the sake of science, and of art for the sake of art, has 
 not the good for its aim ; and in the second place, because 
 
284 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 we do not see the consequences of this activity for the 
 good of society and of humanity. But the fact that from 
 their activity there sometimes accrues something useful 
 and agreeable for certain people does by no means give 
 us the right, again according to their own scientific 
 definition, to regard them as men of science and of art. 
 
 Similarly, no matter what men may call themselves 
 who invent applications of electricity to lighting, heating, 
 and motion, or new chemical combinations, which produce 
 dynamite or beautiful dyes ; or who piay correctly Beet- 
 hoven's symphonies ; or who act, or paint beautiful por- 
 traits, genre pictures, landscapes ; or who write interesting 
 novels, the aim of which is only to offer diversion to the 
 rich in their ennui, — the activity of these men cannot 
 be called science or art, because it is not directed, like 
 the brain activity in the organism, toward the good of the 
 whole, but is guided only by personal advantage, privi- 
 leges, money, received for the invention and production 
 of so-called art, and so can in no way be separated from 
 any other selfish, personal activity which adds pleasure 
 to life, such as are the activities of restaurant-keepers, 
 and jockeys, and modistes, and prostitutes, and so forth. 
 The activities of any of these do not fit in with the defini- 
 tion of science and of art, which on the basis of the 
 division of labour promise to serve the good of all hu- 
 manity or of society. 
 
 The definition of science and of art, as made by science, 
 is quite correct, but unfortunately the activity of modem 
 sciences and arts does not fit in with it. Some of them 
 do outright what is harmful, others what is useless, and 
 others again what is insignificant, and good only for the 
 rich. 
 
 All of them may, indeed, be good men, but they do not 
 fulfil what, according to their own definition, they under- 
 took to do, and so they have as little right to regard 
 themselves as men of science and of art as have the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 285 
 
 modern clergy who, by not fulfilling the obligations taken 
 upon themselves, have lost the right to recognize them- 
 selves as carriers and teachers of divine truth. 
 
 And it is comprehensible why the men of modern 
 science and art have not fulfilled, and cannot fulfil, their 
 calling. They do not fulfil it, because of their obligations 
 they have made rights. 
 
 The scientific and artistic activity, in its real meaning, 
 is fruitful only when it knows no rights, but only obliga- 
 tions. It is only because it is always such, — because its 
 property is to be self-sacrificing, — that humanity values 
 it so highly. 
 
 If men are really called to serve others by means of 
 spiritual labour, they will always suffer in fulfilling this 
 ministration, because only in suffering, as in childbirth, is 
 the spiritual world bom. 
 
 Self-renunciation and suffering will be thie share of the 
 thinker and the artist, because his aim is the good of men. 
 Men are unhappy : they suffer, they perish. There is no 
 time for waiting and taking things coolly. 
 
 The thinker and the artist will never sit on Olympian 
 heights, as we are accustomed to think ; he will always, 
 eternally, be agitated and disturbed ; he might have 
 solved and uttered that which would give the good to 
 men and would free them from suffering, but he did not 
 solve and utter this, and to-morrow it may be too late : 
 he may be dead. 
 
 Not he will be a thinker and an artist who is educated 
 in an establishment where they make a scholar and an 
 artist (what they really make there is a ruiner of science 
 and of art), and receives a diploma and a competency, 
 but he who would be glad to refrain from thinking and 
 expressing what is implanted in his soul, and yet is un- 
 able to refrain from doing that toward which he is drawn 
 by two insuperable forces, — by his inner necessity and 
 by the demands of men. 
 
286 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 There is no such a thing as a smooth, easy-going, and 
 self-satisfied thinker and artist. 
 
 The spiritual activity and its expression, which are 
 indeed necessary for others, are man's most grievous call- 
 ing, his cross, as it is expressed in the GospeL The only 
 undoubted sign of the presence of the calling is self- 
 renunciation, self-sacrifice for the purpose of manifesting 
 the force which is implanted in man for the benefit of 
 other men. 
 
 It is possible to teach how many bugs there are in the 
 world, and to observe the spots in the sun, and to write 
 novels or an opera, without experiencing any sufifering ; 
 but it is impossible without renunciation to teach peo- 
 ple their good, which is all only in self-renunciation and 
 serving others, and strongly to express this teaching. 
 
 There was a church so long as the teachers endured and 
 suffered, but the moment they began to grow fat their 
 teaching activity came to an end. 
 
 " There were golden priests and wooden bowls, now the 
 bowls have become of gold, and the priests are wooden," 
 say the people. 
 
 There was good reason why Christ died on the cross, 
 and good reason why the sacrifice of suffering conquers 
 everything. 
 
 But our men, and science and art, are made secure and 
 have diplomas, and all the care they have is how to make 
 themselves more secure still, that is, how to make im- 
 possible the ministration to men. 
 
 True science and true art have two undoubted signs, 
 — the first, an inward sign, is this, that the servant of 
 science and of art will carry out his calling not for his 
 advantage, but with self-renunciation, and the second, an 
 external one, is this, that its productions are comprehen- 
 sible to all men whose good he has in view. 
 
 No matter in what men may take their purpose and 
 good to lie, science will be the teaching of this purpose 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 287 
 
 and good, and art — the expression of this teaching. The 
 laws of Solon and of Confucius are science ; the teaching 
 of Moses and of Christ are science; the buildings in 
 Athens, David's psalms, the masses, are art ; but the study 
 of the bodies in the fourth dimension and of the tables of 
 chemical combinations, and so forth, has never been and 
 never will be science. The place of true science and of 
 the arts is in modern times taken by theology and the 
 juridical sciences ; the place of true art is taken by eccle- 
 siastic and governmental ceremonies, in which all alike 
 do not believe, and on which all alike fail to look seri- 
 ously ; but that which with us is called science and art is 
 the product of an idle mind and of idle feehug, having for 
 its aim the tickling of just such idle minds and feelings, 
 incomprehensible and meaningless for the masses, because 
 it has not their good in view. 
 
 As far back as we know the Hfe of men, we always and 
 everywhere find the reigning teaching, which falsely calls 
 itself science and which does not disclose the meaning of 
 life to men, but obscures it. Thus it was with the Egyp- 
 tians, with the Hindoos, with the Chinese, and partly with 
 the Greeks (sophists), then with the mystics, gnostics, 
 Cabalists ; in the Middle Ages with the theologians, 
 scholastics, alchemists, and so on up to our time. 
 
 What a special piece of fortune it is for us to be living 
 in such a particular time when that mental activity which 
 calls itself science is not only not in error, but also, as we 
 are assured, in an unusually flourishing state ! Is not 
 this special piece of good fortune due to this, that man 
 cannot and does not wish to see his monstrousness ? Why 
 is there nothing left of the sciences of the theologians 
 and Cabalists but words, while we are so fortunate ? 
 
 The signs are certainly the same : there is the same 
 self -contentment and blind assurance that we, and nobody 
 else, are on the right path, and that the real thing begins 
 with us only. There is the same expectation that very, 
 
288 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 very shortly we shall discover something unusual, and the 
 same chief sign which betrays our error, — our whole 
 wisdom is left with us, and the masses do not understand, 
 nor receive, nor need it. Our situation is very hard, but 
 why should we not look straight at it ? 
 
 It is time to bethink and overhaul ourselves. 
 
 We are certainly nothing but scribes and Pharisees, 
 who have seated ourselves on Moses' seat, and who have 
 taken the keys from the kingdom of heaven, and who 
 ourselves do not enter and do not admit others. We, the 
 priests of science and of art, are the most wretched de- 
 ceivers, who have a great deal less right to our situation 
 than the most cunning and corrupt of priests. We have 
 not the slightest justification for our privileged condition : 
 we have seized this place through rascahty, and we hold 
 it through deception. 
 
 The priests, the clergy, ours or the Cathohc, no matter 
 how corrupt they have been, have had a right to their 
 position, — they have been saying that they teach men 
 life and salvation. But we have undermined the clergy 
 and have proved to people that it deceives them, and 
 have taken its place; we do not teach Hfe to men, 
 and even recognize that there is no need of learning this ; 
 we suck up the juices of the masses and for this we teach 
 our children the same Talmud, -^ Greek and Latin gram- 
 mar, — in order that they may be able to continue the 
 same life of a parasite which we are leading. 
 
 We say that there used to be castes, but that there are 
 none now. But what does this mean, that some people 
 and their children work, while other people and their 
 children do not work ? Take a Hindoo, who does not 
 know our language, and show him the life of several 
 generations in Europe and in Eussia, and he will recog- 
 nize the same two chief, distinct castes of workers and 
 non-workers which he has in his own country. As in his 
 country, the right not to work is given to us by a special 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 289 
 
 sanctification which we call science and art, or, in general, 
 education. 
 
 It is this education and all the perversion of the mind, 
 which is connected with it, that has brought us to that 
 remarkable madness in consequence of which we do not 
 see what is so clear and unquestionable. 
 
 We devour the human lives of our brothers and con- 
 sider ourselves Christian, humane, cultured, and perfectly 
 righteous men. 
 
xxxvni 
 
 So what is to be done ? What shall we do then ? 
 
 This question, which includes the recognition that our 
 life is bad and irregular, and, at the same time, as it were, 
 the assertion that it is impossible to change all this, I 
 have heard on all sides, and so I have chosen this ques- 
 tion for the title of this whole writing. 
 
 I have described my sufferings, my searchings, and my 
 solutions of this question. I am the same kind of a man 
 as all the rest, and if I in any way dififer from the 
 average man of our circle, I differ mainly in this, that I 
 have more than the average man served the false teach- 
 ing of the world and have been in collusion with it, have 
 received more applause from the people of the reigning 
 teaching, and so have more than others become corrupted 
 and strayed from my path. 
 
 And so I think that the solution of the question which 
 I have found for myself will also be good for all sincere 
 people who put the same question to themselves. First 
 of all, in reply to the question, "What to do?" I an- 
 swered myself : " Not to lie to others, nor to oneself ; 
 not to be afraid of the truth, no matter where it may 
 take us." We all know what it means to lie to people, 
 and yet we never stop lying from morning until night : 
 " Not at home," when I am at home ; " Very glad," when 
 I am not at all glad ; " Most respectfully," when I do not 
 at all respect ; " I have no money," when I have it, and 
 so forth. We consider a lie to people, especially a lie of 
 a certain kind, a bad thing, but we are not afraid of lying 
 to ourselves ; and yet the worst, most direct, most decep- 
 
 290 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 291 
 
 tive lie to other people is nothing in its consequences in 
 comparison with the lie to ourselves, on which we build 
 our life. 
 
 It is this he which we must not tell, in order that we 
 may be able to answer the question, " What to do ? " 
 
 How can I answer this question, when everything I 
 do, my whole life, is based on a lie, and I carefully give 
 out this lie to others and to myself as the truth ? Not to 
 lie in this sense means not to be afraid of the truth, not. 
 to invent any subterfuges, and not to accept those invented 
 by others for the purpose of concealing from ourselves the 
 deductions of reason and of conscience ; not to be afraid 
 of disagreeing from all those around us, and to remain all 
 alone with reason and conscience ; not to be afraid of the 
 proposition to which truth will lead us, being fully con- 
 vinced that the proposition to which truth and conscience 
 will lead us, no matter how strange it may be, cannot be 
 worse than the one which is based on the lie. Not to He 
 in our condition of privileged people of the mental labour 
 means not to be afraid of squaring up accounts. " May 
 be I am so much in arrears that I shall never balance my 
 accounts ; " but, no matter how much it may be, it is 
 better than not to cast the accounts at all; no matter 
 how far we may have strayed on the false path, it is 
 better for us than to continue to walk on the false path. 
 Lying to others is only inexpedient. 
 
 Every affair is more directly and more briefly solved by 
 truth than by lies. Lying to others only complicates 
 matters and delays the solution; but a lie to oneself, 
 given out as a truth, ruins a man's whole life. 
 
 If a man, having strayed on a false path, recognizes it 
 as the true one, every step of his on his path removes 
 him from his goal ; if a man, who for a long time walks 
 on this false path, divines himself or is told that this is a 
 false path, and is frightened at the idea of how far he has 
 strayed to one side, and tries to assure himself that he 
 
292 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 will in some way come out on the road, he certainly 
 never will. If a man is awed by truth and, seeing it, 
 does not acknowledge it, accepts the he as truth, he will 
 never know what he has to do. 
 
 We, not only the rich, but also the privileged, the 
 so-called cultured men, have strayed so far on the false 
 path that we need great determination or very great 
 suffering on the false path in order to regain our senses 
 and recognize the lie by which we live. 
 
 I saw the lie of our life, thanks to those sufferings to 
 which the false path brought me ; and having recognized 
 the falseness of the path on which I was standing, I 
 had the courage, at first only mentally, to go whither 
 reason and conscience took me, without reflection as to 
 where they would take me to. I was rewarded for this 
 courage. All the complex, dissociated, confused, mean- 
 ingless phenomena of Ufe which surrounded me suddenly 
 became clear to me, and my position amidst these phe- 
 nomena, strange and oppressive to me before, suddenly 
 became natural and Hght. And in this new position my 
 activity was quite precisely defined : it was by no means 
 the one which had presented itself to me before, but a 
 new, much calmer, more lovable, and more joyous activity. 
 What formerly frightened me now began to attract me. 
 
 And so I think that he who sincerely asks himself, 
 " What to do ? " and, answering this question, does not 
 lie to himself, but proceeds whither his reason will lead 
 him, has already solved the question. If only he shaU 
 not lie to himself, he will find where, how, and what to 
 do. The one thing that can keep him from finding a way 
 out is the false high opinion which he has of his con- 
 dition. So it was with me, and so another answer to 
 the question, " What to do ? " resulting from the first, con- 
 sisted for me in repenting in the full sense of the word, 
 that is, in completely changing the valuation of my con- 
 dition and of my activity ; in recognizing, instead of the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 293 
 
 usefulness and seriousness of my activity, its harm and 
 triviality; in recognizing, instead of my education, my 
 ignorance; in recognizing, instead of my goodness and 
 morality, my immorality and cruelty ; in recognizing, 
 instead of my exaltation, my baseness. 
 
 I say that, in addition to not lying to myself, I had to 
 repent in particular because, although one thing results 
 from another, the false conception of my high significance 
 was so welded with me that so long as I did not sincerely 
 repent, and did not renounce the false valuation which I 
 had made of myself, I did not see the greater part of the 
 lie which I was telling to myself. Only when I repented, 
 that is, stopped looking upon myself as a special man, 
 and considered myself as a man like anybody else, my 
 path became clear to me. 
 
 Before that I had been unable to answer the question, 
 " What to do ? " because I put the question itself incor- 
 rectly. So long as I did not repent, I put the question 
 like this : " What activity shall be chosen by me, a man 
 in possession of the culture and of the talents which I 
 have acquired ? How can I with this culture and these 
 talents repay what I have been taking from the masses ? " 
 
 This question was incorrectly put, because it included 
 the false representation that I was not just such a man, 
 but a special kind of a man, called to serve the masses 
 with those talents and that culture which I had acquired 
 in a practice of forty years. I used to put the ques- 
 tion to myself, but in reality answered it by determining 
 in advance the kind of agreeable activity with which I 
 was called to serve men. What I really asked myself was 
 this : " How can I, such a fine author, who have acquired 
 so much knowledge and so many talents, use them for 
 the benefit of men ? " But the question ought to have 
 been put as it stood for a learned rabbi who had finished 
 his course in the Talmud and had studied the number of 
 letters in all the sacred writings and all the intricacies 
 
294 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 of his science. The question, as for the rabbi, so also for 
 me ought to have stood as follows : What must I, who, 
 through the misfortune of my conditions, have passed 
 my best years of study in acquiring the French language, 
 the playing of the piano, grammar, geography, juridical 
 sciences, verses, novels, philosophical theories, and mili- 
 tary exercises, instead of becoming accustomed to work, — 
 what must I, who have passed the best years of my life 
 in idle occupations which corrupt the soul, do, in spite of 
 these unfortunate conditions of the past, in order to pay 
 back to those people who have fed and clothed me and 
 even now continue to feed and clothe me ? If the ques- 
 tion had stood before me as it now stands before me, 
 after I have repented, namely, what I, such a corrupt 
 man, must do, the answer would have been easy : I must 
 first of all try to earn an honest living, that is, to learn 
 how not to live by sitting on the backs of others and, 
 while learning it and having learned it, upon every occa- 
 sion to be useful to people with my hands, and feet, and 
 brain, and heart, and with all that to which the masses 
 lay any claim. 
 
 And so I say that for a man of our circle it is not 
 enough to refrain from lying to others and to himself : he 
 must also repent, — scrape off the pride which is ingrained 
 in us through our education, refinement, and talents, 
 — and recognize himself not as a benefactor of the 
 masses, a representative man who does not refuse to share 
 his useful acquisitions with the masses, but as an abso- 
 lutely guilty, spoilt, and useless man who desires to mend 
 and not exactly to benefit the masses, but to stop offend- 
 ing and insulting them. 
 
 I frequently hear the questions of good young men who 
 sympathize with the negative part of my writings and ask : 
 "Well, so what must I do? What must I do, having 
 graduated from the university or from another institution, 
 in order that I may be useful ? " 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 295 
 
 The young people ask this question, but in the depth 
 of their hearts they have long ago decided that the educa- 
 tion which they have received is their great superiority, 
 and that they wish to serve the masses even by their su- 
 periority ; and so there is one thing which they certainly 
 will not do, and that is, sincerely, honestly, and critically 
 inspect that which they call their education, and ask 
 themselves whether that which they call education repre- 
 sents good or bad qualities. If they do that, they will 
 inevitably be led to the necessity of renouncing their 
 education, and to the necessity of beginning to study 
 anew, and that is the one necessary thiug. 
 
 They are absolutely unable to solve the question as to 
 what to do, because it is not put as it ought to be put. 
 
 The question ought to stand like this : " How must I, 
 a helpless, useless man, who, through the misfortune of 
 my conditions, have wasted the best years of study in the 
 acquisition of the scientific Talmud, which corrupts body 
 and soul, correct this error and learn to serve people?" 
 But it stands with them like this : " How can I, a man 
 who has acquired so many fine sciences, be useful to men 
 by means of these fine sciences ? " And so a man will 
 never answer the question, " What to do ? " until he stops 
 lying to himself, and repents. And the repentance is not 
 terrible, just as truth is not terrible, and it is just as joy- 
 ous and as fruitful. One needs only to accept truth 
 as a whole and repent in full, in order to comprehend that 
 no one has, nor can have, any rights, privileges, and pre- 
 rogatives in matters of life, and that there is no end and 
 no limit to duties, and that man's first unquestionable 
 duty is to take part in the struggle with Nature for his 
 own life and for that of other men. 
 
 It is this consciousness of man's duty which constitutes 
 the essence of the third answer to the question, " What 
 to do?" 
 
 I trie^ not t'O lie to myself ; I tried to boil away what 
 
296 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 there was left of the false opinion as regards my educa- 
 tion and talents, and to repent ; but a new difficulty arose 
 on the path of the solution of the question, "What to 
 do 1 " There were so many things that it was necessary 
 to have pointed out what it is that I ought to do. And 
 the answer to this question was given to me by the sin- 
 cere repentance of the evil in which I was living. " What 
 to do ? What indeed is to be done ? " all ask, and I, too, 
 asked myself so long as I, under the influence of the 
 high opinion of my calling, did not see that it was my 
 foremost and most unquestionable business to feed, clothe, 
 warm myself, and tend on myself, and in the same things 
 to serve others, because ever since the world has existed 
 this has been the first and most unquestionable duty of 
 every man. 
 
 In this one affair man receives, if he shares it, a full 
 gratification of the bodily and the spiritual demands of 
 his nature: to feed, clothe, guard oneself and one's 
 family is a gratification of a bodily demand, and to do 
 the same for other people is a gratification of a spiritual 
 demand. 
 
 Every other activity of man is lawful only when this 
 foremost necessity is satisfied. 
 
 No matter in what a man may think his calling to lie, 
 whether in governing people, or in defending his com- 
 patriots, or in celebrating divine services, or in teaching 
 others, or in inventing means for the increase of the 
 pleasures of life, or in discovering new laws of the uni- 
 verse, or in incarnating eternal truths in artistic forms, — 
 a sensible man will always find his first and most un- 
 questionable dutv to lie in his participation in the struggle 
 with Nature, for the purpose of supporting his own life 
 and that of other men. This duty will always be the 
 first, if for no other reason because people need their life 
 most, and so, in order to defend and instruct men and 
 make their lives most agreeable, it is necessary to pre- 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 297 
 
 serve life itself, whereas my non-participation in the 
 struggle, the absorption of other men's labours, is a 
 destruction of other men's lives. 
 
 And so it is impossible and irrational to serve the lives 
 of men by destroying them. 
 
 The duty of the struggle with Nature for the purpose 
 of obtaining the means of subsistence will always be the 
 first and most unquestionable of all duties, because it is 
 a law of life, a departure from which draws after it an 
 inevitable punishment, — the destruction of either the 
 bodily or the rational hfe of man. If a man, living alone, 
 frees himself from the duty of the struggle with Nature, 
 he at once inflicts a punishment on himself in that his 
 body perishes. But if a man frees himself from this 
 duty, causing others to fulfil it, while he ruins their lives, 
 he at once inflicts upon himself a punishment by destroy- 
 ing his rational life, that is, the hfe which has a rational 
 meaning. 
 
 I was so corrupted by my past life, and this first and 
 unquestionable law of God, or of Nature, has been so 
 concealed in our society, that the execution of this law 
 seemed strange, terrible, and even shameful to me, as 
 though the execution of an eternal, unquestionable law, 
 and not a departure from it, can be strange, terrible, and 
 shameful. At first it appeared to me that for the per- 
 formance of this matter there was needed some kind of 
 an appliance, arrangement, cooperation of those who 
 share my view, consent of family, life in the country; 
 then it appeared rather awkward for me to speak openly 
 to people and to do such an extraordinary thing in our 
 manner of life as manual labour, and I did not know how 
 to go about it. 
 
 But I needed only to comprehend that it was not some 
 exclusive activity, such as had to be thought out and 
 arranged, but only a return from a false state, in which I 
 was, to one that was natural, that it was only a correc- 
 
298 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 tion of a lie in which I was living, — I needed only to 
 become conscious of this, in order that all these difficulties 
 should be removed. 
 
 It was never necessary to arrange, adapt, and await the 
 consent of others, because, no matter in what condition I 
 was, there were always men who fed, clothed, and kept 
 warm not only themselves, but also me, and under all 
 conditions I could do that for myself and for them, if I 
 had enough time and strength for it. 
 
 Nor could I experience any false shame in my occupa- 
 tion with a matter which was unaccustomed and surpris- 
 ing to people, because, in not doing it, I experienced no 
 longer any false, but real shame. When I arrived at the 
 consciousness of this and at the practical deduction from 
 it, I was fully rewarded for not having lost my courage 
 in the presence of the deductions of reason and for having 
 gone whither they led me. 
 
 When I arrived at this practical deduction, I was 
 startled by the ease and simplicity of the solution of all 
 those questions which before had seemed so difficult and 
 so complicated. 
 
 To the question what to do there appeared a most 
 indubitable answer : " First of all what I myself need, — 
 my samovar, my stove, my water, my raiment, — every- 
 thing which I could do myself." 
 
 In reply to the question as to whether this would not 
 seem strange to the people that did that, it appeared that 
 the strangeness lasted only a week, after which time it 
 would have been strange if I had returned to my former 
 conditions. 
 
 In reply to the question whether it was necessary to 
 organize this physical labour, by establishing a coopera- 
 tion in the country on the land, it turned out that this 
 was not necessary, that labour, if it has for its aim not 
 the obtaining of the possibility of being idle and exploit- 
 ing the labour of others, such as is the labour of those 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 299 
 
 who acquire wealth, but the gratification of needs, 
 naturally draws one from the city to the country, to 
 the land, where this labour is most fruitful and most 
 joyous. 
 
 There was no need of establishing any cooperative 
 society, because a labouring man naturally joins the 
 existing cooperation of working people. 
 
 To the question as to whether this labour would not 
 absorb all my time and deprive me of the possibility of 
 that mental activity which I love, to which I am used, 
 and which, in moments of doubt, I consider not useless, I 
 received a most unexpected answer. The energy of the 
 mental activity was strengthened and evenly strength- 
 ened, freeing itself from everything superfluous, in pro- 
 portion of the bodily tension. 
 
 It turned out that, by giving eight hours to physical 
 labour, — that half of the day which before I had passed 
 in grievous efforts at struggling with ennui, — I had still 
 eight hours left, of which I, according to the conditions, 
 needed only five for mental labour ; it turned out that if 
 I, a very prolific writer, who for nearly forty years had 
 done nothing but write, and who had written three 
 hundred printed sheets [of sixteen pages each], had all 
 these forty years done manual labour with all the work- 
 ing people, and had read and studied for five' hours each 
 day, excluding winter evenings and holidays, and had 
 written only on hoHdays at the rate of two pages a day 
 (whereas I had written as much as a printed sheet a day), 
 I should have written the same three hundred sheets in 
 fourteen years. 
 
 What turned out was most astonishing, — it was a 
 very simple calculation, which a boy of seven years may 
 do, and which I had heretofore been unable to do. In a 
 day there are twenty-four hours ; we sleep eight, so there 
 are sixteen left. If a man of any mental activity should 
 devote five hours each day to his activity, he would do 
 
300 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 an enormous amount, so what becomes of the remaining 
 eleven hours ? 
 
 It turned out that physical labour not only does not 
 exclude the possibility of a mental activity, not only 
 improves its quality, but improves the activity itself and 
 encourages it. 
 
 As to the question whether this physical labour would 
 not deprive me of many harmless pleasures which are 
 proper to man, such as the enjoyments of the arts, the 
 acquisition of knowledge, the communion with men, and 
 in general the happiness of life, the very opposite turned 
 out to be the case : the tenser the work was, the more it 
 approached what is considered rough agricultural labour, 
 the more enjoyments and knowledge did I acquire, and the 
 closer and more amicable was my communion with men, 
 and the more happiness of life did I obtain. 
 
 To the question (so frequently heard by me from not 
 very sincere people) as to what result there may be from 
 such an insignificant drop in the ocean, — the participa- 
 tion of my personal physical labour in the ocean of labour 
 absorbed by me, — the same astonishing and unexpected 
 answer was received. 
 
 It turned out that I needed only to make physical 
 labour a habitual condition of my life, in order that the 
 majority of my false and expensive habits and needs dur- 
 ing my physical idleness should" \^ithout the least effort 
 on my part naturally fall away from me. To say nothing 
 of my habit of changing day into night and vice versa, 
 and not to mention the bed, the garments, the conven- 
 tional cleanliness, which with the physical labour are 
 simply impossible and embarrassing, the food, the need of 
 the quality of the food, was completely changed. Instead 
 of sweet, fat, refined, complicated, seasoned food, for which 
 I had had a hankering before, I began to feel the need of 
 the simplest kind of fpod, which I enjoyed most, such as 
 cabbage soup, porridge, black bread, unsweetened tea. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 301 
 
 Thus, not to speak of the simple example of those 
 labouring men with whom I came into contact and who 
 were contented with little, the needs themselves imper- 
 ceptibly changed in consequence of the life of labour, so 
 that my drop of physical labour, in proportion as I became 
 accustomed to it and acquired the methods of work, be- 
 came more perceptible ; in proportion as my labour became 
 more fruitful, my demands of other people's labour be- 
 came less and less, and life naturally, without effort and 
 without privations, approached that simple life of which 
 I could not even have dreamed without fulfilling the law 
 of labour. It turned out that my most expensive demands 
 on life, namely, the demands of vanity and of diversion 
 from ennui, were directly due to an idle life. 
 
 With physical labour there was no room for vanity, 
 and there was no need of diversions, since my time was 
 pleasantly occupied, and, after fatigue, a simple rest at 
 the tea, over a book, in a conversation with my family, 
 was incomparably more agreeable to me than the theatre, 
 cards, a concert, grand society, — all of those things that 
 cost a great deal. 
 
 As to the question whether this unaccustomed work 
 would not destroy the health which is necessary in order 
 to be able to serve men, it turned out that, in spite of the 
 positive assertions of famous physicians that tense physi- 
 cal labour, especially in my years, may have deleterious 
 results (in what way do they give us something better in 
 Swedish gymnastics, massage, and so forth, — appliances 
 which are to take the place of the natural conditions of 
 man's life ?), it turned out that the tenser the labour, the 
 stronger, fresher, happier, and better did I feel myself. 
 So it turned out to be indisputable that, just as all these 
 cunning devices of the human mind, newspapers, theatres, 
 concerts, visits, balls, cards, periodicals, novels, are nothing 
 but a means for supporting man's spiritual life outside its 
 natural conditions of labour for others, so also all the hygi- 
 
302 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 enic and medical devices of the human mind for the ap- 
 pliances for food, drink, domicile, ventilation, heating, 
 clothing, medicines, water, massage, gymnastics, electrical 
 and all other kinds of cures, — that all these clever devices 
 were nothing but means for supporting man's bodily life 
 which is exempted from all its natural conditions of labour, 
 — that all this was nothing but an arrangement in a her- 
 metically closed room, by means of chemical apparatus, 
 for evaporating water, and supplying the plants with the 
 best air for breathing, whereas it is enough to open a win- 
 dow and do that which is proper not only for man, but 
 also for the animal, — to let out and discharge the absorp- 
 tion of food and surplus of energy by means of muscular 
 labour. 
 
 The profound propositions of medicine and of hygiene 
 for men of our circle are hke what a mechanician might 
 invent in order, by firing a badly working engine and 
 stopping up all the valves, to keep the engine from burst- 
 ing. 
 
 When I clearly comprehended all this, I felt funny. 
 By a whole series of doubts and searchings and by a long 
 train of thought I had arrived at the extraordinary truth 
 that, if a man has eyes, he has them in order to look 
 with them, and ears to hear, and legs to walk, and hands 
 and a back to work with them, and that if a man shall 
 not employ these members for what they were intended, 
 he will fare badly. 
 
 I came to the conclusion that with us privileged people 
 the same happened as with the stallions of my acquaint- 
 ance. The clerk, who did not care for horses and did not 
 know anything about them, having received his master's 
 order to take the best stallions to the horse mart, picked 
 them out of the herd and put them into stalls ; and he 
 fed them and gave them to drink ; but, as he was anxious 
 about the expensive horses, he could not make up his 
 mind to leave them in anybody else's charge, and so did 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 303 
 
 not drive them or even let them out. The horses became 
 stiff- jointed and worthless. 
 
 The same has happened with us, but with this differ- 
 ence, that it is impossible in any way to deceive the 
 horses and that, not to let them out, they were kept in 
 one spot by means of a halter, whereas we are kept in just 
 such an unnatural and ruinous condition by means of 
 temptations which have enmeshed us and hold us as if 
 with chains. We have arranged our life contrary to the 
 moral and the physical nature of man, and we strain all 
 the forces of our mind in order to assure man that this 
 is the true life. Everything which we call culture, our 
 sciences and our arts, the improvements of the comforts 
 of life, are attempts to deceive man's moral, natural needs. 
 Everything which we call hygiene and medicine is an 
 attempt to deceive the natural physical demands of human 
 nature. But these deceptions have their hmits, and we 
 have reached them. 
 
 If such is man's real life, it is better not to live at all, 
 says the reigning, most modern philosophy of Schopen- 
 hauer and of Hartmann. If such is life, it is better not 
 to live, says the increasing number of suicides among 
 the privileged classes. If such is life, it is better for the 
 future generations not to live, says medicine, in collusion 
 with science, and the devices invented by it for the de- 
 struction of female fertility. 
 
 In the Bible it says that, as man's law, in the sweat of 
 thy face shalt thou eat bread and in sorrow shalt thou 
 bring forth children. 
 
 Peasant Bondar^v, who has written an article on this 
 subject, has enlightened me as to the wisdom of this 
 utterance. (In my whole life two Kussian thiakers have 
 had a great moral effect upon me and have made my 
 world conception clear to me. These men are not Russian 
 poets, scholars, preachers, but two even now living remark- 
 able men, both of them peasants, Syutaev and Bondar^v.) 
 
304 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 But — nous avons changS tout pa, as the character in 
 Molifere said when he ranted about medicine and asserted 
 that the liver was on the left side. Nous avons change 
 tout ga : men do not need to work in order to support 
 themselves, — all that will be done by machines, — and 
 women need not bear children. Science will teach us 
 other means, and there are too many people as it is. 
 
 A tattered peasant makes the round of Krapivensk 
 County. During the war he was a purchaser of grain 
 with an official of the commissary department. While 
 cultivating the acquaintance of the official, the peasant, as 
 they say, lost his mind, his fixed idea being that, hke any 
 gentleman, he does not need to work, but can receive the 
 maintenance due to him from his Majesty the emperor. 
 This peasant now calls himself his Most Serene MiHtary 
 Prince Blokhin, purveyor of military stores of all con- 
 ditions. He says of himself that he has gone through 
 all the ranks and that, after becoming an emeritus mili- 
 tary man, he would receive from his Majesty the emperor 
 an open bank, garments, uniforms, horses, carriages, tea, 
 peas, servants, and every other supply. 
 
 To the question whether he does not want to work 
 a little, he always replies proudly : " Much obliged, — all 
 that will be attended to by the peasants." 
 
 When you tell him that the peasants, too, will not wish 
 to work, he answers : " For the peasants this is not diffi- 
 cult in the performance." (He generally speaks in high 
 style and is fond of verbal nouns.) 
 
 " Now there is an invention of machines for the allevi- 
 ation of the peasants," he says. " For them there is no 
 embarrassment." 
 
 When he is asked what he lives for, he replies : " For 
 the passing of the time." 
 
 I always look at this man as into a mirror. I see 
 myself and all our class of people in him. To end with 
 a rank, in order to Hve for the passing of the time and 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 305 
 
 receive an open bank, while the peasants, for whom it is no 
 embarrassment on account of the invention of machines, 
 manage all these matters, — this is a complete formulation 
 of the senseless faith of the people of our circle. 
 
 When we ask what it is we have to do, we do not ask 
 anything, but only affirm, only not with such openness 
 as the Most Serene Mihtary Prince Blokhin, who has 
 gone through all the ranks and has lost his reason, that 
 we do not want to do anything. 
 
 He who comes to his senses cannot ask this, because 
 on the one hand everything he uses has been made by 
 men's hands, and, on the other, the moment a healthy 
 man wakes up and eats his breakfast, he has the need to 
 work with his legs, and hands, and brain. In order 
 to find work and to work, he must only not hold himself 
 back ; only he who considers it a disgrace to work, hke 
 the lady who begs her guest not to trouble herself to 
 open the door, but to wait until she calls a servant, — 
 only he can put to himself the question what he is 
 to do. 
 
 The question is not to invent some work to do, — a 
 man will never succeed in doing all the work for himself 
 and for others, — but to get rid of that criminal view of 
 life that I eat and sleep for my pleasure, and to acquire 
 that simple and true view, with which a labouring man 
 grows up and lives, that a man is above everything else 
 a machine which is charged by food, and that, therefore, 
 to support himself, it is a shame, and hard, and impossible 
 for him to eat and not to work ; that to eat and not to 
 work is an exceedingly perilous condition, something like 
 a conflagration. 
 
 Let this consciousness exist, and there will be work, 
 and the work will always be joyous and it will satisfy the 
 spiritual and the physical demands. The matter presented 
 itself to me as follows : the day of every man is by his 
 meals themselves divided into four parts, or four ploughing 
 
306 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 periods, as the peasants say : (1) before breakfast, (2) 
 from breakfast until dinner, (3) from dinner until supper, 
 and (4) from supper until evening. Man's activity, which 
 draws him to itself, is divided into four kinds: (1) the 
 activity of the muscular force, — the work of hands, feet, 
 shoulder, — hard labour which makes one sweat ; (2) the 
 activity of the fingers and the wrist, — the activity of 
 dexterity of workmanship ; (3) the activity of the mind 
 and of the imagination ; (4) the activity of communion 
 with other men. Those benefits which man enjoys may 
 also be divided into four parts. Every man makes use, 
 in the first place, of the products of hard labour, — of the 
 grain, cattle, buildings, wells, ponds, etc. ; in the second 
 place, of the activity of artisan labour, — of garments, 
 boots, utensils, etc. ; in the third place, of the products of 
 mental activity, — of the sciences, of the arts, and, in the 
 fourth place, of the institution of the communion with 
 men, — of acquaintanceship, etc. And it appeared to me 
 that it would be best so to rotate the occupations of the 
 day as to bring into play all four human faculties, and to 
 repeat all four kinds of products, of which one makes use, 
 in such a way that the four ploughing periods may be 
 devoted : the first — to hard labour, the second — to men- 
 tal labour, the third — to artisan labour, and the fourth — 
 to communion with men. It is well if one can arrange 
 his labour in such a manner, but if that is impossible, one 
 thing is important, and that is, to have the consciousness 
 of a duty toward labour, a duty properly to employ every 
 period. * 
 
 It seemed to me that only then would there be destroyed 
 that false division of labour which exists in our society, 
 and would be established that just division of labour 
 which does not impair man's happiness. 
 
 For example, I had busied myself all my life with 
 mental labour. I said to myself that I had so divided 
 the labour that writing, that is, mental labour, was my 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 307 
 
 special occupation, and all the other necessary occupations 
 I left to others (or compelled others) to do. This appar- 
 ently most convenient arrangement for mental labour, to 
 say nothing of its injustice, was after all disadvantageous 
 for mental labour. 
 
 My whole life, my food, my sleep, my distractions, I 
 had arranged in view of these hours of special labour, and 
 outside this labour I had done nothing. From this it 
 followed, in the first place, that I had narrowed down my 
 circle of observation and knowledge and frequently had 
 no subject for study, and, having set myself the problem 
 to describe the lives of men (the lives of men are the 
 perpetual problem of every mental activity), I frequently 
 felt my ignorance and was obhged to study and to ask 
 about things which are known to every man who is not 
 occupied with any special labour ; in the second place, it 
 turned out that I sat down to write when I had no inner 
 calling to write, and no one demanded of me my writing 
 as a writing, that is, my thoughts, but only wanted my 
 name for magazine purposes. I tried to squeeze out of 
 me whatever I could: at times I did not squeeze out 
 anything, and at others something bad, and 'I experienced 
 dissatisfaction and pining. Thus frequently passed days 
 and weeks when I ate, drank, slept, warmed myself, and 
 did nothing, or did that which no one needed, that is, I 
 committed the most unquestionable and most abominable 
 crime, which is so rarely, hardly ever, committed by a 
 man from the labouring masses. Now, when I came to 
 recognize the necessity of physical, coarse, and artisan 
 labour, something entirely diJBferent resulted from it : my 
 time was occupied, no matter how modestly, yet beyond 
 doubt usefully, and joyfully, and instructively for me. 
 For this reason I tore myself away for my specialty from 
 this unquestionably useful and joyous occupation only 
 when I felt an inner need and saw directly expressed 
 demands for my author labour ; and these demands con- 
 
308 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 ditioned a good quality, and so a usefulness and joyousness 
 for my special labour. 
 
 Thus it turned out that my occupation with those 
 physical labours which are indispensable for me, as for 
 any other man, not only did not interfere with my special 
 activity, but were also a necessary condition of usefulness, 
 good quality, and joyousness of this activity. 
 
 A bird is so built that it must fly, walk, pick, reflect, 
 and when it does all that, it is satisfied and happy, — then, 
 to be more brief, it is a bird. The same is true of a man : 
 only when he walks, turns, lifts, drags, works with his 
 fingers, eyes, ears, tongue, brain, he is satisfied, he is a 
 man. 
 
 A man who has come to recognize his labour calling 
 will naturally strive for that change of labour which is 
 proper for him for the satisfaction of his external and his 
 internal needs, and will never change this order except 
 when he feels in himself an insuperable calling for some 
 exclusive work and there will present themselves other 
 people's demands for this labour. 
 
 The quality of labour is such that the gratification of 
 all of man's needs wants the same rotation of all kinds 
 of labour, which makes work not a burden, but a joy. 
 Only the false belief that work is a curse could have 
 brought men to that emancipation from certain kinds of 
 labour, that is, to the seizure of other men's labour, which 
 demands a forced occupation with a special labour of other 
 men, which they call division of labour. 
 
 We have become so accustomed to our false conception 
 about the arrangement of labour that it seems to us that 
 it will be better for a shoemaker, a machinist, a writer, or 
 a musician, if he shall exempt himself from labour which 
 is proper for every man. 
 
 Where there will be no violence exerted against another 
 man's labour, and no false faith in the joyousness of idle- 
 ness, not one man will, in order to busy himself with any 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 309 
 
 special labour, free himself from physical work, which is 
 necessary for the gratification of his needs, because the 
 special occupation is no prerogative, but a sacrifice which 
 a man brings to his infatuation and to his brothers. 
 
 A shoemaker in the country, who tears himself away 
 from the joyful field labour and takes up his work in 
 order to mend or make boots for his neighbours, deprives 
 himself of the ever joyful and useful labour in the field 
 for others, only because he is fond of making boots and 
 knows that no one can do this as well as he, and that 
 people will be thankful to him for it. But he cannot 
 even dream of a desire to deprive himself for life of the 
 joyful rotation of labour. The same is true of an elder, a 
 machinist, a writer, a scholar. To us, with our corrupted 
 conceptions, it seems that if a master degrades his clerk 
 by sending him back to the country, or if a minister is 
 sent to an exile colony, that he has been punished, that 
 some evil has been done to him. In reaHty, a benefit 
 has been conferred to him, that is, his special, oppressive 
 labour has been abandoned in favour of the joyful rotation 
 of labour. 
 
 In natural society all this is quite different. I know a 
 Commune where the people supported themselves. One 
 member of this society was more educated than the rest, 
 and he was required to read, so that he had to prepare 
 himself in daytime, to be able to read in the evening. 
 He did so joyfuUy, feeling that he was useful to others 
 and was doing a good deed. But he was worn out by the 
 exclusively mental labour, and his health grew worse. 
 The members of the Commune pitied him and asked him 
 to go to work with them in the field. 
 
 For people who look upon labour as the essence and 
 joy of hfe, the background, the foundation of life will 
 always be the struggle with nature, namely, agricultural, 
 mechanical, and mental labour, and the establishment of 
 communion among men. 
 
310 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 The departure from one or many of these kinds of 
 labour and the special work will exist only when the 
 man of the special work, loving this work and knowing 
 that he is doing it better than any one else, sacrifices his 
 advantage for the gratification of demands directly made 
 on him. Only with such a view of labour and of the 
 resulting natural division of labour there is destroyed 
 the curse which in our imagination is imposed upon 
 labour, and every labour always becomes a joy, because 
 a man will do an unquestionably useful and joyous, unop- 
 pressive work, or he will have the consciousness of sacri- 
 fice in the performance of a more difficult, exclusive work, 
 but which is such as he does for the good of others. 
 
 But the division of labour is more advantageous. More 
 advantageous for whom ? 
 
 It is more advantageous to make as many boots and 
 cottons as possible. But who will make these boots 
 and cottons ? 
 
 There are men who for generations have been making 
 nothing but pin-heads. How can this be more advan- 
 tageous for people ? 
 
 If the question is to make as many cottons and pins 
 as possible, that is so ; but the question is in the people, 
 in their good. Now the good of men is in life, and life is 
 in work. How, then, can the necessity of an agonizing, 
 oppressive work be more advantageous for men ? 
 
 If the question is only the advantage for some people 
 without considering the good of all men, it is most 
 advantageous for one set of men to eat others. They say 
 that human flesh tastes good. What is most advan- 
 tageous for all men — the one thing which I wish for 
 myself — is the greatest good and the gratification of all 
 needs, of body and soul, of conscience, of reason, which 
 are implanted in me. Now I found in my case that for 
 my good and for the gratification of these needs of mine 
 I need only cure myself from that madness in which I 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 311 
 
 had lived with that Krapivensk madman, and which con- 
 sisted in this : that gentlemen are not supposed to work, 
 and that others must attend to that and, without invent- 
 ing anything, do only what is proper to man, while grati- 
 fying his needs. When I found this, I convinced myself 
 that this labour for the gratification of one's needs natu- 
 rally divided itself into different kinds of labour, each of 
 which has its charm and not only forms no burden, but 
 also serves as a rest from another kind of labour. 
 
 In a coarse way (by no means insisting on the correct- 
 ness of such a division) I divided this labour according to 
 those demands which I make on life into four parts, 
 to correspond to the four periods of work of which the 
 day is composed, and I try to satisfy these demands. 
 
 So these are the answers which I found for myself in 
 reply to the question what we shall do. 
 
 The first : not to lie to myself ; no matter how distant 
 my path of life may be from that true path which reason 
 opens to me, not to be afraid of the truth. 
 
 The second: to renounce the consciousness of my 
 righteousness, my prerogatives, my privileges in compari- 
 son with other men, and to recognize myself guilty. 
 
 The third: to fulfil that eternal, indisputable law of 
 man, — with the labour of my whole being to struggle 
 with Nature for the purpose of supporting my own life 
 and that of other men. 
 
I HAVE finished, for I have said everything which con- 
 cerned me, but I cannot refrain from the desire to tell also 
 that which concerns everybody : to verify those deduc- 
 tions at which I have arrived by general considerations. 
 
 What I wish to talk about is why it seems to me that 
 very many people of our circle must arrive at the same 
 thing at which I have arrived, and also what wiU happen 
 if even a few people will arrive at the same. 
 
 I think that many people will arrive at the same con- 
 . elusions at which I have arrived, because if men of our 
 circle, of our caste, will take a serious look at themselves, 
 young people, who are in search of their personal happi- 
 ness, will be terrified at the ever increasing inanity of 
 their life, which clearly draws them to their perdition ; 
 conscientious people will be terrified at the cruelty and 
 the illegality of their life ; and timid people will be terri- 
 fied at the perilousness of their life. 
 
 The misfortune of our life : no matter how much we, 
 the rich, with the aid of science and of art, mend and 
 support this our false life, this life with every year be- 
 comes weaker, and more morbid, and more painful ; with 
 every year there is an increase in the number of suicides 
 and in the refraining from childbirth ; with every year the 
 new generations of men of this class become weaker and 
 weaker ; with every year we feel the increasing gloom of 
 this hfe. 
 
 It is obvious that on this road of the increase of the 
 comforts and pleasures of life, of cures and artificial teeth, 
 hair, breathing, massages, and so forth, there can be no 
 
 312 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 313 
 
 salvation ; this truth has become such a truism that in 
 the newspapers they print advertisements about stomachic 
 powders for the rich under the title, " Blessings for the 
 poor," where it says that only the poor have a good diges- 
 tion, but that the rich need assistance, and with it these 
 powders. 
 
 This cannot be mended by any amusements, comforts, 
 powders, — this can be corrected only by a change of 
 Hfe. 
 
 Tloe disagreement of our life with our conscience : no 
 matter how much we may try to justify to ourselves our 
 unfaithfulness to humanity, all our justifications scatter 
 to the winds before that which is obvious : around us 
 people die from work above their strength and from want ; 
 we ruin the food, the garments, the labour of men, in 
 order to find diversion and change. And so the conscience 
 of a man of our circle, if there is but a small residue of it 
 left in him, cannot fall asleep, and it poisons all those 
 comforts and pleasures of life which are furnished to us 
 by our sufferiag brothers who perish in labour. 
 
 Not only does every conscientious man feel this, he 
 would be glad to forget it, but he cannot do so in our 
 time, — the whole better part of science and of art, the 
 one in which the meaning of its calling is left, reminds us 
 constantly of our cruelty and of our illegal situation. The 
 old, firm justifications are all destroyed ; the new, ephem- 
 eral justifications of progress of science for science' sake, 
 and of art for art's sake, do not bear the light of simple 
 common sense. 
 
 The conscience of men cannot be put at rest with new 
 inventions, but only with a change of life, with which 
 there will be no need and no cause for any justification. 
 
 The perilousness of our life: no matter how we try 
 to conceal from ourselves the simple, most obvious 
 danger of the exhaustion of the patience of those men 
 whom we choke ; no matter how much we try to coun- 
 
314 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 teract this danger by all kinds of deceptions, acts of 
 violence, and propitiations, this danger is growing with 
 every day and with every hour, and has been threatening 
 us for a long time, and even now it has matured so much 
 that we with difficulty hold ourselves in our boat over 
 the agitated sea, which is about to swamp us and angrily 
 to swallow and devour us. The labouring revolution, 
 with the terrors of destructions and murders, has not only 
 been threatening us, but we have been Hving on it for 
 thirty years, and so far we have with all kinds of cunning 
 devices managed for a time to postpone its eruption. 
 Such is the state of Europe; such is the state with us, 
 and it is even worse with us, because it has no safety- 
 valves. The classes which oppress the masses, except the 
 Tsar, now have no justification in the eyes of the masses ; 
 they aU hold themselves in their position by nothing but 
 violence, cunning, and opportunism, that is, by agility, 
 but the hatred in the best representatives of the masses 
 and the contempt for us among the best are growing 
 with every hour. 
 
 Among our masses there has in the last three or four 
 years come into general use a new, significant word ; this 
 word, which I had never heard before, they now use 
 opprobriously in tlie streets and define us as " drones." 
 
 The hatred and contempt of the oppressed masses are 
 growing, and the physical and moral forces of the wealthy 
 classes are weakening ; the deception, by means of which 
 everything is holding itself, is being worn out, and the 
 wealthy classes can no longer console themselves by 
 anything in this mortal peril. 
 
 It is impossible to return to the old conditions ; it is 
 impossible to renew the destroyed prestige : there is but 
 one thing left to do for those who do not wish to change 
 their lives, and that is, to hope that things will suffice 
 for their Hfe, and afterward let it be as it may. 
 
 Even so does the blind crowd of the wealthy classes 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 315 
 
 do ; but the peril is growing all the time, and the terrible 
 catastrophe is coming nearer. 
 
 Three causes show to the men of the wealthy classes 
 the necessity for a change of their life : the need for a 
 personal good for themselves and for their nearest friends, 
 which is not satisfied on the path on which the rich are 
 standing; the necessity of satisfying the voice of con- 
 science, the impossibility of which is obvious on the pres- 
 ent path; and the menacing and ever growing danger of 
 life, which is not removed by any external means ; all 
 three causes taken together must lead the men of the 
 wealthy classes to a change of their lives, to a change 
 which would satisfy their good and also their consciences, 
 and would remove the danger. 
 
 There is but one such a change : to stop cheating, to 
 repent, and to recognize labour not as a curse, but as a 
 joyous affair of life. 
 
 But what of it that I shall work ten, eight, or five 
 hours at physical labour, which thousands of peasants 
 will gladly do for the money which I have, I am asked. 
 
 The first thing and the simplest and most indubitable 
 thing will be this, that you will be merrier, healthier, 
 more cheerful, and better, and you will know what the 
 real hfe is, from which you have been4iiding yourself, or 
 which has been concealed from you. 
 
 The second thing will be this, that if you have a con- 
 science, it will not only not suffer, as it does now, looking 
 at the work of men (the meaning of which we, who do 
 not know it, always magnify or minimize), but you will 
 all the time experience a joyous consciousness of the fact 
 that with every day you more and more satisfy the 
 demand of your conscience and get away from that ter- 
 rible position of such an accumulation of evil in our life 
 that there is no possibility of doing any good to people ; 
 you will feel a joy at living freely with the possibility of 
 the good ; you will knock a window, an opening of light, 
 
316 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 into the sphere of the moral world, which was hidden 
 from you. What will happen will be this : instead of the 
 eternal fear of retribution for your evil you will feel that 
 you are saving others from this retribution, and, above 
 all, that you are saving the oppressed from the grievous 
 sensation of malice and of revenge. 
 
 " But it is ridiculous," they say, " for the men of our 
 society, with the profound questions before us, — philo- 
 sophical, scientific, political, artistic, ecclesiastical, social 
 questions, — for us ministers, senators, academicians, pro- 
 fessors, artists, singers, for us, one-fourth of whose time is 
 so highly appreciated by men, to waste our time, — on 
 what ? — on cleaning our boots, washing our shirts, dig- 
 ging, setting out potatoes, or feeding our chickens and 
 our cows, and so forth, — on those things which are 
 gladly done for us, not only by our janitor and our cook, 
 but also by thousands of men who highly value our 
 time." 
 
 But why do we dress, wash, scratch ourselves (excuse 
 the details), why do we hold our vessel, why do we walk 
 ourselves, hand a chair to a lady and to guests, open and 
 close doors, help people into a carriage, and do hundreds 
 of similar things, which formerly slaves used to do for 
 us? 
 
 Because we consider this proper, because so demands 
 human dignity, that is man's duty, man's obligation. 
 
 The same is true of physical labour. 
 
 Man's dignity, his sacred duty and obligation, is to 
 make use of the hands and feet given him for the purpose 
 for which they are given to him, and to use the devoured 
 food for work which is productive of this food, and not to 
 let them become atrophied, not wash and clean them and 
 use them only for the purpose of shoving food, drink, 
 and cigarettes into the mouth. 
 
 Such is the significance which the occupation with 
 physical labour has for each man in any society ; but in 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 317 
 
 our society, where the deviation from this law of Nature 
 has hecome the misfortune of the whole circle of men, 
 the occupation with physical labour receives also another 
 significance, — that of a sermon and of an activity which 
 removes the terrible calamities which threaten humanity. 
 To say that for a cultured man the occupation with 
 physical labour is insignificant is the same as saying in 
 the building of a temple: "What importance can there 
 be in placing one stone evenly in its place?" 
 
 Every great work is, indeed, done under conditions of 
 imperceptibility, modesty, simplicity: it is impossible to 
 plough, to build, to graze cattle, or even to think under 
 an illumination, under roar of cannon, and in uniforms. 
 The illumination, the roar of cannon, music, uniforms, 
 cleanliness, splendour, with which we are accustomed to 
 combine the idea of the importance of an occupation, on 
 the contrary, always serve as signs that the matter is 
 lacking importance. 
 
 Great, true acts are always simple and modest. 
 
 And such is the very great work which is before us, — 
 the solution of those terrible contradictions in which we 
 live. 
 
 The acts which solve these contradictions are these 
 modest, imperceptible, apparently ridiculous acts : minis- 
 tering to ourselves, physical labour for ourselves and, if 
 possible, for others. They are incumbent on us, the rich, 
 if we comprehend the misfortune, unscrupulousness, and 
 danger of the situation, into which we have fallen. 
 
 What will come of it if I and two or three dozen men 
 will not disdain work and will consider it necessary for 
 our happiness, peace of mind, and security ? What will 
 happen will be this: A dozen, two, three dozen men 
 will, without coming into conflict with any one, without 
 any governmental or revolutionary violence, solve for 
 themselves the apparently insoluble question which is 
 standing before the whole world, and wiU solve it in such 
 
318 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 a way that they will live better, that their consciences 
 will become calmer, and that the evil of oppression will 
 no longer be terrible to them ; other people will see that 
 the good, for which they are searching everywhere, is 
 here close to them, that the apparently insoluble contra- 
 dictions of conscience and of the structure of the universe 
 are solved in the easiest and most joyous manner possible, 
 and that, instead of being afraid of men who surround 
 them, it is necessary to come nearer to them and love 
 them. 
 
 The apparently insoluble economic and social question 
 is the question of Krylov's box: it opens in a simple 
 manner. 
 
 But it will not open itseK so long as people will not 
 simply do the first and most simple thing, — so long as 
 they do not open it. 
 
 The apparently insoluble question is the ancient ques- 
 tion of the exploitation of other people's labour ; this 
 question has in our day found its expression in property. 
 
 In our day property is the root of every evil, — of the 
 sufferings of men who have it or who are deprived of it, 
 and of bites of conscience of those who misuse it, and of 
 the danger of conflicts between those who have an abun- 
 dance of it and those who are deprived of it. Property is 
 the root of evil, and at the same time it is that toward 
 which all the activity of modern society is directed, that 
 which guides the activity of our whole world. 
 
 Governments and states intrigue and fight for the pos- 
 session of the banks of the Khine, of land in Africa, in 
 China, on the Balkan peninsula. Bankers, merchants, 
 manufacturers, agriculturists, labour, devise, suffer, and 
 cause others to suffer for the sake of possessions ; offi- 
 cials, artisans, struggle, deceive, oppress, suff'er for the sake 
 of possessions ; courts, the police, guard property ; hard 
 labour, prisons, — all the terrors of so-called punishments, 
 — are all on account of property. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 319 
 
 Property is the root of all evil ; and the whole world is 
 busy dividing and protecting property. 
 
 What, then, is property ? 
 
 People are accustomed to think that ownership is 
 something which actually belongs to man. This is the 
 reason why they have called it ownership. We say of a 
 house and of a hand alike : " My own hand," and " My 
 own house." 
 
 But this is obviously a delusion and a superstition. 
 
 We know, and if we do not know, we can easily see, 
 that ownership is only a means for using the labour of 
 others ; but the labour of others can in no way be my 
 own. It even has nothing in common with the concept 
 of ownership, which is very exact and precise. A man 
 has always called, and always will call, his own what is 
 subject to his will and is connected with his conscious- 
 ness, — his body. The moment a man calls that his own 
 which is not his body, but which he wishes should be 
 subjected to his will, hke his body, he makes a mistake 
 and lays up disappointments and sufferings for himself 
 and subjects himself to the necessity of making others 
 suffer. 
 
 A man calls his wife, his children, his slaves, his chat- 
 tels his property, but reality always shows him his mis- 
 take, and he is obliged to renounce this superstition or to 
 suffer and cause others to suffer. 
 
 At the present time we, nominally rejecting the owner- 
 ship of men, thanks to the money and the exaction of the 
 money by the government, proclaim our property rights 
 to money, that is, to the labour of others. 
 
 But as the property right to one's wife, son, slave, or 
 horse is a fiction, which is destroyed by reahty and only 
 causes him to suffer who beheves in it, because my wife, 
 my son, will never submit to my will, like my body, 
 and my true property will still be in my body, so also the 
 ownership of money will never be an ownership, but only 
 
320 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 a self-deception and source of sufferings, while my prop- 
 erty will still consist in my body, in that which always 
 submits to my will and is connected with my conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 It is only to us, who have become accustomed to call 
 that which is not our body our property, that it can 
 appear that such a wild superstition may be useful to us 
 and remain without any harmful consequences to us ; but 
 we need only reflect on the essence of the matter in order 
 to see that this superstition, like any other, brings with it 
 the most terrible consequences. 
 
 Let us take the simplest example. 
 
 I consider myself my own property and another man 
 my property. 
 
 I must know how to prepare a dinner. If I did not 
 have the superstition about the ownership of another 
 man, I should have taught this art, like any other I may 
 need, to my property, that is to my body ; but instead I 
 teach it to my imaginary property, and the result is this, 
 that my cook does not obey me, does not wish to please 
 me, and even runs away from me, or dies, and I am left 
 with the ungratified, excited necessity of gratifying my- 
 self and with the lost habit of studying, and with the 
 consciousness that I have lost as much time in my worries 
 with this cook as would suffice for me to have learned 
 the art myself. The same is true of the ownership of 
 buildings, garments, utensils, land, and money. Every 
 imaginary property evokes in me non-corresponding, not 
 always gratifiable, needs, and deprives me of the possibility 
 of acquiring for my true and unquestionable property, for 
 my body, that knowledge, that skill, those habits, those 
 perfections, which I could have acquired. 
 
 The result is always this, that I have vainly lost my 
 strength for myself, for my true property, and sometimes 
 even my life without a residue for what never has been, 
 a ad never could be, my property. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 321 
 
 I provide myself with what I imagine to be my own 
 library, my own picture-gallery, my own apartments, my 
 own garments, obtain my own money with which to buy 
 what I need, and the end of it is that, while busying 
 myself with this imaginary property as though it were 
 real, I completely lose the consciousness of the distinction 
 between that which is my real property, over which I 
 actually can work, which can serve me, and which will 
 always remain in my power, and that which is not, and 
 cannot be, my property, no matter how I may call it, 
 and which cannot be the subject of my activity. 
 
 Words have always a clear meaning so long as we do 
 not intentionally give them a false significance. 
 
 What does property mean ? . It means that which is 
 given and belongs to me exclusively, that which I can 
 always employ in any manner I may wish, which no one 
 can ever take away from me, which remains mine to 
 the end of my life, and that which I must use, increase, 
 improve. 
 
 Such a subject of ownership for each man is only he 
 himself. 
 
 And yet it is in this very sense that the imaginary 
 ownership of men is taken, the one in the name of which 
 (to do the impossible, — to make this imaginary property 
 real) all the terrible evil in the world takes place, — the 
 wars and executions, and courts, and prisons, and luxury, 
 and debauch, and murder, and the ruin of men. 
 
 What, then, will happen if a dozen men will plough, 
 chop wood, make boots, not from necessity, but from the 
 consciousness that a man must work and that the more 
 he works the better it will be for him ? What will hap- 
 pen will be this, that a dozen men, or even one man, will, 
 both in cognition and in fact, show men that that terrible 
 evil from which they suffer is not a law of fate, the will of 
 God, or some historical necessity, but a superstition, which, 
 far from being strong and terrible, is weak and insignifi- 
 
322 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 cant, and which one must stop believing in, as in idols, in 
 order to be freed from it and to destroy it, like a frail 
 cobweb. 
 
 Men who will begin to work in order to fulfil the joy- 
 ous law of life, that is, who labour for the fulfilment of the 
 law of work, will free themselves from the superstition of 
 personal ownership, which is pregnant with calamities ; 
 and all the institutions of the world, which exist for the 
 support of this putative property outside of one's body, 
 will appear to them not only useless, but even embarrass- 
 ing ; and it will become clear to all that all these institu- 
 tions are not indispensable, but injurious, imaginary, and 
 false conditions of life. 
 
 For a man who regards labour not as a curse, but as a 
 joy, the property outside of his body, that is, the right or 
 the possibihty of using the labour of others, will be not 
 only useless, but even embarrassing. 
 
 If I am fond and in the habit of preparing my own 
 dinner, the fact that another man will do this for me 
 will deprive me of my customary occupation and will not 
 satisfy me so much as I used to satisfy myself ; besides, 
 the acquisition of imaginary property will be useless for 
 such a man : a man who regards labour as life itself fills 
 his Hfe with it, and so is less and less in the need of the 
 labour of others, that is, in property for the occupation of 
 his idle time, for the pleasures and adornment of his life. 
 
 If a man's life is filled with labour, he needs no rooms, 
 no furniture, no varied beautiful garments ; he needs less 
 of expensive food, no means for transportation, no dis- 
 tractions. 
 
 But above all else, a man who regards work as the 
 business and joy of his life will not seek any alleviation 
 of his labour which can be given to him through the work 
 of others. 
 
 A man who regards life as work will have for his 
 aim, in proportion as he acquires skill, agility, and endur- 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 323 
 
 ance, more and more work, which fills his life more and 
 more. 
 
 For such a man, who assumes the meaning of his life 
 to lie in labour, and not in its results, not in the acqui- 
 sition of property, that is, in the labour of others, there 
 cannot even be any question about instruments of 
 labour. 
 
 Though such a man will always choose the most 
 productive instruments of labour, he will get the same 
 satisfaction from work even if he works with the least 
 productive tools. 
 
 If there is a steam plough, he will plough with it ; if 
 there is none, he will plough with a horse plough ; and 
 if he has not that, he will use a wooden plough ; and if 
 not that, he will dig with a spade, and under all con- 
 ditions will he equally attain his aim, which is to pass his 
 Hfe in work useful to men, and so he will derive from it 
 his full satisfaction. 
 
 The condition of such a man, both from external and 
 internal conditions, will be happier than his who puts his 
 life in the acquisition of property.^ 
 
 From external conditions such a man will never be in 
 want, because men, seeing his desire to work, as in the 
 water-power to which a mill is attached, will always try 
 to make his labour most productive, and, to have it as 
 productive as possible, they will make his material exist- 
 ence secure, which they do not do for men who strive 
 after possessions. But the security of material conditions 
 is all a man needs. 
 
 From internal conditions such a man will always be 
 happier than he who seeks possessions, because the latter 
 will never obtain what he is striving after, while the first 
 will always get it in accordance with his strength: the 
 feeble, the old, the dying, as the proverb says, with a 
 crowbar in their hands, will receive full satisfaction and 
 the love and sympathy of men. 
 
324 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 So that is what will happen if a few crazy, odd people 
 will plough, make boots, and so forth, instead of smoking 
 cigarettes, playing vint, and travelling everywhere, taking 
 with them their ennui during the ten hours of the day 
 which every mental worker has free ! 
 
 What will happen will be this, that these crazy people 
 will show in fact that the imaginary property, which is 
 the cause of suffering and making others suffer, is un- 
 necessary for happiness and embarrassing, and that it is 
 only a superstition, — that ownership, true ownership, 
 is vested only in one's head, hands, and feet, and that, in 
 order actually to exploit this property to good advantage 
 and with joy, it is necessary to reject the false conception 
 of property outside of one's body, on which we waste the 
 best forces of our life. What will happen will be this, 
 that these men will show that only when man stops 
 believing in the imaginary property he properly works 
 his real property, his ability, his body, so that they will 
 give him returns a hundredfold and happiness of which 
 we have no conception, and he will be such a useful, 
 strong, and good man that, no matter where he may be 
 thrown, he will always alight on his feet, will every- 
 where always be a brother to all, and will be known and 
 needed and dear to all. And people, looking at one, at a 
 dozen such crazy men, will comprehend what they must 
 all do in order to untie that terrible knot into which they 
 have been drawn by the superstition of ownership, in 
 order to free themselves from the unfortunate position 
 from which they all groan in one voice, not knowing a 
 way out from it. 
 
 But what will one man do in a crowd which does not 
 agree with him ? 
 
 There is no reflection which more obviously shows the 
 unrighteousness of those who employ it. 
 
 The tow-men tow a boat against the stream. Is it pos- 
 sible there will be found such a stupid tow-man who will 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 325 
 
 refuse to do his pulling, because he is not able by himself 
 to tow the boat up the river ? 
 
 He who in addition to his rights of an animal life, such 
 as to eat and to sleep, recognizes any human duty, knows 
 full well wherein this duty consists, as well as the tow- 
 man knows, who shoulders the tow-rope. The tow-man 
 knows very well that all he has to do is to pull the rope 
 and walk in a well-trod direction. He will be lookiog 
 for something to do and how to do it, only when he has 
 thrown off his rope. And what is true of the tow-men 
 and of all other men who do a common work is also true of 
 the work of all humanity ; each man must not take off the 
 tow-rope, but must pull at it in the direction indicated by 
 the master and opposite to the current. For this the 
 same intellect has been given to men that the direction 
 might be always one and the same. 
 
 This direction is given so obviously, so indubitably, in 
 the whole life of all men about us, and in the conscience 
 of every individual man, and in the whole expression of 
 men's wisdom, that only he who does not want to work 
 can say that he does not see it. 
 
 So what will come of it ? 
 
 This, that one or two men will pull ; looking at them, 
 a third man will join them, and so the best men will join 
 them until the matter wiU advance and go as though 
 pushing and invitiag those who do not understand what 
 is being done and for what purpose. 
 
 The men who consciously work for the fulfilment of 
 the law of God will at first be joined by men who semi- 
 consciously, taking things half on faith, recognize the 
 same thing ; then they will be joined by a large number 
 of men who recognize the same through their faith in the 
 representative men, and, finally, the majority of men will 
 recognize the same, and then all men will stop ruining 
 themselves and will find happiness. That will be (and it 
 will be very soon) when the men of our circle, and after 
 
326 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 them the vast majority of the labourers, will not consider 
 it a shame to clean privies, and yet not a shame to till 
 them and let people, their brothers, clean them ; a shame 
 to call on people in their personal boots, and yet not a 
 shame to pass in galoshes by men who have no foot- 
 gear ; a shame not to know French or the latest news, and 
 not a shame to eat bread and yet not to know how to set 
 it ; a shame not to have a starched shirt and clean dresses, 
 and not a shame to wear clean garments, in order to point 
 out their idleness ; a shame to have dirty hands, and not 
 a shame not to have callous hands. 
 
 All that will happen when public opinion will demand 
 it. But public opinion will demand it when in the minds 
 of men will be destroyed the offences which concealed 
 the truth from them. Within my memory great changes 
 have taken place in this sense. And these changes have 
 taken place only because public opinion changed. Within 
 my memory it was considered a shame for rich people not 
 to drive out with four horses and two lackeys, and not to 
 have a lackey or chambermaid to dress and wash them 
 and hold the vessel for them, and so forth ; and now it 
 has suddenly become a shame not to dress oneself and 
 to drive out with lackeys. All these changes were pro- 
 duced by public opinion. 
 
 Can we not clearly see the changes which are being 
 wrought in pubhc opinion? It was enough for the 
 offence which justified the serf right to be destroyed 
 twenty-five years ago, in order that public opinion should 
 change in regard to what is praiseworthy and what 
 shameful, and for life to become changed. The offence 
 which justifies the power of money over men need be 
 destroyed, and pubhc opinion will change as to what is 
 praiseworthy and what disgraceful, and life will change 
 with it. 
 
 But the destruction of the offence of the justification of 
 the money power and change of public opinion in this 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 327 
 
 respect are rapidly taking place. This offence is trans- 
 parent now, and barely veils the truth. We need but 
 take a close look in order to see clearly that change of 
 public opinion which not only must take place, but which 
 has already taken place, though it is still unconscious and 
 has not been given a name. Let an ever so little educated 
 man of our time reflect on what results from those views 
 of the world which he professes, in order that he may 
 convince himself that that valuation of what is good and 
 what bad, what praiseworthy and what disgraceful, by 
 which he is guided in life from inertia, directly contra- 
 dicts his whole world conception. 
 
 A man of our time need but for a minute, renouncing 
 his life which goes on from inertia, look at it from one 
 side and subject it to the valuation which flows from his 
 whole world conception, in order to become frightened at 
 that determination of his whole life which results from 
 his world conception. 
 
 Let us take as an example a young man (in young men 
 the energy of life is stronger and self-consciousness more 
 hazy) from the rich classes, professing any views what- 
 ever. Every good young man considers it a shame not to 
 help an old man, a child, a woman ; he considers it a 
 shame in a common affair to subject to danger the life 
 or health of another man, and himself to avoid it. Every- 
 body considers it a shame and monstrous to do what 
 Schuyler tells the Kirgizes do in time of a storm, to send 
 the women, both young and old, out into the storm to 
 hold the corners of the tent, while they themselves 
 remain sitting in the tent and drinking kumys; every- 
 body considers it a shame to compel a feeble man to 
 work for him; a still greater shame during a danger, 
 on a burning ship for example, for the strongest to push 
 aside the weaker and, leaving them in danger, to be the 
 first to climb into a life-saving boat, and so forth. All 
 this they consider shameful and they will never do that in 
 
328 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 certain exclusive conditions; but in every-day life just 
 such acts and even much worse acts are hidden from 
 them by the offence, and they continue to do them. 
 
 They need but stop and think, in order that they may 
 see and be horrified. 
 
 The young man puts on a fresh shirt every day. Who 
 washes it at the river ? A woman, no matter in what 
 position she may be, who is old enough to be the young 
 man's grandmother or mother, and who often is sick. 
 What does this young man himself call him who, from 
 mere wantonness to change his shirt, which is clean as it 
 is, sends it to be washed by a woman who is old enough 
 to be his mother ? 
 
 The young man keeps horses for the sake of foppish- 
 ness, and they are trained in at the risk of his life by a 
 man who is old enough to be his father or grandfather, 
 while the young man mounts them only when all danger 
 is past. What will this young man call him who, get- 
 ting himself out of the way, puts another man in a 
 dangerous position and makes use of this risk for his own 
 pleasure ? 
 
 But the whole hfe of the wealthy classes is composed 
 of a series of such acts. Uneuduringly hard w^ork of old 
 men, children, and women, and acts performed by others 
 at the peril of their lives, not that we may be able to 
 work, but for our lust, fill our whole life. A fisherman 
 is drowned while catching fish for us ; laundresses catch 
 colds and die ; blacksmiths grow blind ; factory hands get 
 sick and are ruined by the machinery ; woodchoppers are 
 crushed by trees ; thatchers fall down from roofs and are 
 killed ; seamstresses become consumptive. All real work 
 is done with the loss and peril of life. It is impossible 
 to conceal and not see this. There is one salvation in 
 this situation, one way out from it, and this is, for a man 
 of our time, in accordance with his own conception of the 
 world, not to call himself a rascal and a coward, who 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 329 
 
 shoulders the labour and the peril of hfe upon others, — 
 to take from people only what is necessary for life and 
 for himself to bear the real labour with the loss and peril 
 of his life. 
 
 The time will soon come, and it is already at hand, 
 when it will be a disgrace and a shame to eat not only 
 a dinner of five courses, served by lackeys, but also one 
 that is not cooked by the hosts themselves ; when it will 
 be a shame to drive fast horses and even in a hack, so 
 long as one has legs ; in week-days to put on garments, 
 shoes, and gloves in which it is impossible to work ; to 
 play on a piano costing twelve hundred roubles, or even 
 fifty roubles, when others, strangers, are working for me ; 
 to feed milk and white bread to the dogs, when there are 
 people who have no bread and no milk ; to burn lamps 
 and candles at which people do not work, to make fires 
 in stoves, in which they do not cook food, when there are 
 people who have no illumination and no fuel. We are 
 inevitably and rapidly marching to such a view. We 
 are already standing on the borderland of this new life, 
 and the establishment of this new view of life is a matter 
 of public opinion. The public opinion which confirms 
 such a view on life is being rapidly worked out. 
 
 Women make public opinion, and women are in our 
 time particularly strong. 
 
CHAPTER XL. 
 
 As it says in the Bible, man is given the law of labour, 
 and woman the law of childbirth ; although we, accord- 
 ing to our science, avons change tout pa, the law has 
 remained as unchanged for man and for woman as the 
 liver is in its old place, and a departure from it is as 
 much as ever punished by inevitable death. 
 
 The only difference is this, that for man, for all in gen- 
 eral, the departure from the law is punished by death in 
 such a near future that it may be called the present, 
 while for woman the departure from the law is punished 
 in a more remote future. The common departure from 
 the law by men destroys men at once ; the departure of 
 all women destroys the men of the next generation, but 
 the departure of some men and women does not destroy 
 the human race, but deprives only those who have 
 departed of man's rational nature. 
 
 Men's departure from the law began long ago in those 
 classes which could exert violence on others and, spread- 
 ing all the time, has lasted down to our own time and in 
 our time has reached a point of madness, of an ideal 
 which consists in the departure from the law, an ideal 
 expressed by Prince Bldkhin and shared by Renan and 
 all the cultured world, — that machines will do the work, 
 and men will be enjoying bundles of nerves. 
 
 There has hardly existed any women's departure from 
 the law. It found its expression in prostitution and in 
 the frequent crimes of the killing of the foetus. The 
 women of the circle of wealtl.y men fulfilled their law, 
 when the men did not fulfil theirs, and so the women 
 
 830 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 331 
 
 became stronger and continue to rule, and must rule, the 
 men who have departed from the law, and, therefore, 
 have lost their reason. 
 
 They generally say that woman (the Parisian woman, 
 generally the childless woman) has become so fascinating, 
 by making use of all the means of civilization, that she 
 has by means of this fascination taken possession of man. 
 That is not only untrue, but the very opposite is the fact. 
 It is not the childless woman who has taken possession 
 of the man, but the mother who has fulfilled her law, 
 while man did not fulfil his. 
 
 But the woman who becomes artificially childless and 
 fascinates man with her shoulders and looks is not the 
 woman who rules man, but a woman debauched by man, 
 who has descended to the level of the debauched man, a 
 woman who, like him, has departed from the law, and so, 
 like him, loses every meaning of life. 
 
 From this mistake results that remarkable stupidity 
 which is called women's rights. 
 
 The formula of these women's rights is like this : " Oh, 
 you man," says the woman, "have departed from your 
 law of real work, and you want us to bear the brunt of 
 the real work. Yes, if that is so, we shall know how like 
 you to do that semblance of work which you do in banks, 
 ministries, universities, academies, studies, and we want, 
 like you, under the form of the division of labour, to 
 make use of the labour of others and live gratifying our 
 whims only." 
 
 This they say, and they show in fact that they know 
 as well, if not better, than the men how to do this sem- 
 blance of work. 
 
 The so-called woman question arose, and could have 
 arisen only among men who have departed from the law 
 of true work. 
 
 We need only to return to it, and this question will 
 not exist. 
 
332 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 Having her own, unquestionable, inevitable work, 
 woman can never demand the superfluous, false work of 
 the men of the rich classes. Not one woman of a real 
 workman will demand the right to participate in his 
 labour, whether in the mines or in the field. She could 
 demand a participation in the imaginary labour alone of 
 the men of wealthy classes. 
 
 The woman of our circle has been stronger than man, 
 and even now is stronger, not by her fascination, not by 
 her agility to do the same Pharisaical semblance of work 
 as men, but because she has not come out from under 
 the law, because she has, at the peril of her life, with the 
 tension of her uttermost strength, borne that real, true 
 labour from which the man of the wealthy classes has 
 emancipated himself. 
 
 But within my memory there began a woman's de- 
 parture from the law, that is, her fall, and within my 
 memory it has been growing more and more. 
 
 Having lost the law, woman has come to believe that 
 her strength lies in the fascination of her charms, or in 
 the agility of the Pharisaical semblance of mental la- 
 bour. 
 
 Children interfere with either. And so, with the aid 
 of science (science is always prepared for everything 
 abominable), it has happened within my memory that 
 among the wealthy classes there have appeared dozens 
 of means for the destruction of the foetus, and instruments 
 for the destruction of childbirth have become a usual 
 appurtenance of the toilet ; and so the women-mothers of 
 the wealthy classes, who had held the power in their 
 hands, are letting it out in order not to fall behind the 
 street-walkers and to become like them. 
 
 The evil has become widely disseminated, and with 
 every day spreads farther and farther, and soon it will 
 embrace all the women of the wealthy classes, and then 
 they will be equal with the men, and with them will lose 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN t 333 
 
 the rational meaning of life, and then there will no longer 
 be any return for that class. But there is still time. 
 
 However, there are still more women than men who 
 fulfil their law, and so there still are among them rational 
 beings, and so the possibility of salvation is stiU in the 
 hands of a few women of our circle. 
 
 Oh, if these women comprehended their significance 
 and their strength, and used it in the work of saving 
 their husbands, brothers, and children, in saving all men ! 
 
 Women, mothers, of the wealthy classes ! The salva- 
 tion of the men of our class from the evils they suffer 
 from is only in your hands ! Not the women who are 
 busy with their waists, bustles, hair-dressing, and fasci- 
 nation for men, and against their will, by oversight, in 
 despair bring forth children and turn them over to wet- 
 nurses, nor those who attend all kinds of lectures and 
 talk of psychomotor centres and differentiation, and also 
 try to free themselves from bearing children, in order not 
 to have any obstacle in their dulling of sensibilities, 
 which they call development, but those in whose hands, 
 more than in those of anybody else, lies the salvation of 
 the men of our class from the calamities which are 
 overwhelming them. You, women and mothers, who 
 consciously submit to the law of God, you alone in our 
 unfortunate, monstrous circle, which has lost the human 
 semblance, know the whole real meaning of life according 
 to God's will. You alone can by your example show to 
 men that happiness of life in the submission to the will 
 of God, of which they deprive themselves. You alone 
 know those raptures and joys which take hold of your 
 whole being, and that bliss which is predetermined for 
 man who does not depart from the law of God. You 
 know the happiness of love for your husbands, a happi- 
 ness which does not come to an end, nor break off, like 
 all others, but forms the beginning of a new happiness of 
 love for the babe. You alone know, when you are simple 
 
334 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 and submissive to the will of God, not that playful, parade 
 work in uniforms and illuminated halls, which the men 
 of your circle call work, but that true work which God 
 has intended for men, and you know the true rewards for 
 it and the bliss which it gives. 
 
 You know this, when after the joys of love you with 
 agitation, fear, and hope wait for that agonizing state of 
 pregnancy, which will make you sick for nine months, 
 and will bring you to the brink of death and to in- 
 tolerable sufferings and pains; you know the conditions 
 of true labour, when with joy you await the approach 
 and intensification of the most terrible agonies, after 
 which there comes bliss which is known to you alone. 
 
 You know this, when immediately after these pains 
 you without rest, without interruption, pass over to 
 another series of labour and of sufferings, to nursing, 
 when you at once reject and submit to your duty, 
 to your feeling, the strongest human necessity, that of 
 sleep (which, according to the proverb, is dearer than 
 father and mother), and for months and years at a time 
 do not sleep through a single night, and frequently stay 
 awake whole nights and with benumbed arms walk about 
 and rock your sick babe, who is tearing your heart 
 asunder. 
 
 And when you do all this, unapproved and unseen by 
 any one, expecting no praise and no reward from any one, 
 when you do this not as an exploit, but as the servant of 
 the gospel parable who comes back from the field, think- 
 ing that you have but done what is right, you know 
 what is the false parade work for people and what the 
 real work for the fulfilment of God's will, the indications 
 of which you feel in your heart. 
 
 You know that, if you are a real mother, it is not 
 enough that no one has seen your labour and has praised 
 you for it, and all have merely found that that was the 
 way it ought to have been, but that those for whom 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 335 
 
 you have laboured will not only fail to thank you, but 
 also frequently torment and reproach you, — and with the 
 next baby you do the same again : again you suffer, again 
 you endure the unseen, terrible labour, and again you do 
 not await any reward from any one, and feel the same 
 satisfaction. 
 
 In your hands, if you are such a woman, must be the 
 power over men, and in your hands is salvation. With 
 every day your number is diminishing: some are busy 
 fascinating men and becoming street-walkers ; others are 
 busy competing with men in their false, trifling affairs ; 
 others again, even before becoming untrue to their calling, 
 in their consciousness already renounce it : they perform 
 all the exploits of the woman as mother, but they do SO 
 by accident, with murmurs, with envy toward the free 
 women who do not bear children, and they deprive them- 
 selves of the only reward for them, — of the inner 
 consciousness of the fulfilment of God's will, — and, in- 
 stead of satisfaction, suffer from that which forms their 
 happiness. 
 
 We are enmeshed in our false life, we the men of 
 our circle, we have all of us, to a person, so lost the 
 meaning of life that there is no distinction between us. 
 Having rolled the whole burden, the whole danger of 
 life, on the necks of others, we are unable to call our- 
 selves by our real name, which befits people who cause 
 others to perish in our place for the purpose of earning a 
 living, — scoundrels, cowards. 
 
 But among women there still exists a distinction. 
 There are women who are human beings, women who 
 represent the highest manifestation of man, and women 
 who are whores. This distinction will be made by 
 future generations, and we cannot help making it our- 
 selves. ' 
 
 Every woman, no matter how she may be dressed, 
 what she may call herself, or how refined she may be, is 
 
336 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 a whore if she does Dot abstain from sexual intercourse, 
 and yet abstains from childbirth. 
 
 And no matter how fallen a woman may be, if she 
 consciously abandons herself to bearing children, she per- 
 forms the best, the highest act of life, in that she is doing 
 God's will, and she has no one above her. 
 
 If you are such, you will not say after two, nor after 
 twenty children, that it is enough to bear children, just as 
 a labourer of fifty years will not say that it is enough for 
 him to work, so long as he continues to eat and sleep, 
 and his muscles demand for work ; if you are such, you 
 will not throw your care of nursing and tending on the 
 children on another mother, just as a labourer will not 
 permit a stranger to finish his work which he has begun 
 and has almost finished, because into this work you place 
 your whole life, and so your hfe is fuller and happier in 
 proportion as your work is greater. 
 
 When you are such, — and there are such, luckily for 
 men, — the same law of the fulfilment of God's will, by 
 which you are guided in your life, will be applied by you 
 to the life of your husband, and your children, and your 
 near relatives. 
 
 If you are such a woman acd know from your own 
 case that only a self-sacrificing, invisible, unrewarded 
 labour at the peril of life and to the last limits of tension, 
 for the lives of others, is that calling of man which gives 
 him satisfaction and strength, then you will make the 
 same demands on others, encourage your husband to 
 the same work, measure and esteem the worth of men 
 by the same work, and prepare your children to do the 
 same work. 
 
 Only that mother who looks upon childbirth as a dis- 
 agreeable incident, and upon her pleasures of love, com- 
 forts of life, of culture, of society as upon the meaning of 
 life, will bring up her children to have as much pleasure 
 as possible and to enjoy them as much as possible, and 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 337 
 
 will feed them on sweet things, will dress and artificially 
 amuse them, and will teach them, not what would make 
 them capable of self-sacrificing man's and woman's work, 
 which is connected with peril of life and the uttermost ten- 
 sion, but what will free them from this labour, — everything 
 which will give them diplomas and the possibility to keep 
 away from work. Only such a woman, who has lost the 
 meaning of hfe, will sympathize with that deceptive, false 
 male labour which enables her husband, who has freed 
 himself from human duties, to enjoy with her the labours 
 of others. Only such a woman will choose the same 
 kind of a husband for her daughter and will value peo- 
 ple not for what they are in themselves, but for what 
 is connected with them, for their position, money, and 
 knowledge how to make use of the labours of others. 
 
 But a real mother, who in fact knows the will of God, 
 will prepare her children to do this will also. For such 
 a mother it will be a suffering to see her overfed, pam- 
 pered, dressed-up baby, because all this, she knows, 
 makes harder the fulfilment of God's will, as it is known 
 to her. 
 
 Such a mother wiU not teach her children what will give 
 them the possibihty of the offence of freeing themselves 
 from labour, but what will help them to bear the work 
 of hfe. She will not have to ask what to teach them, for 
 what to prepare them: she knows what the calling of 
 men consists in, and so she knows what to teach her 
 children and for what to prepare them. Such a woman 
 will not only refrain from encouraging her husband in 
 his deceptive, false work, which has for its aim nothing 
 but the exploitation of the labour of others, but will also 
 look with disgust and horror upon such an activity, which 
 serves as a double offence for her children. Such a 
 woman will not choose a husband for her daughter on 
 account of the whiteness of his hands and refinement 
 of his manners, but, knowing full well what work and 
 
338 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 what deception are, will, beginning with her husband, 
 always and at all times respect and appreciate in men 
 and demand of them true work with loss and peril, and 
 will despise that false, parade work, which has for its aim 
 the freeing of oneseK from true work. 
 
 Let not the woman, who, renouncing woman's calling, 
 wants to enjoy her rights, say that such a view of life is 
 impossible for a mother, that a mother is too closely con- 
 nected by love with her children to be able to refuse 
 them sweetmeats, amusements, dresses, not to be afraid 
 for her unprovided children, if her husband has no fortune 
 or no secure position, and not to be afraid for the fate of 
 the marriageable daughters and sons, if they have received 
 no education. 
 
 All this is an untruth, a most glaring untruth ! 
 
 The true mother will never say that. You cannot 
 refrain from the desire to give your children candy, and 
 toys, and taking them to the circus ? But you do not 
 give them spurge-laurel, do not allow them to get into a 
 boat by themselves, and do not take them to a caf^ 
 chantant. Why can you refrain yourself there, and 
 cannot do so here? 
 
 Because you are telling an untruth. 
 
 You say that you love your children so much that you 
 are afraid for their hves, that you are afraid of hunger 
 and cold, and so value highly the security which is fur- 
 nished you by your husband's position, which you recog- 
 nize as irregular. 
 
 You are so much afraid of those future accidents and 
 calamities for your children, which are still far removed 
 and doubtful, that you encourage your husband in what 
 you do not recognize the justice of; but what are you 
 doing now in the present conditions of your life to save 
 your children from the unfortunate accidents of your 
 present life? 
 
 Do you pass a large part of the day with your chil- 
 
WHAT SHALL WE BO THEN? '339 
 
 dren ? You do well if you give them one-tenth of your 
 time. 
 
 The remaining time they are in the hands of hired 
 strangers who are frequently taken from the street, or in 
 institutions, abandoned to the perils of physical and moral 
 infections. 
 
 Your children eat and receive nourishment. Who 
 prepares the dinner, and out of what is it prepared ? As 
 a rule you do not know. By whom are moral concepts 
 instilled in them ? You do not know this, either. So do 
 not say that you are suffering evil for the good of your 
 children, — that is untrue. You are doing wrong, because 
 you love it. 
 
 A true mother, who sees in childbirth and the bringing 
 up of her children her self-sacrificing calling of life and 
 fulfilment of God's will, will not say so. 
 
 She will not say so, because she knows that it is not 
 her business to make of her children what she or the 
 reigning tendency may wish, that the children, that is, 
 the future generations, are the greatest and holiest thing 
 which is given men to see in reality, and that her minis- 
 tration with her whole being to this holiness is her life. 
 
 She knows herself, being constantly between Hfe and 
 death, and living a barely glimmering life, that life 
 and death are not her business, that her business is to 
 minister to life, and so she will not seek any distant 
 paths of this ministration, but will only keep from de- 
 parting from those that are near. 
 
 Such a mother will herself bear children and nurse 
 them, will above all else herself feed her children and 
 prepare food for them, and sew, and wash, and teach her 
 children, and sleep and talk with them, because in this 
 she assumes her work of life to consist. She knows that 
 the security of any hfe is in work and in the ability to 
 do it, and so will not seek for her children's security in 
 her husband's money, and in the diplomas of her children, 
 
340 WHAT SHALL WE DO THEN? 
 
 but will educate in them the same self-sacrificing fulfil- 
 ment of God's will which she knows in herself, — the 
 ability to endure labour with the loss and the peril of 
 life. Such a mother will not ask others what she has 
 to do ; she will know everything and will not be afraid 
 of anything, and she will always be calm, because she 
 will know that she has fulfilled everything which she is 
 called to do. 
 
 If there can be any doubt for a man and for a childless 
 woman as to the path on which is to be the fulfilment of 
 God's will, for a mother this path is firmly and clearly 
 defined, and if she has humbly fulfilled it in the sim- 
 phcity of her soul, she stands on the highest point of 
 perfection which a human being can reach, and becomes 
 for all men that complete sample of the fulfilment of 
 God's will, toward which all men strive at all times. 
 
 Only a mother can before her death calmly say to 
 Him who has sent her into the world, and to Him whom 
 she has served by bringing forth and educating her chil- 
 dren, whom she loves more than herself, after she has 
 done her appointed task in serving Him: "To-day dost 
 Thou release Thy slave." But this is that highest per- 
 fection toward which, as toward the highest good, all men 
 strive. 
 
 It is such women, who have fulfilled their woman's 
 calling, that rule the ruling men and serve as a guiding 
 star to men; such women establish public opinion and 
 prepare new generations of men; and so these women 
 have in their hands the highest power, the power of 
 saving people from the existing and menacing evils of our 
 time. 
 
 Yes, women and mothers, in your hands, more than in 
 any other, is the salvation of the world. 
 
 February 14, 1886. 
 
ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 
 
 1882 
 
ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 
 
 The census has a scientific purpose. The census is a 
 sociological investigation. But the aim of sociology is 
 men's happiness. This science and its method differs 
 markedly from all the other sciences. 
 
 Its peculiarity consists in this, that the sociological 
 investigations are not carried on by the learned in their 
 cabinets, observatories, and laboratories, but by two thou- 
 sand people from society. Another peculiarity of it is 
 this, that the investigations of other sciences are not 
 carried on on Hving men, while here they are. A third 
 peculiarity of it is this, that the aim of any other science 
 is knowledge, while here it is the good of men. The 
 nebular spots may be investigated by one man, but here 
 two thousand people are needed. The purpose of the 
 investigation of the nebular spots is to find out everything 
 about the nebular spots ; the aim of the investigation of 
 the population is to deduce laws of sociology and on the 
 basis of these laws better to establish the lives of men. 
 It makes no difference to the nebular spots whether they 
 are investigated or not, and they are in no hurry and will 
 be in no hurry for a long time to come ; but it is not all 
 the same for the inhabitants of Moscow, especially for 
 those unfortunates who form the most interesting subject 
 of the science of sociology. 
 
 The census-taker comes to a lodging-house, and he finds 
 
 343 
 
344 ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 
 
 in the basement a man who is dying of insufficient nour- 
 ishment, and asks him poHtely for his calling, name, 
 patronymic, and kind of occupation, and, after some hesi- 
 tation as to whether he should enter him in his list as 
 living, he enters him and goes on. 
 
 Thus will two thousand young men walk about. That 
 is not good. 
 
 Science does its work, and society, which in the persons 
 of the two thousand men is called to cooperate with 
 science, must do its work. The statistician, who makes 
 his inferences from figures, may be indifferent to people, 
 but we, the census-takers, who see these people and have 
 no scientific infatuation, cannot help but have a human 
 interest in them. Science does its work, and, as regards 
 its aims in the distant future, does a work which is useful 
 and necessary for us. 
 
 For the men of science it is possible to say calmly that 
 in the year 1882 there are so many paupers, so many 
 prostitutes, so many children without attention. It may 
 say so calmly and proudly, because it knows that the 
 assertion of this fact leads to the elucidation of socio- 
 logical laws, and that the elucidation of sociological laws 
 leads to the improved state of society. But how would 
 it be, if we, the laymen, should say : " You are perishing 
 in debauchery, you are starving, you are wasting away, 
 you are killing one another ; but let not that grieve you : 
 when all of you shall have perished and hundreds of 
 thousands like you, then, perhaps, science will arrange 
 everything beautifully." For the man of science the 
 census has its interest : for us it has an entirely different 
 interest. For society the interest and significance of the 
 census consists in this, that it gives it a mirror in which, 
 willy nilly, society and each of us can see himself. 
 
 The figures and the deductions will be the mirror. It 
 is possible not to read them, just as it is possible to turn 
 away from a mirror. It is possible to cast a passing 
 
ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 345 
 
 glance into the mirror, or to look into it from near by. 
 To take the census, as a thousand men are doing now, is 
 to take a close look into the mirror. 
 
 What is the census which is taking place now for us 
 Muscovites who are not men of science ? It is two things. 
 In the first place, that we shall certainly find out that 
 among us, among tens of thousands of men spending tens 
 of thousands of roubles, there live tens of thousands of 
 men without bread, clothing, or shelter; in the second 
 place, that our brothers and sons will go to see this and 
 calmly record in columns how many there are that are 
 dying from hunger and cold. 
 
 Both things are very bad. 
 
 All cry about the flimsiness of our social structure, 
 about its exclusive condition, about its revolutionary 
 mood. Where is the root of everything? To what do 
 the revolutionists point? To the poverty, the unequal 
 distribution of wealth. To what do the conservatives 
 point ? To the decay of moral foundations. If the opin- 
 ion of the revolutionists is correct, what must we do ? 
 Diminish poverty and the unequal distribution of wealth. 
 If the opinion of the conservatives is correct, that all the 
 evil is due to the decay of moral principles, what can be 
 more immoral and corrupt than the consciously indiffer- 
 ent contemplation of human misfortunes with the mere 
 purpose of recording them ? What must we do, then ? 
 We must add to the census the work of a brotherly com- 
 munion of the rich, the leisurely, and the enlightened with 
 the poor, the oppressed, and the ignorant. 
 
 Science is doing its work, — let us do our work. This 
 is what we will do. In the first place, we, who are busy 
 with the census, the managers, census-takers, will form 
 for ourselves a clear idea of what we are doing, — we will 
 gain a clear idea as to why and over what we are making 
 the investigations : over men, and that men may be happy. 
 No matter how a man may look at life, he will agree that 
 
346 ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 
 
 there is nothing more important than human life, and 
 that there is no more important business than the removal 
 of obstacles in the way of the development of hfe, than 
 aiding it. 
 
 In the Gospel we find expressed, with striking boldness, 
 but with definiteness and clearness for all, the thought 
 that the relations of men to poverty, to human sufferings, 
 is the root, the foundation of everything. 
 
 He who clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, and visits 
 the prisoners has clothed me, fed me, visited me, that is, 
 has done work for what is most important in the 
 world. 
 
 No matter how a man may look at things, everybody 
 knows that this is the most important business in the 
 world. 
 
 And we must not forget this, and permit any other 
 considerations to veil from us the most important busi- 
 ness of our life. We will record and take the census, but 
 we will not forget that, if we meet a naked and hungry 
 man, it is more important to help him than to attend to 
 the most important investigations and discoveries of all the 
 possible sciences, that, if the question arose whether we 
 should busy ourselves with an old woman who had not 
 had anything to eat for two days, or ruin the whole work 
 of the census, we should let the census go to perdition, 
 if only we can feed the old woman. The census-taking 
 will be longer and harder, but in the quarters of the poor 
 we cannot pass by people and merely record them, without 
 caring for them or trying to help them according to our 
 strength and moral sensitiveness. So much in the first 
 place. 
 
 In the second place, this is what we ought to do ; we, 
 who are not taking part in the census, let us not be angry 
 at being disturbed ; let us understand that this census is 
 very useful for us ; that, if it is not a cure, it is at least 
 an attempt at investigating a disease, for which we ought 
 
ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 347 
 
 to be thankful, and which ought to serve us as an occasion 
 for trying to cure ourselves a httle bit. Let us all, who 
 are being recorded, try and make use of the only oppor- 
 tunity offered us in ten years for cleaning up a little : let 
 us not counteract the census, but help it, namely, in the 
 sense of giving it not the cruel character of a probing of 
 a hopeless patient, but that of a cure and convalescence. 
 Indeed, here is a singular chance : eighty energetic, cul- 
 tured men, having in hand two thousand young men of 
 the same character, are making the round of the whole 
 of Moscow, and will not leave out a single man in Mos- 
 cow, without entering into personal relations with him. 
 All the sores of society, all the sores of poverty, debauch- 
 ery, ignorance, — all of them will be laid bare. Well, 
 shall we stop at this ? 
 
 The census-takers will make the round of Moscow, will 
 indiscriminately enter into their lists the overweening, 
 the satisfied, and the calm, the perishing and the ruined, 
 and the curtain will fall. The census-takers, — our 
 brothers and sons, — the youths, will see all this. They 
 will say, " Yes, our life is very detestable and incurable," 
 and with this consciousness will continue to hve with us, 
 expecting a remedy of the evil from this or that external 
 force. But the ruined will continue to die in their ruin, 
 and the perishing will continue to perish. No, we had 
 better understand that science has its business, and we, 
 on the occasion of the census, our own business, and let 
 us not cover ourselves with the raised curtain, but let us 
 make use of the opportunity, in order to remove the 
 greatest evil of the dissociation between us and the poor, 
 and let us establish a communion and the business of 
 mending the evil, the misfortunes, the poverty, and the 
 ignorance, and the still greater misfortune, our own, of 
 the indifference and aimlessness of our Hfe. 
 
 I already hear the habitual remark : " All this is very 
 nice, all this is ranting ; but tell us what to do and how 
 
348 ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 
 
 to do it." Before telling what to do, I must say what 
 not to do. Above all, if something sensible is to come of 
 all this activity of society, it is, in my opinion, necessary 
 that no society be formed, that there be no publicity, 
 no collections of funds by means of b^Us, bazars, and 
 theatres ; that there be no announcements : " Prince A. 
 has contributed one thousand roubles, and Honorary Citi- 
 zen B., three thousand roubles ; " that there be no assem- 
 blies, no reports, and no writing, especially no writing; 
 that there be not even a shadow of any institution, either 
 governmental or philanthropic. 
 
 In my opinion, this is what we ought to do at once : 
 first, all those who agree with me ought to go to the man- 
 agers, ask them to point out the poorest districts in their 
 wards, the poorest tenements, and go with the census- 
 takers, on the twenty-third, the twenty-fourth, and the 
 twenty-fifth, through these districts, enter into relations 
 with those who live in them, and retain these rela- 
 tions with the people who are in want of aid, and work 
 with them. 
 
 Secondly: the managers and census-takers are to pay 
 attention to the denizens who demand assistance, and 
 work for them, and point them out to those who want 
 to work for them. But I shall be asked what is meant 
 by working for them. I shall answer: Doing good to 
 them. Not giving them money, but doing them good. 
 By the words " to do good " people generally understand 
 giving money. But, according to my opinion, to do good 
 and give money not only are not the same, but are two 
 entirely different, and generally opposite, things. Money 
 is in itself an evil, and so he who gives money gives an 
 evil. The delusion that giving money means doing good 
 is due to this, that for the most part a man who does 
 good rids himself of the evil and at the same time of his 
 money. And so giving money is only a sign that man is 
 beginning to rid himself of evil. To do good means to 
 
OK THE MOSCOW CENSUS 349 
 
 do what is good for man. To find out what is good for 
 man, we must get into human, that is, amicable, relations 
 with him. And so, to do good it is not money that is 
 needed, but, first of all, the ability at least for a time to 
 renounce the conventionalities of our life, not to be afraid 
 to soil our boots and garments, nor to be afraid of bed- 
 bugs and lice, nor of typhoid, diphtheria, or smallpox ; we 
 must be able to sit down on the cot of a ragged feUow 
 and talk with him so intimately that he will feel that the 
 talker respects and loves him, and is not acting and ad- 
 miring himself. That this may be possible, a man must 
 look for the meaning of life outside himself. This is 
 what is needed that there should be the good, and this 
 it is difficult to find. 
 
 When the thought came to me of helping in the census, 
 I talked with a few of the rich about it, and I saw how 
 glad the rich were of the opportunity of getting rid of 
 their money, of those alien sins which they shelter in their 
 hearts. " Do take, if you please," they would say to me, 
 "three hundred roubles, or five hundred roubles, but I 
 myself cannot go to those purlieus." There is no want 
 of money. Think of Zacchaeus, the chief of the publicans, 
 of whom the Gospel speaks. Eemember how he, being 
 small, climbed a tree in order to see Christ, and how he, 
 when Christ announced that he was going to his house, 
 understood only this, that the master did not extol 
 wealth, and tumbled down from the tree and started 
 home on a run, in order to prepare a reception for Christ. 
 And, when Christ entered, the first thing Zacchaeus an- 
 nounced was that he had given half his fortune to the 
 poor, and that to those whom he had offended he would 
 give fourfold. And remember how we, reading the 
 Gospel, hold this Zacchaeus in little esteem, and with 
 involuntary contempt look at this half of his fortune and 
 fourfold remuneration. And our feeling is right. Upon 
 reflection, Zacchseus, it seems, did a great thing ; but our 
 
350 ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 
 
 feeling is correct. He had not yet begun to do good : he 
 only began to cleanse himself a little from evil. Christ 
 told him so. All he told him was, This day is salvation 
 come to this house. 
 
 Suppose the Moscow Zacchseuses should do the same. 
 There would be more than a billion gathered together. 
 Well, what would become of it ? Nothing. There would 
 be even more sin, if they proposed to distribute it among 
 the poor. It is not money that is needed. What is 
 needed is an activity of self-renunciation and men who 
 would be willing to do good, not by giving other people's 
 sins, money, but their own labour, themselves, their life. 
 Where are these people ? Here they are, they are walk- 
 ing about Moscow. They are those student census-takers. 
 I have seen them write their cards. They write in a doss- 
 house, on a sick man's bunk. " What is your disease ? " 
 " Smallpox." And such a student does not even frown, 
 but continues writing. And this he does for the sake of 
 some doubtful science. What would he do, if he did this 
 for his undoubted personal good and for the good of all 
 people ? 
 
 Just as children in a happy mood want to laugh and, 
 unable to discover a cause for laughter, laugh without 
 any cause, simply because they feel happy, so these dear 
 youths sacrifice themselves. They have not yet had time 
 to find a pretext for sacrificing themselves, and yet sacri- 
 fice their attention, labour, and life, in order to write the 
 cards, which may lead to something, or not. What 
 would happen, if there were something worth while? 
 This something exists and has existed, and it is a 
 business for which it is worth while to lay down the 
 whole life which there is in man. This business is 
 the brotherly communion of people with people, and the 
 breaking down of those obstacles which people have 
 raised between themselves, in order that the merriment 
 of the rich man may not be impaired by the wild 
 
ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 351 
 
 lamentations of bestialized men and by the groans of 
 helpless hunger, cold, and diseases. 
 
 The census brings out before the eyes of us, the well- 
 to-do and so-called cultured men, all that misery and 
 oppression which nestles in all the nooks of Moscow. 
 Two thousand people of our class, who stand on the 
 highest round of the ladder, will face thousands of 
 people who stand on the lowest round of society. Let 
 us not miss the opportunity for this communion. Let us 
 preserve this communion through these two thousand 
 people, and let us use it for the purpose of saving our- 
 selves from the aimlessness and monstrosity of our life, 
 and of freeing the wronged from those calamities and mis- 
 fortunes which do not permit us sensitive people calmly 
 to enjoy our joys. 
 
 This is what I propose: (1) all of us, managers and 
 takers of the census, shall to the business of the census 
 add the business of assistance, — of work for the good of 
 such men as we meet, who, in our opinion, demand aid ; 
 (2) all of us, managers and takers of the census, shall, 
 not by the appointment from the City Council's com- 
 mittee, but by the prompting of our hearts, remain in our 
 places, that is, in relations with the inhabitants who 
 demand aid, and shall, after the conclusion of the work 
 of the census, continue our work of assistance. If I 
 have been able to express but a small part of what I feel, 
 I am sure that only impossibility will compel the man- 
 agers and the takers of the census to abandon this work, 
 and that others will appear in place of those who give 
 up the work; (3) all those inhabitants of Moscow who 
 feel themselves able to work for the needy shall join the 
 various wards and, by the indications of the census- 
 takers and managers, begin their activity at once and 
 continue it in the future ; (4) all those who, on account 
 of old age, feebleness, or other causes, cannot work them- 
 selves amidst the needy, shall entrust their work to their 
 
352 ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 
 
 young, strong, willing neighbours. (The good is not the 
 giving of money, — it is a brotherly relation of men. It 
 alone is needed.) 
 
 No matter what may come of it, it is better than what 
 is going on at present. 
 
 Let the least work be this, that we, the takers and the 
 managers of the census, shall distribute a hundred twenty- 
 kopek pieces among those who have had nothing to eat ; 
 that will not be a trifle, not so much because the starving 
 will have something to eat, as because the takers and the 
 managers of the census will be in a humane relation to a 
 hundred poor people. How are we to figure out what 
 consequences will be produced in the general moral bal- 
 ance by the fact that, instead of the feeling of annoyance, 
 malice, envy, which we shall provoke, as we count up the 
 hungry, we shall a hundred times evoke a good sentiment, 
 which will be reflected on a second, a third man, and will 
 in an endless wave pour forth among the people ? That is 
 a great deal. 
 
 Let there be only this much, that those of the two 
 thousand census-takers who did not understand this be- 
 fore will come to understand that amidst misery it is not 
 right to say, " This is very interesting," that a man's mis- 
 fortune must not merely represent some interest to a man. 
 Even that will be good. Let there be only this much, 
 that aid will be furnished to all those unfortunates, of 
 whom there are not so many in Moscow as I used to 
 think, who can easily be aided with money alone. Let 
 there be this, that those labourers who have strayed into 
 Moscow and have sold their clothes to buy food, and who 
 are unable to return to the country, will be sent home ; 
 that neglected orphans will be looked after; that en- 
 feebled old paupers, who are living on the charity of 
 fellow paupers, will be spared a death from semi-starva- 
 tion. (That is very possible. There are not very many 
 of them.) Even that will be very, very much. 
 
ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 353 
 
 But why shall we not think and hope that more, much 
 more will be done? Why shall we not hope that we 
 shall partially do or begin that real work, which is no 
 longer done with money, but with labour, — that we 
 shall save enfeebled drunkards, uncaught thieves, and 
 prostitutes for whom salvation is possible ? Even if not 
 all evil shall be remedied, there will be its recognition, 
 and we shall struggle against it not with police measures, 
 but with inner measures, — with the brotherly communion 
 of men who see the evil against men who do not see 
 it, because they are in it. 
 
 No matter what may be done, it will be much. But 
 why shall we not hope that everything will be done? 
 Why can we not hope that we shall succeed in accom- 
 plishing this, that in Moscow there will not be a single 
 man without clothes, nor one who is hungry, nor one 
 unfortunate man who is crushed by fate, without know- 
 ing that he may have brotherly assistance? What is 
 remarkable is not that this should be, but that it exists 
 side by side with our excess of leisure and wealth, and 
 that we can live calmly, knowing that it exists. Let us 
 forget that in large cities and in London there is a prole- 
 tariat, and let us not say that it must be so. It must not 
 be, because it is contrary to our reason and to our heart, 
 and it is impossible, if we are living men. 
 
 Why can we not hope that we shall understand that 
 we have not a single obligation, to say nothing of a per- 
 sonal obligation, for our own sake, not any domestic, nor 
 public, nor political, nor scientific obligation, which is 
 more important than this ? Why can we not hope that 
 we shall finally comprehend it ? Is it because this would 
 be too great a happiness ? Why can we not think that 
 some day men will wake up and comprehend that every- 
 thing else is offensive, and this alone is the business of 
 life ? And why can this " some day " not be now, in 
 Moscow ? Why can we not hope that the same will 
 
354 ON THE MOSCOW CENSUS 
 
 happen with society, with humanity, that happens with 
 the ailing organism, when suddenly there arrives a mo- 
 ment of convalescence ? The organism is diseased ; this 
 means that the cells stop doing their mysterious work : 
 some die, others are born, others again remain indifferent, 
 working for themselves. Suddenly there arrives a mo- 
 ment when every living cell begins its independent vital 
 work : it pushes out the dead cells, with a living barrier 
 excludes those that are infected, communicates life to 
 those that live, and the body rises from the dead and 
 lives a full life. 
 
 Why can we not think and hope that the cells of our 
 society will revive, and will bring the organism to life ? 
 We do not know in whose power the cells are, but we 
 know that life is in our power. We can manifest the 
 light which is in us, or we may put it out. 
 
 Let a man come at the end of the day to the Lyapinski 
 night lodging-house, when one thousand insufficiently clad 
 and hungry people are waiting in the cold to be let into 
 the house, and let this one man try to help them, — his 
 heart will bleed, and he will with despair and resentment 
 at men run away from there ; but let one thousand people 
 come to those one thousand people with the desire to help 
 them, and the work will appear easy and pleasant. Let 
 the mechanics invent a machine with which to lift the 
 burden which is choking us, — that is good ; but while 
 they have not yet invented it, let us in foolish, peasant, 
 Christian fashion heave in a mass, — maybe we can lift it. 
 Heave, friends, all together ! 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE 
 COLLECTED ARTICLES 
 
 "WHAT IS THE TRUTH IN ART?" 
 
 1887 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE 
 COLLECTED ARTICLES 
 
 "WHAT IS THE TRUTH IN ART?" 
 
 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good 
 things ? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
 speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart 
 bringeth forth good things : and an evil man out of the evil 
 treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, 
 That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give 
 account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words 
 thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be 
 condemned. (Matt. xii. 34-37.) 
 
 In this volume there are collected, in addition to stories 
 which describe real occurrences, stories, traditions, saws, 
 legends, fables, fairy-tales, such as have been composed 
 and written for the good of children. 
 
 We have chosen such as we regard as conforming with 
 Christ's teaching, and so regard as good and true. 
 
 Many people, and especially children, reading a history, 
 fairy-tale, legend, fable, ask first of all : " Is what they 
 say true ? " And frequently, when they see that what is 
 described could not have happened, they say, " This is an 
 idle invention and untrue." 
 
 People who judge thus judge incorrectly. 
 
 The truth is learned not by him who learns only what 
 has been and what happens, but by him who learns what 
 ought to be by God's will. 
 
 367 
 
358 WHAT IS THE TRUTH IN ART? 
 
 The truth will be written not by him who describes 
 only what has happened and what this man and that man 
 did, but by him who will show what people do well, that 
 is, in accordance with God's will, and what badly, that is, 
 contrary to God's wilL 
 
 The truth is a path. Christ has said, I am the way and 
 the truth and the life. 
 
 And so the truth is not known by him who looks at 
 his feet, but by him who knows by the sun whither to go. 
 
 All hterary productions are good and necessary, not 
 when they describe what has been, but when they show 
 what ought to be ; not when they tell what men did, 
 but when they estimate what is good and what bad, — 
 when they show to men the narrow path of God's will, 
 which leads to life. 
 
 In order to show this path, it is impossible to describe 
 only what happens in the world. The world abides in 
 evil and in offences. If you are going to describe the 
 world as it is, you will describe many lies, and in your 
 words there will be no truth. In order that there may be 
 any truth in what you describe, you must not write what 
 is, but what ought to be, — to describe the truth, not of 
 what exists, but of the kingdom of God, which is coming 
 nearer to us, but is not yet. For this reason there are 
 mountains of books, in which we are told of just what 
 has happened, or what might have happened, but these 
 books are all lies, if those who write them do not them- 
 selves know what is good and what bad, and do not know 
 and do not point out the one path which leads men to the 
 kingdom of God. And there are fairy-tales, parables, 
 fables, legends, in which something miraculous is de- 
 scribed, something which has never happened and never 
 could have happened, and these legends, fairy-tales, fables, 
 are true, because they show wherein the will of God has 
 always been, wherein is the righteousness of the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
WHAT IS THE TRUTH IN ART? 359 
 
 There may be a book, — and there are many, many 
 such novels and stories in which is described how a man 
 lives for his passions, suffers, torments others, undergoes 
 dangers and want, and shows cunning ; struggles with 
 others, escapes poverty, and finally unites with the object 
 of his love, and becomes famous, rich, and happy. Such 
 a book, even though everything described in it is as it has 
 happened, and though there may be nothing improbable in 
 it, will none the less be a lie and untruth, because a man 
 who lives for himself and his passions, no matter what 
 beautiful wife he may have, and how famous and rich he 
 may be, cannot be happy. 
 
 And there may be a legend about how Christ and His 
 apostles walked over the earth and went to see a rich man, 
 and the rich man did not let Him in, and how He went to 
 a poor widow, and she let Him in. And then He ordered 
 a barrel full of gold to be rolled up to the rich man, and 
 sent a wolf to the poor widow to eat up her last calf, 
 and the widow was well off, and the rich man fared 
 badly. 
 
 Such a story is all improbable, because nothing of what 
 is described has happened, or could have happened ; but 
 it is all true, because it shows what always must be, in 
 what the good is, and in what the bad, and what a man 
 must strive after in order to do the will of God. 
 
 No matter what miracles may be described, or what 
 animals may speak in human fashion, or how self-flying 
 carpets may carry people from place to place, — the leg- 
 ends, and parables, and fables will be true, if in them 
 there be the righteousness of the kingdom of God. And 
 if there be not that truth, let everything described be 
 attested by whomsoever you please, — it will all be a lie, 
 because it has not the righteousness of the kingdom of 
 God. Christ Himself spoke in parables, and His parables 
 have remained eternal truths. He only added. Observe 
 as you hear. 
 
TO THE DEAR YOUTH 
 
 1887 
 
TO THE DEAR YOUTH 
 
 Your letter is, not in spite, but in consequence, of 
 your youth so heartfelt and so serious that, no matter 
 how difficult and how inconvenient it is for me to answer 
 it in a short letter, I shall none the less try to do so. 
 
 You write that you do not need any defence of the 
 necessity of faith, that you recognize this necessity. That 
 is nice ! Thank God for this. You have that which no 
 one can give. As Christ has said : " No man can come 
 to me except the Father draws him." 
 
 But you say : " What shall I believe in ? " You say : 
 " Christianity, but which ? " 
 
 There may be two conceptions : Christ God, the son of 
 God, who came down from heaven, in order to save and 
 enlighten men, and Christ the man, one of those in whom 
 there is the highest divine wisdom, who lived eighteen 
 hundred years ago, and who founded a teaching which 
 has taken possession of humanity, and has transformed it. 
 
 Let us at first admit the second supposition, which I 
 have never fully admitted, and which, I assume, is also 
 unpleasant for you to admit. Let us admit it. Christ 
 is a great sage and teacher, not only in words, but also in 
 his life and death. Is there any possibility of perverting 
 the teaching of such a man ? How, for example, can we 
 pervert Socrates' teaching ? Let them pervert and distort 
 
 363 
 
364 TO THE DEAR YOUTH 
 
 him as much as they please. He who understands the 
 spirit of Socrates* teaching will without any effort and 
 without any labour reject the perversions, and leave 
 what forms the essence of the teaching. 
 
 A great teacher is great for this very reason, that he is 
 clear, unambiguous, and unsubjected to perversions, just 
 as a diamond cannot be ground by anything weaker than 
 it itself is. 
 
 For the same reason there can be no different interpre- 
 tations of the great teacher. He is great for the very 
 reason that he has unified everything which was scattered 
 and dispersed. How can his teaching break up into dif- 
 ferent sects ? If the great teaching breaks up into differ- 
 ent sects, this means that something false is falling to 
 pieces, something which is called by the name of a great 
 teaching, but not the teaching itself. 
 
 If the great teaching (the one which I recognize as 
 great) should present itself to me as corrupted or break- 
 ing up into a multitude of sects, what else could I do but 
 take the teaching itself, the one which is nearest to the 
 teacher, in which there are most of his utterances, 
 and begin to read it, trying to penetrate its meaning. If 
 the teaching is distorted and has broken up into a multi- 
 tude of sects, one of two things is true : either the teach- 
 ing itself is insignificant, or I do not* know the great 
 teaching. 
 
 And so, in the case of the second assumption, that 
 Christ is a wise man, it is necessary quite freely to read 
 the gospels of the four evangelists, and without self-satis- 
 faction and without false joy to read this book, as we read 
 the books of the sages. Then there will at once appear 
 the greatness of the teaching, the distortions wiU fall off 
 at once, and it will become clear that the breaking up 
 into sects does not take place in the teaching itself, but 
 in the artificial sphere which is outside of it. 
 
 The necessity of simply and naively reading the four 
 
TO THE DEAR YOUTH 365 
 
 evangelists, excerpting from them the utterances of Christ 
 Himself, becomes even more obvious in the case of the 
 first assumption. Christ God once during the whole ex- 
 istence of the world descended upon earth in order to 
 reveal to men their salvation. He came down out of love 
 for men. He lived, and taught, and died, loving men. 
 You and I are men. We suffer and are agonized in our 
 search for salvation, and we do not find it. Why, then, 
 did Christ come down into the world ? There is some- 
 thing wrong here. 
 
 Could God, upon coming down to the world, have for- 
 gotten you and me ? Or ^vas He unable to speak in such 
 a way that we might understand ? But He did speak, 
 and we have His words before us. They are before us in 
 precisely the same form in which they were before those 
 who heard His sermon on the mount. Why did all 
 those understand ? Why did they not say that it was 
 obscure, and why did they not ask Him for explanations ? 
 No, they understood Him, and said that they had never 
 heard anything like it, that He was teaching them as 
 i^ovaiav €%ft)i/, as one having power. Why is it incom- 
 prehensible to us, and why are we afraid that we shall 
 break up into sects ? Evidently because we do not hear 
 Him, but those who stood in His place. 
 
 Thus, as in the first assumption, there is one thing left 
 to do, and that is, to listen to His words with childish 
 simplicity, as a child listens to his mother, with the full 
 assurance that his mother, loving him, will be able to 
 tell him everything clearly and simply, and that only his 
 mother will tell him the real truth and everything neces- 
 sary for his good. We need only read in this manner, re- 
 jecting, at least for a time, all considerations about what 
 by others is considered divine, just, lawful, in order that it 
 may become absolutely clear that God has not deceived 
 us, that He has, indeed, given us salvation, and has 
 revealed to us the truth, as indubitably and as compre- 
 
366 TO THE DEAR YOUTH 
 
 hensibly as the mathematical truths are revealed to us, 
 when we learn them. 
 
 With such a reading the spirit of Christ's teaching is 
 revealed to us, that is, that universal principle which 
 permeates everything, and which will guide us in the 
 comprehension or non-comprehension of obscure passages. 
 I say " non-comprehension," because the non-comprehen- 
 sion of obscure passages for a man who is permeated with 
 the spirit of the teaching does not interfere with the 
 clear, full comprehension of clear passages. To a man 
 who is permeated with the spirit of the teaching an 
 obscure passage means only this, that the writing on paper 
 is the work of human hands and is subject to errors, but 
 in no way can lead him into error as to the meaning of 
 the clear passages. 
 
 Only he who seeks the letter, and not the spirit, can 
 ascribe an arbitrary meaning, which is frequently contrary 
 to the spirit of the teaching, to the obscure passages. The 
 obscure passages cannot interfere with the understanding 
 of the teaching. There are too many passages which are 
 clear, divine, subject to no varying interpretations, all 
 of them united among themselves by one principle and by 
 the immediate and ecstatic consciousness of the truth, 
 passages which echo in the hearts of aU men, in order 
 that the obscure passages should interfere with the com- 
 prehension. What interferes with the comprehension is 
 something else, that of which the gospel says : " They 
 did not walk toward the light, for their works were evil." 
 
 What interferes with the comprehension of Christ's 
 teaching is this, that the works of the world amidst 
 which we have grown up and Hve, of the world which 
 has the impudence to call itself Christian, are evil, and 
 we do not want to see what arraigns us, that what is de- 
 manded of us is a renunciation of what we have become 
 fond of, and the cross, which Christ recognizes as a neces- 
 sary condition of the life of His disciple. 
 
TO THE DEAR YOUTH 367 
 
 Christ's teaching is as simple, clear, and indubitable as 
 the fact that all right angles are equal, but I have seen a 
 man build a crooked house, and so deny this truth. In 
 order that I may understand Christ's teaching, I must 
 first of all say to myself that what I am studying is the 
 highest law, the law of God, and that, therefore, I with 
 this law measure all the other laws which I know, and 
 not vice versa, look in God's law for what confirms the 
 human laws, but in advance recognize it as holy. Only 
 he will understand Christ's teaching who, before studying 
 it, will clearly establish in his soul the meaning of what 
 he is seeking, — he who recognizes as holy nothing but 
 his soul, as a human soul, and its relation to God. 
 
 We have been taught that we can be Christians, without 
 effort, ever since our baptism, that is, almost since our 
 birth, without any labour, without any self-renunciation. 
 
 Christ has said (Luke xiv. 33) : " Who forsaketh not 
 all that he hath cannot be my disciple." But there have 
 been no such Christians, and there can be none. The 
 kingdom of God is always taken by force, and it cannot 
 be otherwise. It is impossible to serve God and mam- 
 mon, — it is impossible to be a little bit a Christian, 
 to hold on to Christianity for the sake of pleasure, of 
 decency, of consolation in the heavy moments of life. 
 Christianity is the teaching of the true life. 
 
 Christ says : " He that belie veth on me hath life, and 
 he that believeth not hath not life." And so the faith 
 in Christ changes a man's whole hfe and imposes on him 
 what he calls the cross. 
 
 I do not know whether I have said anything of im- 
 portance to you. I am afraid not, though I should like 
 to very much, for I have come to love you from your 
 letter. I think that you will get some of my writings on 
 religious questions, and then you will probably see clearly 
 what now is not comprehensible to you. Seek and you 
 will find. That is so simple. All the needs which are 
 
368 TO THE DEAR YOUTH 
 
 stored in man receive their satisfaction ; how, then, is it 
 possible that the highest need of faith should not have 
 it ? All that is necessary is to reject the false concep- 
 tions. 
 1886, 
 
WHAT A CHRISTIAN MAY 
 DO, AND WHAT NOT 
 
 1887 
 
WHAT A CHRISTIAN MAY 
 DO, AND WHAT NOT 
 
 One thousand . eight hundred and eighty years ago a 
 new law was revealed to men by Jesus Christ. By His 
 life and His death Christ showed to men what he who 
 wants to be His disciple, a Christian, may do, and what 
 not. 
 
 According to Christ's teaching, the sons of the Father 
 are free (Matt. xvii. 26), for they know the truth, and the 
 truth shall make them free (John viii. 32). Christ's teach- 
 ing was then, even as it is now, contrary to the teaching 
 of the world. According to the teaching of the world, 
 the powers govern the nations, and, to govern them, com- 
 pel some people to kill, execute, punish others, and to 
 swear that they will in everything do the will of the 
 rulers. According to Christ's teaching, a man not only 
 cannot kill another, but even cannot do violence to him, 
 or resist him with force : he can not do evil to his neigh- 
 bour, nor even to his enemy. 
 
 The teaching of the world and of Christ have always 
 been and always will be opposed to each other. Christ 
 knew this, and said this to His disciples, and predicted to 
 them that He Himself would suffer and that they, too, 
 would be delivered to be afflicted and killed (Matt xxiv. 
 9), and that the world would hate them, because they 
 
 371 
 
372 WHAT A CHRISTIAN MAY DO 
 
 would not be the servants of the world, but of the Father 
 (John XV. 19, 20). 
 
 And everything came to pass as Jesus had predicted. 
 The world hated Him and tried to ruin Him. All, the 
 Pharisees, and the Sadducees, and the scribes, and the 
 Herodians, rebuked Him for being an enemy to Caesar, for 
 prohibiting men from paying tribute to him, for disturb- 
 ing and corrupting the world. They said that He was 
 an evildoer, that He made Himself a king, and so was an 
 enemy of Caesar (John xix. 12). 
 
 Even before He was delivered up to be put to death, 
 they, watching Him, sent cunning men up to Him, to 
 catch Him in some utterance, so as to dehver Him up 
 to the authorities and the power of the ruler. And they 
 asked Him: 
 
 Master, we know that Thou art true, and teachest the 
 way of God in truth, neither carest Thou for any man : 
 for Thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us there- 
 fore. What thinkest Thou ? Is it lawful to give tribute 
 unto Caesar, or not ? But Jesus perceived their wicked- 
 ness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites ? Shew 
 me the tribute money. And they brought unto Him a 
 penny. And He saith unto them. Whose is this image 
 and superscription ? They say unto Him, Caesar's. Then 
 saith He unto them, Eender therefore unto Caesar the 
 things which are Caesar's ; and unto God the things that 
 are God's. When they had heard these words, they mar- 
 velled at His answer, and grew silent. 
 
 They had expected Him to say, either that it is lawful 
 and necessary to pay tribute to Caesar, and that thus He 
 would destroy His whole teaching about the sons being 
 free, about a man being obliged to Hve hke the birds of 
 the air, not caring for the morrow, and many similar 
 things ; or that He would say that it is not lawful to pay 
 tribute to Csesar, and that thus He would show Himself to 
 be an enemy to Caesar. But Christ said, Unto Caesar the 
 
WHAT A CHKISTIAN MAY DO 373 
 
 things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things which 
 are God's. He said more than they had expected of Him. 
 He defined everything, dividing everything a man has 
 into two parts, — into the human and the divine, and 
 said that what is man's may be given to man, and what 
 is God's cannot be given to man, but only to God ; and 
 what both God and Caesar claim ought to be given to 
 God. 
 
 With these words He told them that if a man believes 
 in the law of God, he can fulfil Caesar's law only when 
 it is not contrary to God's. For the Pharisees, who did 
 not know the truth, there still existed a law of God 
 which they would not have transgressed, even if Caesar's 
 law demanded it of them. They would not have de- 
 parted from circumcision, from the observance of the 
 Sabbath, from fasting and from many other things. If 
 Caesar had demanded of them work on a Sabbath, they 
 would have said : " To Caesar belong all days, but not the 
 Sabbath." The same is true of circumcision and of other 
 things. 
 
 Christ showed them with His answer that God's law 
 stood higher than Caesar's, and that a man can give to 
 Caesar only what is not contrary to God's law. 
 
 Now, what is for Christ and for His disciples Caesar's, 
 and what God's ? 
 
 One is horrified to think of the answer to this question, 
 which one may hear from Christians of our time ! God's, 
 in the opinion of our Christians, never interferes with 
 Caesar's, and Caesar's is always in agreement with God's. 
 The whole life is given up to the service of Caesar, and 
 only what does not interfere with Caesar is turned over to 
 God. Not so did Christ understand it. 
 
 For Christ the whole life is God's business, and what 
 is not God's may be given to Caesar. 
 
 " Unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto 
 God the things which are God's." 
 
374 WHAT A CHRISTIAN MAT DO 
 
 What is Caesar's ? The coin, — what is carnal, — not 
 yours. 
 
 Give, then, everything carnal to him who will take it ; 
 but your life, which you have received from God, is all 
 God's. This cannot be given to any one but God, because 
 man's life, according to Christ's teachiag, is the service of 
 God (Matt. iv. 10), and one cannot serve two masters 
 (Matt. vi. 24). 
 
 Everything carnal a man must give to somebody, and 
 so may give also to Caesar ; but he cannot serve anybody 
 but God. 
 
 If men believed in Christ's teaching, in the teaching of 
 love, they could not lose all the divine laws revealed by 
 Christ, in order to fulfil the laws of Caesar. 
 
 1887. 
 
LETTER TO N. N. 
 
 (To Engelhard) 
 1887 
 
LETTER TO N. N. 
 
 (To Engelhard) 
 
 My dear N. K. : — I write to you " dear/* not because 
 people usually write this way, but because since the 
 receipt of your first, but especially of your second, letter, 
 I feel that you are very near to me, and I love you very 
 much. 
 
 In the sentiment which I experience there is much 
 which is egoistical. You probably do not think so, but 
 you cannot imagine to what extent I am lonely, to what 
 extent that which is my real ego is despised by aU who 
 surround me. 
 
 I know that he who suffers until the end shall be 
 saved; I know that it is only in trifles that a man is 
 given the right to enjoy the fruits of his labour, or at 
 least to see this fruit, but that in matters of divine truth, 
 which is eternal, it cannot be given to man to see the fruit 
 of his work, especially in the short period of his brief life ; 
 I know all that, and yet frequently lose courage, and so 
 the meeting with you and the hope, almost the assurance, 
 of finding in you a man who is sincerely walking with 
 me on the road and tending toward the same goal is a 
 great joy to me. 
 
 Well, now I will answer everything in order. 
 
 Your letters to Aksakov have pleased me, especially 
 the last. Your proofs are incontestable, but they do not 
 
 377 
 
378 LETTER TO N. S. 
 
 exist for him. Everything he says has long heen known 
 to me. It is all repeated in life, in literature, in conver- 
 sations : it is all one and the same. It is this : " I see 
 that this is true, and this false, for such and such reasons ; 
 that this is good, and this bad, because it is so and so." 
 
 Aksakov and his like see that it is true ; even before 
 you have told it to them, they know that it is true. But 
 they abide in the lie, and in order that a man, like any 
 other with a heart which loves the good and despises the 
 evil, and with a reason which has this one purpose of dis- 
 tinguishing the lie from the truth, may be able to live 
 in the lie and the evil, and serve them, he had to close 
 his eyes against the truth even before this, and to continue 
 to do the favourite evil. 
 
 They have all the same shield : the historical concep- 
 tion, the objective view, the care for others, and the re- 
 moval of the question as to their relation to the good and 
 to truth. 
 
 Aksdkov does this, and so does Solov^v, and so have 
 done all the theologians, and all the statesmen, the politi- 
 cal economists, and all who live contrary to the truth and 
 to goodness, and who have to justify themselves before 
 themselves. 
 
 This cannot be said any more clearly than it has been 
 said in John iii. 19-21. 
 
 From this I draw the conclusion that in relation to 
 these people one must not cast the pearls, but must work 
 out a certain relation to them, so as not to waste strength. 
 Disputing with them is not only an idle matter, but even 
 harmful for our purpose. They irritate us with provoca- 
 tions to something superfluous and inexact, and, forgetting 
 all the chief things which you have said, will harass you 
 only about that one thing. 
 
 The relation which I am trying to work out in myself 
 toward them, and which I advise others, too, to work out, 
 is like my relation to a debauched, drunken bully who is 
 
LETTER TO N. N. 379 
 
 trying to draw my sixteen-year-old son into debauch. I 
 am sorry for this debauchee, but I will not try to mend 
 him, for I know that it is impossible : he is beyond any 
 hope, and will only ridicule me in the eyes of my son. 
 Nor will I by force remove my son from him, for my 
 son will inevitably meet him or his like, to-morrow, if not 
 to-day ; I will even not try to disclose his baseness to my 
 son. My son has to find it out for himself. I will try to 
 fill my son's soul with such contents that the temptations 
 of the bully will not corrupt him, or else I shall lose all 
 my strength, of which there is none too much, in casting 
 the pearls, and they will, if not trample upon you and me, 
 and crush us, put out the little flickering light amidst the 
 darkness. 
 
 And with this excursus I have accidentally approached 
 directly the second point in your letter. 
 
 " How are men's eyes to be opened ? How are they to 
 be saved from the temptations of the debauchees, when 
 violence is in the way ? " 
 
 " How is the evangelical teaching to be reaHzed ? " 
 
 " Must I not take the part of men if they ask my aid 
 even though I should have to free them by force, when 
 before my eyes others kill and torture them ? " 
 
 It is not right to free and defend men by force, and it 
 is not right, because it is impossible and also because it is 
 foolish, to attempt doing good by means of violence. 
 
 My dearest, please, for the sake of the God of truth, 
 which you serve, be in no hurry, do not get excited, do 
 not invent proofs of the justice of your opinion before you 
 have thought deeply, not of what I am writing you, but 
 of the Gospel, and not of the Gospel as the word of Christ, 
 or God, and so forth, but of the Gospel as the clearest, 
 simplest, most comprehensible, and practical teaching of 
 how each of us and all men are to live. 
 
 If a mother in my presence thrashes her child, what 
 shall I do ? 
 
380 LETTER TO N. N. 
 
 Consider that the question is what I must do, that is, 
 what is good and rational, and not what my first impulse 
 will be. The first impulse in the case of a personal insult 
 is revenge; but the question is whether this is rational 
 
 Precisely such is the question as to whether it is 
 rational to use violence against the mother who is whip- 
 ping her child. If a mother is whipping her child, what 
 is it that pains me, and that I consider evil ? Is it that 
 the child is suffering pain, or that the mother, instead 
 of the joy of love, is experiencing the agony of malice ? 
 I think that in either there is evil. 
 
 One man can do no evil. Evil is the disunion between 
 men. And so, if I want to act, I can do so only for 
 the purpose of destroying the disunion and estabhshing the 
 union between the mother and the child. What, then, 
 shall I do ? Shall I use violence on the mother ? I shall 
 not destroy her disunion (sin) with the child, but shall only 
 introduce a new sin, — the disunion between her and me. 
 What, then, shall I do? It is this: take the child's 
 place, and this will not be irrational. 
 
 To what Dostoevski writes, — which has always dis- 
 gusted me, — and what the monks and the metropolitans 
 have told me, — that it is lawful to wage war, for it is a 
 defence (" to lay down one's life for one's brothers "), I 
 have always rephed : " To defend with one's breast, to 
 substitute oneself, yes, — but to shoot people with guns, 
 — that is not defending, but killing." 
 
 Ponder on the teaching of the Gospel, and you wiU see 
 that the very short fourth commandment. Resist not evil 
 with evil, reply not to evil, is, I shall not say, the main, 
 but the binding link of the whole teaching, the one which 
 all the pseudo-Christian teachings have most carefully 
 circumvented, and that proposition the non-recognition of 
 which has served as the foundation of everything which 
 you so justly hate. 
 
 To say nothing of the Nicene Council, which has 
 
LETTER TO N. N. 381 
 
 created so much evil, and which is based on this same 
 lack of comprehension of Christ's teaching, that is, on 
 violence in the name of the good and of Christ, this vio- 
 lence in the name of the good is to be found in its germ 
 in apostolic times, even in the Acts of Paul, and vitiates 
 the meaning of the teaching. 
 
 How often I have felt sad in my conversations with 
 priests and revolutionists, who look upon the evangehcal 
 teaching as upon a weapon for obtaining external aims. 
 The men of either extreme poles have with equal virulence 
 denied this fundamental proposition of Christ's teaching. 
 The first must not persecute and crush the heterodox, and 
 bless battles and executions; the second must not by. 
 force destroy the existing monstrous disorder, which is 
 called order. 
 
 Apparently the priests and the authorities cannot even 
 imagine human life without violence. The same is true 
 of the revolutionists. By their fruits do you tell the 
 tree : a good tree cannot bring forth fruits of violence. 
 Christ's teaching can neither serve for killing, nor for 
 temporizing ; and so the men of either class, by pervert- 
 ing the teaching, deprive themselves of the one force 
 which is given by the faith in the truth, in the whole 
 truth, and not in a particle of it. 
 
 "They that take up the sword shall perish by the 
 sword," is not a prediction, but a confirmation of a fact 
 well known to all. 
 
 « If thy light is darkness," if that which thou regard- 
 est as good is not good, but evil, what will the evil of thy 
 life and of thy works be ? 
 
 It is impossible to serve God a little and the devil a 
 little, and the gospel is not such a stupid book as the 
 priests have made it out for us. Every proposition is not 
 given there to the winds, but is organically connected with 
 the whole teaching. Even so the commandment about the 
 non-resistance to evil by means of violence goes through 
 
382 LETTER TO N. N. 
 
 the whole Gospel, and without it the teaching of the Gospel 
 falls to pieces, at least it does so to me. Not only is it 
 many times expressed clearly and directly, so that it can- 
 not be concealed; not only is all the description of life 
 and of Christ's works an application of this command- 
 ment; but Evangelist John presents Caiaphas as not 
 understanding this truth, and, in consequence of the lack 
 of comprehension, as ruining Christ's Hfe in the name of 
 the people's good ; the Gospel shows directly that resist- 
 ance to evil by means of violence is the most terrible and 
 dangerous offence into which Christ's disciples fall, and He 
 Himself comes very near falling into it. 
 
 More than this : it now seems to me that if Christ and 
 His teaching did not exist, I should myself have discovered 
 this truth, — so simple and clear does it appear to me 
 now, and I am convinced it will appear such to you also. 
 
 It is now so clear to me that if I were to admit the 
 slightest violence in the name of correcting a most terrible 
 evil, another, on the basis of this, would permit himself 
 a small act of violence, and a third, a fourth, and millions 
 of small acts of violence will combine into one terrible 
 evil, which exists even now and crushes us. 
 
 If you have fulfilled my request and have calmly read 
 to the end, refraining from arguments in confirmation of 
 your opinion, and have followed my exposition, then I 
 hope that you will agree with me that there are also 
 strong arguments for the contrary opinion, and I hope 
 that you will still more agree with me when you have 
 read the exposition which I am sending you. 
 
 So far as I can guess, you are now in this position : 
 your reason tells you that I am right, but your heart 
 revolts against such a proposition concerning the non- 
 resistance to evil. 
 
 You say to yourself : " Something is wrong here ; 
 there is here some error of judgment, and I will find it 
 and wiU prove that it is impossible that Christ's teaching, 
 
LETTER TO N. N 383 
 
 the teaching of love for my brother, should lead me to sit 
 with folded arms looking at the evil which is being com- 
 mitted in the world. It is all very well," you say, « for 
 an old man who has lived his day to talk idly and assure 
 all men that we must not resist evil. He does not suffer : 
 he has enough to eat, is satisfied, has everything he wants, 
 and has but a short time left to live. The whole fire of 
 life has been used up by him, but I feel without reflection 
 that in me is stored love for what is good and true, and 
 hatred for what is evil and untrue, and not vainly so. 
 I cannot help but express it and live in its name, and 
 every step of my life is a struggle with evil. I am obliged 
 to struggle, and I will struggle with them, using all the 
 means which have already become clear to me and which 
 will become clear to me in the future. What is needed 
 is a propaganda among the people, a closer union with 
 the sectarians, the exertion of an influence on the govern- 
 ment, and so forth." 
 
 The feehng which prompts this is good, and I love you 
 for this, but it is the feeling which prompted Peter to 
 provide himself with a knife and cut off the slave's ear. 
 
 Imagine what would have happened if Jesus had not 
 repressed those feehngs : there would have been a fight ; 
 let us suppose that Jesus' men would have been victo- 
 rious and would have conquered the whole of Jerusalem. 
 They w6uld have struck down men, and others would 
 have struck down them. What would have become of 
 the Christian teaching? 
 
 It would not exist now, and we should have nothing 
 to lean on. We should be worse than an Aksakov or 
 Solov^v. 
 
 In order completely to express to you my idea, I will 
 tell you what I take to be the meaning of Christ, a mean- 
 ing which is not hazy and mystical, but clear and vital. 
 
 All say that the meaning of Christianity lies in loving 
 God and our neighbour as ourselves. But what is God ? 
 
384 LETTER TO N. N. 
 
 What is meant by loving something incomprehensible, — 
 God ? What is a neighbour ? What am I ? 
 
 These words have for me this meaning : To love God 
 means to love truth. 
 
 To love my neighbour as myself means to recognize 
 the unity of my essence, soul, and life with every other 
 human life, with eternal truth, — God. So it is for me. 
 But it is clear to me that these words, which define noth- 
 ing, may be understood differently, and that the majority 
 of men are even unable to understand it as I do. The 
 main thing is that these words put no obligations on me, 
 or on any one else, and define nothing. 
 
 How is this ? I am to love God, whom each under- 
 derstands in his own way, and others do not recognize at 
 all ; and I am to love my neighbour as myself, whereas 
 there is implanted in me the love of self, which does not 
 leave me for a moment, and very frequently just as con- 
 stant a hatred of others. 
 
 This is so obscure and impracticable that it remains an 
 empty phrase. It is my opinion that it is a metaphysical 
 proposition, which is important in itself, but when it is 
 understood as a rule of life, as a law, it is simply stupid. 
 Unfortunately it is frequently understood as such. 
 
 All this I say in order to make clear that the meaning 
 of Christianity, as of any other faith, does not lie in meta- 
 physical principles, — these will always be the same with 
 all humanity (Buddha, Confucius, Socrates), — but in their 
 application to life, in the Hving representation of that good 
 of every man and of all humanity which is obtained in 
 their application, and in the determination of the rules 
 by means of which they are obtained. 
 
 Even in Deuteronomy it says, "Love God and thy 
 neighbour as thyself;" but the application of this rule 
 according to Deuteronomy consisted in circumcision, in the 
 Sabbath, and in the criminal law. 
 
 The significance of Christianity consists in the indica- 
 
LETTER TO N. K. 385 
 
 tion of the possibility and the happiness of the execution 
 of the law of love. Christ very clearly defined in the 
 sermon on the mount how this law must and can be car- 
 ried out for His own happiness and for that of all men. 
 In the sermon on the mount, without which there would 
 be no teaching of Christ, — in this all agree, — and in 
 which Christ does not address the sages, but the illiterate 
 and the tawny-handed, and which is hedged in with the 
 introduction, "Whosoever shall break one of these least 
 commandments," and with the conclusion that we must 
 not speak, but fulfil, — in this sermon everything is said, 
 and five commandments are given as to how to fulfil the 
 teaching. 
 
 In the sermon on the mount are expounded the sim- 
 plest, easiest, most comprehensible rules of the application 
 of the love of God and of our neighbours to life, without 
 the recognition or fulfilment of which it is impossible to 
 speak of Christianity. 
 
 And, no matter how strange this may seem, after 
 eighteen hundred years I had to rediscover these rules 
 as something new. And only when I comprehended 
 these rules did I comprehend the meaning of Christ's 
 teaching. 
 
 These rules so marvellously embrace the whole life 
 of each man and of all humanity that a man need but 
 imagine the fulfilment of these rules on earth in order 
 that the kingdom of righteousness may be upon earth. 
 
 Then analyze all these rules separately, applying them 
 to yourself, and you will see that this incredibly blessed 
 and enormous result is obtained through the fulfilment 
 of the simplest, most natural rules, which are not only 
 easy, but even pleasurable to execute. 
 
 Do you think it is necessary to add anything to these 
 rules in order that the kingdom of righteousness be real- 
 ized ? It is not. 
 
 Do you think that it is possible to reject one of the 
 
386 LETTER TO N. N. 
 
 rules without impairing the kingdom of righteousness? 
 It is not. 
 
 If I did not know anything of Christ's teaching but 
 the five rules, I should still be as good a Christian as 
 I am now. 
 
 Be not angry. Commit no debauch. Do not swear. 
 Do not judge. Wage no war. In this does the essence 
 of Christ's teaching consist for me. 
 
 This clear expression of Christ's teaching has been 
 concealed from men, and so humanity has always devi- 
 ated from it in two extreme directions. Some, seeing in 
 Christ's teaching the teaching of the salvation of the sou\ 
 have, for the sake of the grossly conceived eternal life, 
 removed themselves from the world, caring only for this, 
 what to do for themselves, how to perfect themselves 
 individually, — which would be ridiculous, if it were not 
 pitiful. Tremendous forces have been wasted by these 
 people, — and there have been many of them, — on what 
 is impossible and foolish, on doing good for themselves 
 individually, without other men. 
 
 Others, on the contrary, who did not believe in the 
 future life, have lived, the best of them, only for others, 
 but did not know and did not want to know what was 
 necessary for themselves, and in the name of what they 
 wanted the good for others, or what good they wanted. 
 
 It seems to me that one thing is impossible without 
 the other ; a man cannot do any good to himself, to his* 
 soul, without acting for others and with others, as did 
 the religious ascetics and others, — the best of them, — 
 and he cannot do good to men if he does not know what 
 he himself needs, and in the name of what he is acting, 
 as in the case of the public workers who have no faith. 
 
 I love the men of the first order, but with all the forces 
 of my soul do I despise their teaching, and I love very 
 much the men of the second category, though I despise 
 their teaching. Only that teaching has the truth which 
 
LETTER TO N. K. 387 
 
 points out an activity, — life, — which satisfies the de- 
 mands of the soul, and which, at the same time, is a con- 
 stant activity for the good of others. 
 
 Such is the teaching of Christ. It is equally distant 
 from religious quietism, from the care for one's soul, 
 and from the revolutionary zeal (the governmental, the 
 priestly activity is revolutionary) of him who wants to 
 benefit others, though, at the same time, he does not 
 know wherein this true, indubitable good consists. 
 
 The Christian life is such that it is impossible to do 
 good to people except by doing good to oneself, to one's 
 rational soul, and impossible to do good to oneself, except 
 by doing good to one's neighbours. The Christian life is 
 equally distant from quietism and from excessive zeal. 
 
 Young people, who are of your turn of mind, are in- 
 clined to confuse the true Christian teaching with the 
 quietism of the superstitious, and it seems to them that 
 it is very convenient and very easy to reject the resistance 
 to evil through violence, and that this causes the Chris- 
 tian work to weaken and lose force. That is not true. 
 You must understand that a Christian renounces vio- 
 lence, not because he does not love the same which you 
 desire ; not because he does not see that violence is the 
 first thing which begs for recognition at the sight of evil ; 
 but because he sees that violence removes him from his 
 aim, and does not bring him nearer to it, and that it is 
 senseless, as it is senseless for a man who wants to get 
 to the water of a spring with a stick to strike the earth 
 which separates him from the spring. For a man who 
 denies violence it is not easier, — on the contrary : it is 
 more difficult to take a spade and dig, than to strike the 
 earth with a pole. But it is easier for him, because he 
 knows full well that by opposing evil, not with violence, 
 but with goodness and truth, he is doing what he can, 
 fulfilling the will of the Father, according to Christ's 
 expression. 
 
388 LETTER TO N. N. 
 
 It is impossible to put fire out with fire, to dry up water 
 with water, to destroy evil with evil. They have been 
 doing that ever since the beginning of the world, and 
 have reached the state in which we live. 
 
 It is time to give up the old method, and to take hold 
 of the new, the more so since it is more sensible. 
 
 If there is a motion forward, it is so only thanks to 
 those who have paid with good for evil. 
 
 What would happen if only one-millionth part of those 
 efforts which are employed by people in order to fight 
 evil with violence were employed for the purpose of en- 
 during evil, without taking part in it, and of shedding 
 the light which is given to each ? If it were so simply 
 from the point of view of experiment ! 
 
 Nothing has been gained by the other way, — so why 
 not try this, the more so since it is clear, obvious, and 
 joyful ? 
 
 Here is a special example : let us recall Eussia for the 
 last twenty years. How much sincere desire of good 
 and readiness for sacrifice has been wasted by our young 
 intellectual classes in order to establish the truth, to do 
 good to men ! And what has been done ? Nothing. 
 Worse than nothing. They have wasted enormous spirit- 
 ual forces. The poles are broken and the earth is beaten 
 down harder than ever, so that the spade does not enter 
 into it. 
 
 Instead of those terrible sacrifices which the youths 
 have brought, instead of shooting, causing explosions, 
 running printing offices, these men need but beheve in 
 Christ's teaching, that is, consider that the Christian Hfe 
 is the one rational life. What if, instead of that terrible 
 tension of forces, one, two, ten, dozens, hundreds of men 
 should say, in reply to the call to military service, " We 
 cannot serve as murderers, because we believe in Christ's 
 teaching, that teaching which we profess and which for- 
 bids it by a special commandment"? The same they 
 
LETTER TO N. N". 389 
 
 might say in respect to the oath and to the courts ; the 
 same they might say and do in respect to the violence 
 which asserts private possession. What would happen 
 in this case I do not know ; but I know that it would 
 advance matters. 
 
 I know that there is one truly fruitful way, and that 
 is not to do what is contrary to Christ's teaching, but 
 outright and openly to profess it, not for the purpose of 
 obtaining any external aims, but for one's own inward 
 satisfaction, which consists in not doing any evil to 
 others, as long as I am not yet able to do them good. 
 
 Here is my answer to your questions as to what we 
 should strive after. We should strive to carry out Christ's 
 rules for ourselves and disclose to men the light and the 
 joy of their execution. All this is, however, much better 
 expressed in the Gospel (Matt. v. 13-16). 
 
 I foresee another objection. You will say : " It is not 
 clear how to carry out these rules, and what they will 
 bring us to. How are we according to these rules to 
 bear ourselves in relation to property, to the authorities, 
 to international relations ? 
 
 Do not think that there is anything obscure with 
 Christ. Everything is as clear as dayhght. 
 
 The relation to the authorities is expressed in the story 
 of the penny. Money — property — is a non-Christian 
 matter. It comes from the authorities, give it back to 
 the authorities ; but your soul is your own, it is from the 
 God of truth, and so give to no one but God your works, 
 your rational freedom. They can kill you, but they can- 
 not compel you to kill, to do an un-Christian deed. 
 
 According to the Gospel there is no property, and woe 
 to those who have it, that is, they fare badly. In rela- 
 tion to property, a Christian can only refuse to take part 
 in acts of violence which are committed in the name of 
 property, and may explain to others that property is a 
 myth, that there is no property, but that there is a habit- 
 
390 LETTER TO N. N. 
 
 ual act of violence in relation to the use of things, which 
 people call property, and which is bad. There can be no 
 question of property for a man who will give up his cloak 
 when they want to take his coat from him. 
 
 Nor can there be any question about international 
 relations. All men are brothers, — all are alike ; and if 
 a Zulu comes and wants to roast my children, there is 
 only one thing which I can do, and that is, to impress 
 upon the Zulu that this is not advantageous and good for 
 him, — to impress this upon him, while submitting to 
 his force, — the more so since there is no profit in strug- 
 gling with a Zulu : either he will overcome me and will 
 roast more of my children, or I shall overcome him, and 
 my children will get ill to-morrow and die in worse 
 agonies of disease. 
 
 There is profit in it, because by submitting I certainly 
 do better, while by resisting I do something doubtful. 
 
 So here is my answer : the best that we can do is for 
 us to carry out the whole teaching of Christ. In order to 
 do so, we must be convinced that it is the truth both for 
 humanity at large and for each of us in particular. 
 
 Have you that faith ? 
 
 There are two more objections, or questions, which, I 
 imagine, you will bring forward. The first is this, that 
 if we shall submit, as I say, to a Zulu or a policeman, 
 and shall give to a bad man everything which he may 
 want to take from me ; if we are not to take part in the 
 governmental institution of the courts, of schools, of uni- 
 versities, and are not to recognize our property, — we shall 
 fall to the lowest round of the social ladder, and shall be 
 trampled upon and crushed: we shall be mendicants, 
 tramps, and the light which is in us will be lost in vain, 
 and no one will see it, and so would it not be better to 
 hold ourselves on a certain level of independence from 
 want, of a possibility of education and of communion 
 with as large a circle of men 03 possible (the press) ? 
 
LETTER TO N. N. 391 
 
 Indeed, so it seems, but it only seems so. And it 
 seems so because we value highly our comforts of life, 
 our education, and all those imaginary joys which they 
 furnish us, and we temporize when we say so. It is 
 not true, because, no matter on what level a man may 
 stand, he will always be with men, and so able to do good 
 to them. But whether the professors of a university 
 are better, or the inmates of the night lodging-houses 
 are more important for the work of Christianity, — that 
 is a question which no man can decide. In favour of the 
 poor speaks my own sentiment and Christ's example. 
 Only the poor can preach the Gospel, that is, teach the 
 rational life. I can discuss beautifully and be sincere, 
 but no man will ever believe me, so long as he sees that 
 I, living in a mansion, spend with my family in a day 
 the amount of a year's supply for an indigent family. 
 And as regards our vaunted education, it is time to stop 
 speaking of it as of a good. It will easily spoil ninety-nine 
 of every hundred men, and it will certainly not add 
 anything to one man. You no doubt know about 
 Syutaev. Here is an illiterate peasant, but his influence 
 on people, on our intellectual classes, is greater and more 
 important than that of all the Eussian savants and 
 writers, with all their Piishkins and Byelmskis taken 
 together, from Tredyakdvski until our day. We shall not 
 lose much. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or 
 brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or chil- 
 dren, shall receive a hundred times more houses, and a 
 father here in this world, and also everlasting hfe. Many 
 that are first shall be last (Matt. xix. 29, 30). 
 
 Now another question, which directly, involuntarily 
 results from it : " Well, and you, Lev Nikoldevich ? You 
 preach indeed, but how do you carry it out ? " This is a 
 most natural question which people always put to me 
 and with which they triumphantly close my mouth. 
 
 ** You preach, but how do you hve ? " And I answer 
 
392 LETTER TO N. N. 
 
 that I do not preach and cannot preach, though I passion- 
 ately wish to do so. 
 
 I could preach by my works, but my works are bad. 
 What I speak is not a preaching, but only a rebuttal of 
 the false understanding of the Christian teaching and the 
 explanation of its real meaning. Its meaning does not 
 consist in reorganizing society in its name through 
 the exercise of force ; its meaning consists in finding the 
 meaning of Hfe in this world. 
 
 The fulfilment of the five commandments gives this 
 meaning. 
 
 If you want to be a Christian, you must fulfil these 
 commandments ; and if you do not want to fulfil them, 
 do not speak to me of Christianity, outside of the fulfil- 
 ment of these commandments. 
 
 "But," people say to me, "if you find that outside 
 of the fulfilment of the Christian teaching there is no 
 rational life, and you love this rational life, why do you 
 not fulfil the commandments ? " 
 
 I answer that I am guilty and wretched, and that I 
 deserve contempt for not fulfilling them, but, at the same 
 time, not so much in justification as in explanation of 
 my inconsistency, I say : Look at my former and at my 
 present life, and you will see that I am trying to fulfil 
 I have not fulfilled one ten -thousandth part, it is true, and 
 I am to blame, but I have not fulfilled it, not because I 
 did not want to, but because I could not. Accuse me, — 
 I do so myself, — but accuse me only, and not the path 
 over which I walk, and which I point out to those who 
 ask me where, in my opinion, the path is. 
 
 If I know the way home and walk on it, drunk, totter- 
 ing from side to side, does it follow from this that the 
 path over which I am travelling is not right ? 
 
 If it is not right, — show me another ; but if I have 
 lost my way and am tottering, help me, hold me on the 
 right path, even as I am prepared to hold you up, and do 
 
LETTER TO N. N. 393 
 
 not push me off, do not rejoice because I have lost my 
 way, do not shout in glee : 
 
 "There he says that he is going home, and yet he is 
 making for the swamp ! " 
 
 Do not rejoice at this, but help me, assist me ! You 
 are not yourselves wills-o'-the-wisp, but men who are 
 making for home ! 
 
 I am one, and I certainly do not wish to go into the 
 swamp. 
 
 Help me ! My heart bursts from despair, because we 
 have all gone astray ; and when I struggle with all my 
 might and main, you, at every deviation of mine, instead 
 of pitying yourself and me, push me into the swamp and 
 shout in delight : 
 
 " See, he is in the swamp with us ! " 
 
 Such is my relation to the teaching and its fulfilment. 
 I try with all my power to fulfil it, and on every failure 
 to fulfil it, I not only repent, but implore aid so as to be 
 able to fulfil, and with joy meet every man who like me 
 seeks the path, and obey him. 
 
 If you read what I send you, you will also understand 
 the contents of this letter. 
 
 Write to me. I am very glad to commune with you, 
 and will in agitation await your answer. 
 
 1887. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO T. M. 
 BONDAREV'S TEACHING 
 
 1888 
 
INTRODUCTION TO T. M. 
 BONDAREV'S TEACHING 
 
 This work is offered here precisely in the form in 
 which it was written. The only difference from the 
 original is this, that for its peculiar orthography is substi- 
 tuted the one which is generally used in books, and also 
 this, that the whole work is divided into two parts, the 
 exposition and the supplement. In the supplement I 
 have separated what to me appeared as repetition or 
 departure from the exposition of the subject itself. 
 
 This work seems to me very remarkable on account of 
 its power, and clearness, and beauty of language, and 
 power of sincerity of conviction, which may be seen in 
 every line, and, above all, on account of the importance, 
 correctness, and profundity of the fundamental idea. 
 
 The fundamental idea of this work is this : 
 
 In all the affairs of life it is not important to know 
 what it is that is good and necessary, but what of all 
 good and necessary things or acts is of the very first im- 
 portance, what of a second, what of a third importance, 
 and so forth. If this is true in affairs of life, it is still 
 more true in matters of faith, which defines the duties of 
 man. 
 
 Tatian, a teacher of the first times of the church, says 
 that the misfortune of men is due not so much to the 
 fact that men do not know God as to the fact that they 
 
 397 
 
398 BONDAEEV*S TEACHING 
 
 recognize a false God — that they recognize as a god 
 what is not God. 
 
 The same may be said of the doctrine of men's obHgations. 
 
 Men's misfortune and evil is not due so much to the 
 fact that men do not know their duties, as to the fact 
 that they recognize false duties; that they recognize as 
 their duty what is not their duty, and do not recognize 
 as their duty what is their chief duty. 
 
 Bondar^v asserts that men's misfortunes and evil are 
 due to this, that they have recognized as their religious 
 duties many idle and harmful decrees, and have forgotten 
 and concealed from themselves and others their chief, 
 first, indubitable duty, which is expressed in the first 
 chapter of Holy Scripture : In the sweat of thy face shalt 
 thou eat bread. 
 
 For people who believe in the sacredness and infallibil- 
 ity of God's word,- as expressed in the Bible, this com- 
 mandment, given by God Himself, and nowhere abolished, 
 is a sufficient proof of its truth. 
 
 But for people who do not acknowledge Holy Scripture 
 the meaning and truth of this proposition, if we will only 
 view it without prejudice, as a simple and not super- 
 natural expression of human wisdom, is proved by the 
 analysis of the conditions of human life, as Bondar^v 
 proves it in this work of his. 
 
 An obstacle to such an analysis is unfortunately found 
 in this, that many of us have become so accustomed to 
 the perverse and senseless interpretations by the theo- 
 logians of the words of Holy Scripture, that the mere 
 mention that a certain proposition coincides with Holy 
 Scripture serves as a cause for looking with contempt on 
 such a proposition. 
 
 " What does Holy Scripture mean to me ? We know 
 that anything you please may be based on it, and that 
 everything in it is a lie." 
 
 But that is not true. It is certainly not the fault of 
 
bondarey's teaching 399 
 
 Holy Scripture if people have interpreted it wrongly, and 
 a man who tells a truth is not to blame, because he 
 expressed a truth which has been given before, and espe- 
 cially in Holy Scripture. We must not forget that if we 
 admit that what is called Holy Scripture is not the 
 product of God, but of men, there must be some good 
 reason why this human production, and not any other, 
 has been accepted by men as the writing of God Himself. 
 This reason is clear. 
 
 This Scripture is by superstitious persons called divine, 
 because it is higher than anything which men knew, and 
 also because this Scripture, despite the fact that men 
 have all the time denied it, has come down to us and con- 
 tinues to be considered divine. It is called divine and 
 has come down to us, only because in it is contained the 
 highest human intelHgence. And such is in many places 
 the writing which is called the Bible. And such is the 
 forgotten and omitted utterance, which is not understood 
 in its real meaning, and which Bondar^v explains and 
 puts in his ?.orner-stone chapter. 
 
 This utterance and the whole world of the life in Para- 
 dise is generally comprehended in its direct meaning, 
 namely, that all actually happened as described, wherea-s 
 the significance of the whole passage is this, that in a 
 figurative form it presents those as it were contradictory 
 tendencies which are found in human nature. 
 
 Man is afraid of death and is subject to it ; a man who 
 does not know good and evil seems to be happy, but he 
 irrepressibly tends to this knowledge : man loves idleness 
 and the gratification of passions without suffering, and 
 yet it is only labour and suffering that give life to him 
 and to his race. 
 
 This utterance is not important because it was pre- 
 sumably made by God to Adam himself, but because it 
 is true and confirms one of the unquestionable laws of 
 human life. 
 
400 BONDAR^V'S TEACHING 
 
 The law of gravity is not true because it was enun- 
 ciated by Newton, but I know Newton and am thankful 
 to him because he discovered for me the eternal law 
 which gave me an answer to a whole series of phenomena. 
 
 The same is true of the law, In the sweat of thy face 
 shalt thou eat bread. 
 
 It is a law which elucidates to me a whole series of 
 phenomena. And, having once come to understand it, I 
 can no longer forget it, and am thankful to him who has 
 revealed it to me. This law seems very simple and long 
 known ; but it only seems so, and to convince ourselves 
 of the opposite, we need but look around us. Men not 
 only fail to recognize this law, but even recognize the 
 very opposite. In conformity with their faith, all men — 
 from the king to the beggar — do not strive to fulfil this 
 law, but to avoid fulfilling it. This work of Bondar^v is 
 devoted to the elucidation of the eternity and unchange- 
 ableness of this law and the inevitableness of the calamities 
 arising from a departure from it. 
 
 Bondar^v calls this law an original law and chief of all 
 other laws. Bondar^v proves that sin (that is, error, false 
 act) is due only to a departure from this law. Of all the 
 positive duties of man, Bondar^v regards it as the chief, 
 first, and invariable duty of each man to earn his bread 
 with his own hands (meaning by bread every hard, manual 
 labour, necessary for man's salvation from starvation and 
 cold, that is, his food, and drink, and raiment, and house, 
 and fuel). 
 
 Bondar^v's fundamental idea is that this law (that a 
 man must work in order to live), which heretofore has 
 been acknowledged as a necessity, must be recognized as 
 a good and invariable law of human life. 
 
 This law must be recognized like any religious law, like 
 the observance of the Sabbath, the circumcision among the 
 Jews, the fulfilment of the sacraments, the fasts of the ec- 
 clesiastic Christians, the fivefold prayer and fasting among 
 
' bondakey's teaching 401 
 
 the Mohammedans. Bondar^v says in one place that if 
 people recognize the bread work as their rehgious obliga- 
 tion, no private, special occupations can interfere with the 
 execution of this work, just as no special occupations can 
 keep the people of the church from executing the idleness 
 of their holidays. 
 
 In all, more than eighty holidays are counted, and to 
 do the bread work only forty days are needed according 
 to Bondar^v's calculation. No matter how strange it may 
 at first appear that such a simple, all-intelligible, artless 
 means might Serve as a salvation from the endless exist- 
 ing evils of humanity, it is still more strange, when we 
 come to think of it, how we, by leaving it, may seek 
 a cure for our evils in various devices and conceits. But 
 reflect on the matter, and you will see that it is so. 
 
 A man ought not to put a bottom into a vat and ought 
 to invent some more cunning means for retaining the 
 water. Such are all our cares about the cure of existing 
 evils. Indeed, whence comes all the misery of men, if we 
 exclude from the number of miseries those which men 
 have directly inflicted upon each other by means of mur- 
 ders, executions, prisons, frights, and all kinds of cruelties, 
 in which they err by not abstaining from violence ? 
 
 All the misery of men, with the exception of direct 
 violence, is due to hunger, to aU kinds of privations, to 
 despair in work, and, by the side of these, to excesses, idle- 
 ness, and vices caused by them. 
 
 What more sacred duty can man have than cooperating 
 in the abolition of this inequality, these calamities, this 
 need of some, and this temptation in others ? And how 
 can a man cooperate in the abolition of these calamities, if 
 not by a participation in labour which meets men's needs, 
 and by removing from oneself all superabundance and 
 idleness, which are productive of vices and temptations, 
 that is, if not by doing bread work, by supporting oneself 
 with one's own hands, as Bondar^v says ? 
 
402 BONDAR^V'S TEACHING 
 
 We are so entangled by having created for ourselves so 
 many laws, religious, and social, and domestic, so many 
 rules, as Isaiah says, "Kule upon rule, here a rule, and 
 there a rule," that we have entirely lost the meaning of 
 what is good and what bad. 
 
 A man celebrates mass, a second collects an army or 
 taxes for himself, a third judges, a fourth learns out of 
 books, a fifth cures, a sixth teaches people, and under 
 these pretexts they free themselves from bread work and 
 impose it upon others, forgetting that people die from 
 exertion, labour, and hunger, and that, to have men 
 celebrate mass, defend us by means of an army, sit in 
 judgment, cure, and teach, it is necessary above all else 
 that men should not starve. We forget that there may be 
 many duties, but that among them there is one that is first 
 and one that is last, and that it is not possible to fulfil 
 the last without having fulfilled the first, just as it is im- 
 possible to harrow before ploughing. 
 
 It is to this first indubitable duty in the sphere of 
 practical activity that Bondar^v's teaching takes us. Bon- 
 dar^v shows that the execution of this duty does not 
 interfere with anything, presents no obstacles, and at the 
 same time saves men from misery, want, and temptations. 
 The fulfilment of this duty first of all destroys that 
 strange division into two classes who hate each other and 
 with flattery conceal their mutual hatred. Bread labour, 
 says Bondar^v, equalizes all and wiU clip the wings of 
 luxury and of lust. 
 
 It is impossible to plough and dig wells in costly gar- 
 ments and with clean hands, and while living on dainty 
 food. The occupation with the holy work which is com- 
 mon to all men will bring them together. Bread labour, 
 says Bondar^v, is a remedy which saves humanity. If 
 men recognized this original law as a divine and un- 
 changeable law ; if each man recognized bread labour, 
 that is, his support by means of his own labour, as his 
 
BONDAR^V^S TEACHING 403 
 
 unalterable duty, — all men would unite in the faith of 
 the one God, in the love of one another, and would des- 
 troy the calamities which crush men. 
 
 We are so accustomed to the order of things which rec- 
 ognizes the very opposite, namely, that wealth — the 
 means for not doing bread labour — is either a divine 
 blessing or a higher social position, that, without analyzing 
 this position, we feel Hke recognizing it as narrow, one- 
 sided, idle, stupid. 
 
 But we must give the matter a serious consideration 
 and analyze this position, to see whether it is just. We 
 analyze all kinds of rehgious and political theories, and 
 we will also analyze Bondar^v's theory as a theory. We 
 shall see what will happen, if, according to Bondar^v's 
 idea, the religious propaganda will direct its forces to the 
 elucidation of this law, and all men will recognize as 
 holy the original law of labour. What will happen 
 then ? 
 
 All will work and eat the bread of their labours, and 
 bread and objects of prime necessity will not be objects 
 of purchase and sale. What will happen then? What 
 will happen will be this, that there will be no people who 
 perish from want. If one man does not earn enough for 
 his own food and for that of his family, another man will 
 give it to him. He will give it to him, because he can 
 do nothing else with the bread, since it cannot be sold. 
 What will happen will be this, that man will not have 
 the temptation, the necessity of acquiring bread by means 
 of cunning or violence, because he is not otherwise pro- 
 vided for. And not having this temptation, he will not 
 employ violence or cunning. That will not be necessary, 
 as it is now. 
 
 If he shall use cunning or violence, he will use them 
 only because he likes cunning and violence, and not be- 
 cause he has to, as is the case now. 
 
 Nor will the feeble, who for some reason are unable to 
 
404 BONDAKEV'S TEACHING 
 
 earn their bread, or who for some reason have lost it, need 
 to sell themselves, their labour, and sometimes their souls, 
 for the sake of earning bread. 
 
 There will not exist the present tendency of all to free 
 themselves from bread labour and to impose it upon others, 
 a tendency to crush the feeble with labour and to free the 
 strong from all work. 
 
 There will not be that mood of human thought which 
 directs all the efforts of the mind, not on alleviating the 
 labour of the labouring, but on alleviating and adorning 
 the idleness of the idle. 
 
 The participation of all in bread labour and the recog- 
 nition of the same as the chief of all human affairs pro- 
 duces the same effect that a man would produce with a 
 cart which some foohsh people have been drawing with 
 the wheels up, when he turns it down and puts it on its 
 wheels, and does not break the cart, but makes it go 
 easily. But our Hfe, with the contempt for bread labour 
 and its rejection, and our corrections of this false life, is a 
 cart which we are dragging with its wheels up. All our 
 corrections of the matter are of no avail, so long as we do 
 not turn the cart over and place it properly. 
 
 Such is Bondar^v's idea, which I share in full 
 
 His idea presents itself to me also in this manner. 
 
 There was a time when men ate one another. The 
 consciousness of the unity of all men was developed to 
 such an extent that this became impossible to men, and 
 they stopped eating one another. Then there was a time 
 when people took the labour of others by force and 
 turned men into slavery. Men's consciousness developed 
 to such an extent that this became impossible. This 
 form of violence, though surreptitiously retained, has 
 been destroyed in its gross manifestations: man no 
 longer openly takes possession of another man's labour. 
 In our day there exists that form of violence by which 
 men, exploiting the want of others, subject them to them- 
 
bondaki^y's teaching 405 
 
 selves. According to Bondar^v's idea there is now arriv- 
 ing the time of that consciousness of the unity of men, 
 when it will become impossible for men to exploit the 
 want, that is, the hunger and the cold, of others, in order 
 to subject them to themselves, and when men, by thus 
 recognizing as obligatory the law of bread labour for each, 
 will recognize as their duty unconditionally, without the 
 sale of bread (articles of prime necessity), to feed, and 
 clothe, and warm one another. 
 
 From still another side I look upon this work of 
 Bondar^v's like this. We frequently have occasion to 
 hear judgments of the insufficiency of mere negative 
 laws or commandments, that is, of rules as to what not 
 to do. People say: "We must have positive laws or 
 commandments, we need rules as to what we should do." 
 They say that the five commandments of Christ, — (1) not 
 to regard any one as insignificant or senseless, and not to 
 be angry with any one, (2) not to look upon cohabitation 
 as a subject of enjoyment, not to abandon the mate with 
 whom one has come together once, (3) not to swear to 
 any one in anything, not to bind one's will, (4) to endure 
 offences and not resist them by means of violence, and 
 (5) not to consider any men enemies, and to love the 
 enemies like our neighbours, — they say that all men 
 ascribe to these five commandments of Christ a meaning 
 about what ought not to be done, and that there is no 
 commandment or law which prescribes what ought to be 
 done. 
 
 Indeed, it may appear strange why there are in Christ's 
 teaching no definite commandments as to what ought to 
 be done. But this may appear strange only to him who 
 does not beheve in Christ's teaching itself, which is not 
 contained in the five commandments, but in the teaching 
 of the truth itself. 
 
 The teaching of the truth, as expressed by Christ, is 
 not to be found in the laws about the commandments, — - 
 
406 BOKDAR^V'S TEACHING 
 
 it is to be found in this alone, — in the meaning which 
 is ascribed to life. 
 
 The meaning of this teaching is in this alone, that Hfe 
 and the good of life are not to be found in personal hap- 
 piness, as some people think, but in serving God and 
 men. This proposition is not a prescription which is to 
 be carried out in order to obtain rewards for its fulfil- 
 ment ; it is not a mystical expression of something mys- 
 terious, but the disclosure of a formerly concealed law of 
 life; it is an indication of this, that life can be a good 
 only with such a comprehension of life. And so all the 
 positive teaching of Christ is expressed in this, Love God 
 and thy neighbour as thyself. There can be no elucida- 
 tions of this proposition. It is one, because it is all ! 
 
 Christ's laws and commandments, Hke the Jewish and 
 Buddhist laws and commandments, are only indications of 
 those conditions in which the temptations of the world 
 take men away from the true comprehension of life. 
 And so there can be many laws and commandments ; but 
 there can be but one positive teaching about life, about 
 what ought to be done. 
 
 The life of each man is a motion somewhere ; whether 
 a man wants to or not, he moves, he lives. Christ shows 
 man his path, and at the same time shows those devia- 
 tions from the true path which may lead him on the 
 false road ; of such indications there may be many, they 
 are the commandments. Christ gives five such command- 
 ments, and those which He gives are such that until now 
 it has been impossible to add one, or detract one from 
 them. But there is given but one indication of the direc- 
 tion of the road, just as there can be but one straight line 
 which indicates direction. 
 
 Consequently the idea that in Christ's teaching there 
 are only negative commandments, and none that are posi- 
 tive is correct for those only who do not know or do not 
 believe in the teaching of the truth itself, in the direction 
 
BONDAREV'S TEACHING 407 
 
 itself of the true path of life, as pointed out hy Christ. 
 But the people who believe in the truth of the path of 
 life, as pointed out by Christ, cannot look for positive 
 commandments in His teaching. 
 
 The whole positive activity, the most varied, which 
 results from the teaching of the true path of life, is clear 
 and always indisputably determined for them. Men who 
 believe in the path of Hfe are, according to Christ's utter- 
 ance, like a spring of living water, that is, like a spring 
 welling up from the ground. Their whole activity resem- 
 bles the flowing of water which runs everywhere in spite 
 of the obstacles which detain it. A man who believes in 
 Christ's teaching can as little ask what he is positively 
 to do, as the spring of water can, which is welling up 
 * from the earth. It flows, watering the earth, grass, trees, 
 birds, animals, men. The same does a man who beheves 
 in Christ's teaching about life. 
 
 A man who believes in Christ's teaching will not ask 
 what to do. Love, which will become the power of his 
 life, will show him correctly and indubitably when and 
 what to do first, and what last. 
 
 To say nothing of those indications with which Christ's 
 teaching and our heart are filled, that the first and most 
 exacting work of love consists in giving food to the hun- 
 gry and drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, helping 
 the poor and the imprisoned, — the whole of Christ's 
 teaching, and reason, and conscience, and feeling, every- 
 thing urges us, before all other works of love toward the 
 living, to support this life of our brothers, — to free them 
 from suffering and death, which overcome them in their 
 unequal struggle with Nature, — that is, it urges us on to 
 the most necessary work for the Hfe of men, — to the 
 simplest, foremost, gross, hard labour on the land. 
 
 As the spring of water cannot ask whither to send its 
 water, whether to spurt the water upward on the grass 
 and the leaves of the trees, or to pour forth downward to 
 
408 BONDAREV'S TEACHING 
 
 the roots of the grass and the trees, even so man who 
 believes in the teachiug of the truth cannot ask what he 
 must do first, whether to instruct the people, to defend 
 them, to give them the pleasures of life, or to support 
 them who are perishing from want. And just as the 
 spring flows on the surface and fills the ponds and gives 
 the animals and men to drink only after it has watered 
 the earth, so a man who believes in the teaching of the 
 truth can cooperate with the less pressing demands of 
 men only after he has satisfied the first demand, that is, 
 after he has contributed to their support, to their libera- 
 tion from ruin, in consequence of a struggle with want. 
 A man who professes the teaching of truth and of love 
 not in words, but in deeds, cannot be mistaken as to where 
 he must first of all direct his activity. A man who posits 
 the meaning of life in the service of others can never 
 make the mistake of beginning to serve a hungry and 
 freezing man by writing resolutions, casting cannon, man- 
 ufacturing elegant articles, or playing the violin or the 
 piano. 
 
 Love cannot be foolish ! 
 
 Just as love of man does not permit one to read novels 
 to a hungry man, or to warm up a freezing person by 
 putting on him earrings and bracelets, even so love of , 
 man does not permit the ministration to them to consist 
 in cheering the satiated, abandoning the hungry and the 
 freezing to fate. 
 
 Love that is true, not in words but in deeds, cannot be 
 foolish ; it is only love which gives penetration and 
 wisdom, and so a man who is permeated by love will 
 make no mistake and will always do that first which his 
 love of men demands, — what supports the life of the 
 hungry, the naked, the oppressed; and what support© 
 the life of the hungry, the freezing, and the oppressed is 
 the struggle, the direct struggle with Nature. 
 
 Only he who wants to deceive himself and others can, 
 
BONDAREV'S TEACHING 409 
 
 in moments of danger and of men's struggle with want, 
 evade bringing aid, increase men's want, and assure him- 
 self and those who are perishing in his sight that he is 
 busy finding or inventing means for their salvation. 
 
 Not one sincere man, who puts his life into the minis- 
 tration to others, will say this. And if he says it, he will 
 never find in his conscience a confirmation of his decep- 
 tion ; he will find it only in the tricky devilish teaching 
 about the division of labour. But in all the expressions 
 of human wisdom, from Confucius to Mohammed, he will 
 find one thing only ; he wiU find it with particular force 
 in the Gospel ; he will find the demand for serving men 
 not according to the theory of the division of labour, but 
 in the simplest, most natural, and only necessary means ; 
 he will find the demand for serving the sick, the impris- 
 oned, the hungry, and the freezing. But it is impossible 
 to offer aid to the sick, the imprisoned, the hungry, and 
 the freezing in any other way than by means of one's im- 
 mediate, present labour, because the sick, the hungry, and 
 the freezing do not wait, but die of hunger and of cold. 
 
 To a man who professes the teaching of the truth, his 
 life itself, which consists in serving others, will point out 
 that original law which is expressed in the first book of 
 Genesis, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, 
 which Bondar^v calls the original law and proves to be 
 positive. 
 
 This law is indeed such for men who do not acknowl- 
 edge the meaning of life which is revealed to men by 
 Christ, and such it was for men before Christ, and such 
 it wiU remain for men who do not acknowledge Christ's 
 teaching. It demands that each should live on his labour 
 according to the will of God, as expressed in the Bible 
 and in reason. This law is positive. Such is this law 
 until the meaning of life has been revealed to men in the 
 teaching of the truth. 
 
 But with the higher consciousness of the meaning of 
 
410 BONDAREV'S TEACHING 
 
 life, revealed by Christ, the law of bread labour, remain- 
 ing as true as ever, becomes only a part of the one positive 
 teaching of Christ about serving men, and receives the 
 significance, not of a positive, but of a negative law. This 
 law, with a Christian consciousness, points only to an old 
 temptation of men, to what men must not do in order 
 that they may not deviate from the path of true life. 
 
 For a believer in the Old Testament, who does not 
 acknowledge the teaching, this law has the following 
 meaning : " Earn your bread with your own hands." But 
 for a Christian it has a negative significance. This law 
 says: "Do not assume it as possible to serve people by 
 swallowing up the labours of others and by not earning 
 your own sustenance by your hands." 
 
 This law is for a Christian an indication of one of the 
 most ancient offences from which people suffer. Against 
 this offence, terrible in its consequences and so old that 
 we can with difficulty recognize it as a deception, and 
 not as a natural human property, this teaching of Bonda- 
 r^v is directed : it is equally binding on him who beheves 
 in the Old Testament, and on the Christian who believes in 
 the Holy Scripture, and on him who does not beheve in the 
 Scripture, but follows reason alone, and on him who recog- 
 nizes the teaching of the truth. 
 
 Eeader and dear brother, whoever you may be, I love 
 you, and not only do not wish to grieve and offend you, 
 to bring evil into your life, but want this much, — to 
 serve you. 
 
 I could write a great deal, and I feel like doing so, in 
 order to prove the truth of this proposition and overthrow 
 the arguments which I hear against it. But no matter 
 how much I may write, how well I may write, how logi- 
 cally right I may be, I shall not convince you, if you 
 struggle with your reason against mine, and your heart 
 will remain cold. 
 
 I am afraid of that ; I am afraid of harming you with 
 
bondakey's teaching 411 
 
 the pride of my reason, with my coldness. All I ask you 
 is not to dispute, not to prove, but to ask your heart. 
 
 Whoever you may be, no matter how talented you may 
 be, or how good, or in what condition you may be, can 
 you be calm at your tea, your dinner, at your business of 
 state, of art, of learning, of medicine, or teaching, when 
 you hear or see at your porch a hungry, freezing, sick, 
 weary man ? No, you cannot ! But they are always 
 there, if not at the porch, they are ten sazhens, ten versts 
 away. They are there, and you know it. 
 
 You cannot be calm, you cannot have joys which are 
 not poisoned by them. In order that you may not see 
 them at the porch, you must bar them from you, keep them 
 from you by your coldness, or go somewhere where they 
 are not to be found. But they are everywhere ! And even 
 if a place were found where you would not see them, you 
 will nowhere get away from the consciousness of the 
 truth. What is to be done ? 
 
 You know yourself, and this whole book tells you 
 what. 
 
 Descend to the bottom (to what to you seems to be 
 the bottom, but what is the top), stand by the side 
 of those who feed the hungry, clothe the freezing, — 
 fear nothing, — it will not be worse, but better in jBvery 
 respect. Stand in a row with them, with unskilled hands 
 take hold of the first work which feeds the hungry and 
 clothes those who are cold, — of the bread labour, of the 
 struggle with Nature. — and you will feel for the first 
 time a firm soil under your feet : you will feel that you 
 are at home ; that you are free and firmly settled ; that 
 you have nowhere else to go to, and you wiU experience 
 those whole-hearted unmixed joys which you will find 
 nowhere, behind no doors and behind no curtains. 
 
 You will learn of joys which you did not know ; you 
 wiU know for the first time those simple, strong men, 
 your brothers who, far away from you, have so far fed you, 
 
412 BONDAR^V'S TEACHING 
 
 and, to your surprise, you will discover in them such vir- 
 tues as you did not know before ; you will see in them 
 such modesty, such goodness, namely toward you, which, 
 you will feel, you do not deserve. 
 
 Instead of contempt and ridicule, which you expected, 
 you will see such kindness, such gratitude, such respect 
 for you, because, having lived all your life by their labours, 
 and despising them, you have suddenly come to your 
 senses and are willing to help them with your unslalful 
 hands. 
 
 You will see that what to you appeared as a little 
 island, on which you have been sitting, to save yourself 
 from the sea which was swamping you, is a bog in which 
 you have been sinking ; and that the sea of which you 
 have been afraid is firm ground over which you will pass 
 safely, calmly, joyfully, and it cannot be otherwise, for 
 from the deception which you did not enter yourself, but 
 were led into, you will make your way out to truth, and 
 from the departure from the will of God you will pass 
 over to its fulfilment. 
 
LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 
 
 1889 
 
LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 
 
 You ask me why manual labour presents itself to us 
 as one of the inevitable conditions of true happiness ? 
 
 Is it necessary to deprive ourselves of mental activity 
 in the sphere of science and art, which to us seems in- 
 compatible with manual labour ? 
 
 To these questions I have answered as well as I could 
 in my book entitled What Shall We Do Then ? 
 
 I have never looked upon manual labour as a funda- 
 mental principle, but as a most simple and natural appli- 
 cation of moral principles, an appHcation which presents 
 itself first of all to every sincere man. 
 
 In our corrupt society (the society which is called 
 civilized) we have to speak above all else of manual 
 labour only because the chief defect up to the present 
 time has been a tendency to free oneself from manual 
 labour and to make use, without any mutual exchange, 
 of the labour of the ignorant and dispossessed poor 
 classes, who are in a state of slavery resembhng the 
 slavery of the ancient world. 
 
 The first sign of the sincerity of the men of our class, 
 who profess Christian, philosophical, or humanitarian 
 principles, is a striving to free themselves as much as 
 possible from this injustice. 
 
 The simplest and handiest means for attaining this is 
 manual labour, which begins by attending to one's own 
 needs. 
 
 416 
 
416 LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN" 
 
 I will never believe in the sincerity of the philosophical 
 and moral principles of a man who makes his chamber- 
 maid carry out his vessel. 
 
 The simplest and shortest rule of morality consists in 
 making others serve one as little as possible, and in serv- 
 ing others as much as possible; in demanding as little 
 as possible from others, and giving to others as much as 
 possible. 
 
 This rule, which gives to our existence a rational 
 meaning, and the good as its consequence, at the same 
 time solves all the difficulties, including the one which 
 presents itself to you. This rule points out the place 
 which is to be occupied by mental activity, by science, by 
 art. In following this rule, I am happy and satisfied only 
 when in my activity I am unquestionably sure that it is 
 useful to others. The gratification of those for whom I 
 act is already a surplus, a superabundance of happiness, 
 on which I cannot count and which cannot influence me 
 in the choice of my actions. 
 
 My firm conviction that what I do is not useless and 
 not harmful, but good for others, — this conviction is the 
 chief condition of my happiness. And it is this which 
 makes a moral and sincere man involuntarily prefer 
 manual labour to scientific and altruistic work. 
 
 In order that my labours as an author may be exploited, 
 the work of printers is needed ; to carry out my symphony 
 I need the work of musicians ; in order to carry out ex- 
 periments I need the labours of those who make appli- 
 ances and instruments for our cabinets ; for the picture 
 which I am painting I need the men who prepare the 
 paints and the canvas, — but at the same time the works 
 which I produce may be useful to men, or they may be 
 (as in the majority of cases they are) quite useless and 
 even harmful. 
 
 How, then, can I busy myself with occupations the 
 usefulness of which is very doubtful, and for which I 
 
LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 417 
 
 have to put others into requisition, while about me, in 
 front of me, there is an endless quantity of things which 
 are all unquestionably more useful for others, and for the 
 production of which I need nobody ? For example, to 
 carry a burden for him who is fatigued from it ; to plough 
 up the field of a sick farmer ; to dress a wound, and so 
 forth, to say nothing of the thousands of things which 
 surround us, for the production of which no external aid 
 is needed, which give immediate satisfaction to those for 
 whom they are produced ; in addition to these there is a 
 vast number of acts of a different kind, such as, planting 
 a tree, raising a calf, cleaning a well, — and all these acts 
 are unquestionably useful, and a sincere man cannot help 
 preferring them to occupations which demand the labour 
 of others and which, at the same time, are of doubtful 
 usefulness. 
 
 The calhng of the prophet teacher is a high and noble 
 one. But we know what the priests are who regard 
 themselves as the only teachers, because they possess the 
 possibility of compelling others to regard them as such. 
 Not he is a prophet who receives the education and the 
 culture of a prophet, but he who has the inner conviction 
 that he is, must be, and cannot help but be that and 
 nothing else. 
 
 This conviction is rarely met with, and can be proved 
 only by the sacrifices which a man brings to his calling. 
 
 The same holds good in true science and true art. 
 The violinist Lulli runs at the danger of his life from the 
 kitchen to the garret, in order to play on his viohn, and 
 by this sacrifice he proves the sincerity of his calling. 
 But for a student of the conservatory, a university stu- 
 dent, whose only duty consists in learning what is being 
 taught, it is impossible to prove the truth of his calling. 
 They only make use of the condition which presents 
 itself to them as advantageous. 
 
 Manual labour is a duty and happiness for all men; 
 
418 LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 
 
 the activity of the mind and imagination is an exclusive 
 activity : it becomes a duty and happiness for those only 
 who are called to it. A calling may be discovered and 
 proved only by a sacrifice, which the scholar or the artist 
 makes of his rest and comfort, in order to devote himself 
 to his calling. A man who continues to fulfil his obliga- 
 tions of sustaining his hfe by the work of his hands, and 
 who, in spite of this, deprives himself of hours of rest and 
 sleep, in order to create in the sphere of the mind and the 
 imagination, thus proves his calling and creates in his 
 sphere what is necessary for men. But he who rids him- 
 self of universal moral obligations and under the pretext 
 of a special infatuation for art or for science, arranges for 
 himself the life of a drone, creates only false science and 
 false art. 
 
 The fruits of true science and true art are the fruits of 
 sacrifice, and not the fruits of certain material prerogatives. 
 
 But what will then become of art and of science ? 
 
 How often I hear this question from people who are 
 not at all interested in science or in art, and who have not 
 the slightest conception of what science and art are ! One 
 would think that these people have near at heart the good 
 of humanity, and that it, according to their conviction, 
 cannot be obtained in any other way than by the evolu- 
 tion of what they call science and art. 
 
 But what a strange phenomenon this is, that men 
 defend the usefulness of what is useful ! 
 
 Is it possible there can be men so senseless as to deny 
 the usefulness of what is useful ? And is it possible 
 there are still more ridiculous people who regard it 
 as their duty to defend the usefulness of what is useful ? 
 
 There are artisans, and there are farmers, and no one 
 has ever had the courage to deny their usefulness ; and 
 never will a labourer stop to prove the usefulness of his 
 labour. He produces, and his product is indispensable 
 and good for others. People make use of it, and no one 
 
LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 419 
 
 doubts its usefulness; and still less does one stop to 
 prove it. The workmen of art and of science are in the 
 same situation. Why, then, are there found people who 
 make an effort to prove their usefulness ? 
 
 The reason is this, that the true workers of science and 
 of art do not secure any rights to themselves : they give 
 the products of their labours, these products are useful, 
 and they are in no need of rights and of their confirma- 
 tion. But the vast majority of those who consider them- 
 selves savants and artists know full well that what they 
 produce is not worth what they use up, and so they have 
 recourse to all kinds of means, like the priests of all times 
 and of all nations, in order to prove that their activity is 
 indispensable for the good of humanity. 
 
 True science and true art have always existed, and will 
 always exist, Hke all other branches of human activities, 
 and it is impossible and useless to deny or defend them. 
 
 The false position which science and art occupy in our 
 society proves only that the people who call themselves 
 civilized, with the savants and the artists at their head, 
 form a caste with all the prophets who are inherent in 
 each caste. They debase and minimize the principle 
 in the name of which a caste is formed. Instead of the 
 true religion they preach a false one ; instead of the true 
 science they produce a false one. The same is true of 
 art. They he as a heavy burden on the people, and be- 
 sides deprive the people of the light, in vain trying 
 to show that they are disseminating it. And, what is 
 worst of all, their acts always contradict the principles 
 which they profess. 
 
 Without considering those who maintain the untenable 
 principle of science for science's sake, and of art for art's 
 sake, they are all obliged to prove that science and art 
 are indispensable, because they serve the good of human- 
 ity. 
 
 But wherein does this good consist ? 
 
420 LBTTEK TO A FRENCHMAK 
 
 By what signs can the good be told from the evil ? 
 
 The adherents of science and of art obviate this ques- 
 tion. They even assume that the determination of the 
 good is not possible and is standing outside of science 
 and outside of art. The good in general, they say, what 
 is good and beautiful, cannot be defined. 
 
 But they are lying ! 
 
 At all times, humanity, in its forward movement, has 
 been doing nothing but defining what is good and beauti- 
 ful. Goodness and beauty were defined a thousand years 
 ago ; but this definition does not suit them, the high 
 priests : it discloses their emptiness and the harmfulness 
 of what they call science and art, which is even contrary 
 to goodness and beauty. 
 
 The Brahmins, the Buddhists, the Chinese sages, the 
 Jews, the Egyptians, the Greek stoics, have defined the 
 good in the simplest way. Everything which introduces 
 union among men is goodness and beauty. Everything 
 which disunites them is evil and ugliness. All men 
 know this definition. It is imprinted in our hearts. 
 
 Goodness and beauty are for man that which unites 
 men. And so, if the adherents of science and of art have 
 indeed the good of humanity in view, they must move 
 forward only those sciences which lead to that end. And 
 if that were so, there would be no juridical, no military 
 sciences, no pohtical economy, the aim of which is the 
 good of certain societies and the ruin of others. If the 
 good were actually the aim of science and of the arts, 
 the pretensions of the positive sciences, which frequently 
 have no relation to the true good of humanity, would 
 never have acquired such an inexplicable importance ; the 
 same may be said of the productions of art, which are 
 only good for the excitation of corrupt old men and for 
 the pastime of idle people. 
 
 Human wisdom does not at all consist in the quantity 
 of knowledge which we may acquire. Wisdom does not 
 
LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 421 
 
 consist in knowing as much as possible ; it consists in the 
 knowledge of that order in which it is useful to know 
 things ; wisdom consists in the knowledge of what branch 
 of knowledge is more or less important. But of all the 
 branches of knowledge the most necessary to man is that 
 of how to live, doing the least possible amount of evil 
 and the greatest possible amount of good ; and of aU the 
 arts the most important is the one which teaches us to 
 avoid evil and to introduce the good with the least 
 effort. 
 
 And it has happened that among all the sciences and 
 arts, which pretend to serve humanity, the first science 
 and the first art in importance not only do not exist in 
 fact, but are even excluded from the list of the sciences 
 and the arts. 
 
 What in our society is called science and art is nothing 
 but an immense soap-bubble, a superstition, into which 
 we generally fall as soon as we free ourselves from the 
 superstition of the church. 
 
 In order clearly to see the road over which we have 
 to travel, we must raise the hood which keeps our head 
 warm, but interferes with our seeing the road ahead of us. 
 The offence is great. 
 
 If we are not placed in that situation by our birth, we 
 by our labour or cunning reach out for the upper rounds 
 of the social ladder, for the privileged social position of 
 the priests of civilization, and like the priests. Brahmins 
 or Catholics, we need a great deal of sincerity and a great 
 deal of love of truth and of goodness, in order to sub- 
 ject to doubt those principles which condition such an 
 advantageous position. 
 
 But for a serious man, who, like you, puts to himself 
 the question of life, there is no choice : in order that he 
 may be able to see clearly, he must free himself from 
 prejudice, although the prejudice may be advantageous 
 for him. 
 
422 LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 
 
 This is a condition siifie qua non. 
 
 It is useless to speak with a man who accepts anything 
 whatever on faith. If the field of thought is not com- 
 pletely free, a man may dispute and reflect for a long time 
 and yet not advance an iota in the knowledge of truth. 
 Every rational judgment will be shattered against the pre- 
 conceived tenets which are based on faith alone. 
 
 There is a religious faith and a faith in the progress of 
 humanity. They are precisely alike. A Catholic says to 
 himself : " I may reflect, but only within the limits of 
 Holy Writ and Tradition, which possess the truth in all 
 its fulness and unchangeability." 
 
 The believer in civilization says : " My reflection stops 
 before the two foundations of civilization, science and 
 art." 
 
 "Our science," he says, "is the totality of the true 
 knowledge of man; if science does not yet possess the 
 full truth, it will possess it in the future. Our art, to- 
 gether with the classical art, is the one true art." 
 
 The religious superstitions say : " Outside of man exists 
 the thing in itself, as the Germans say, and that is the 
 church." 
 
 The people of our society say : " Outside of man exists 
 civihzation in itself." 
 
 We can easily see the illogicalness in the religious 
 superstitions, because we do not share them. But the 
 religious believer, for example a Cathohc, is fully con- 
 vinced that there is no other truth but his. And it 
 seems to him that the source of his truth is proved by 
 disputation. 
 
 Similarly, when we are ourselves enmeshed in the false 
 belief in our civilization, we are almost unable to see the 
 illogicalness of our reflections, which are all directed 
 toward the proof that of all times and nations there is 
 only our time, only a few millions of people, inhabiting a 
 peninsula called Europe, who are in possession of the true 
 
LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 423 
 
 civilization, which consists in the true science and the 
 true art. 
 
 In order to know the true meaning of life, which is so 
 simple, there is no need of positive philosophy, nor of pro- 
 found knowledge; all that is necessary is to have no 
 prejudices. 
 
 We must arrive at the condition of a child or of Des- 
 cartes, and we must say to ourselves : " I know nothing, 
 believe nothing, and want nothing but to find out the 
 true meaning of life, which I must live." 
 
 The answer has been given since remote antiquity, and 
 this answer is clear and simple. 
 
 My inner feeling tells me that I want the good and 
 happiness for myself only. 
 
 Eeason tells me : " All men, all beings, want the same." 
 
 All beings, which, like me, seek their personal happi- 
 ness, will evidently crush me. And so I cannot find that 
 happiness in the striving after which my life consists. 
 The striving after happiness is my Hfe, and reason shows 
 me that this striving is useless, and that, therefore, I 
 cannot live. 
 
 Simple reflection shows me that in that order of the 
 world, where all beings strive only after their personal 
 good, I, a being striving after the same, cannot get this 
 good. And I cannot Hve ! 
 
 But, in spite of such a clear reflection, we live and seek 
 happiness and the good. We say to ourselves : " I could 
 attain the good, be happy, if only all the other beings 
 loved me more than themselves." 
 
 This is impossible ! But, in spite of it, we all Hve, and 
 our whole activity, all our strivings after wealth, family, 
 glory, power, — all that is only attempts at compelling 
 other people to love me better than they love themselves. 
 
 Wealth, glory, power, give us the semblance of such a 
 state, and we are satisfied : for a moment we forget that 
 these are all illusions, and not reality. 
 
 or THE 
 
424 LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 
 
 All beings love themselves better than us, and happi- 
 ness is impossible ! 
 
 There are men (and their number is growing from day 
 to day) who cannot solve this difficulty, and who kill 
 themselves, saying thjt life is an empty and foolish 
 jest. 
 
 And yet the solution of the problem is more than 
 simple, and presents itself of its own accord. 
 
 I can be happy only in an order of the world in which 
 all beings would love others more than themselves. The 
 whole world would be happy, if its beings did not love 
 themselves, but their like. 
 
 I am a being, a man, and reason gives me the law of 
 the universal good, and I must follow this law of my 
 reason — I must love others better than myself. 
 
 A man need but reflect thus, in order that life might 
 suddenly present itself to him under an entirely different 
 angle of vision than before. 
 
 The beings destroy one another, but at the same time 
 love and help one another. Life is not supported by the 
 passion of destruction, but by the passion of mutuality, 
 which in the language of our heart is called love. 
 
 In so far as I can see the evolution of the life of the 
 world, I see in it the manifestation of nothing but this 
 principle of mutual help. The whole of history is noth- 
 ing but an ever clearer and clearer manifestation of this 
 one principle of mutual concord of all beings. 
 
 The reflection is also confirmed by historical and by 
 personal experience, but, independently of the reflection, 
 man finds the most convincing proof of the justice of this 
 reflection in his inner immediate feeling. 
 
 The highest good known to man, the condition of the 
 fullest freedom and happiness, is a condition of renuncia- 
 tion and love. Reason discloses to man the one possible 
 path to happiness, and feeling directs man along this path. 
 
 If the ideas which I have tried to communicate to you 
 
LETTER TO A FRENCHMAN 425 
 
 seem obscure to you, do not judge them too severely. I 
 hope that some day you will read them in a clearer and 
 simpler exposition. 
 
 I only wanted to give an idea of my views of life. 
 
THE HOLIDAY OF ENLIGHT- 
 ENMENT OF THE 12TH 
 OF JANUARY 
 
 1889 
 
THE HOLIDAY OF ENLIGHT- 
 ENMENT OF THE I2TH 
 OF JANUARY 
 
 What can there be more terrible than village holidays ? 
 In nothing is so palpably expressed all the savagery and 
 monstrosity of the national life as in the village holidays. 
 During work-days the people live, eating wholesome food 
 moderately, working industriously, communing with one 
 another amicably. Thus it goes for a week, sometimes 
 for months, and suddenly this good life is impaired with- 
 out any visible cause. On one definite day all stop work- 
 ing at the same time, and in the middle of the day begin 
 to eat unaccustomed dainties, and to drink the specially 
 prepared wine and vodka. All drink : the old make the 
 young, and even children, indulge in drink. All congrat- 
 ulate one another, kiss, embrace, shout, sing songs ; now 
 they are meek, now they brag, now feel offended ; all talk, 
 and no one listens ; one hears cries, quarrels, and often 
 sees fights. Toward evening some stumble, fall, and go 
 to sleep wherever they happen to be ; others are taken 
 away by those who are still in their senses, and others 
 again wallow on the ground and writhe, filHng the air 
 with the stench of alcohol. 
 
 On the next day all these men awaken sick and, com- 
 ing to a little, go to work until the next similar day. 
 
 429 
 
430 THE HOLIDAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT 
 
 What is it ? Why is it so ? — Why, it is a holiday, a 
 church holiday. In one place it is Visitation, in another, 
 Presentation, in a third, the Virgin of Kaz^. What 
 is meant by Visitation and Virgin of Kazdn, nobody knows. 
 All they know is that it is a church holiday, and that it is 
 necessary to celebrate. And they wait for this celebration, 
 and after their hard life of labour are glad when that time 
 comes. 
 
 Yes, this is one of the most striking expressions of the 
 savagery of the working people. Wine and celebration 
 are for them temptations which they cannot withstand. 
 When a holiday comes, each one of them is prepared to 
 get intoxicated to a point where he loses his human sem- 
 blance. 
 
 Yes, the masses are savage. But here comes the 12th 
 of January, and in the newspapers the following announce- 
 ment is printed : " A social dinner of the alumni of the 
 Imperial Moscow University will take place on founder's 
 day, January 12th, at five o'clock, in the restaurant of 
 Grand Hotel, Moscow, entrance through the main door. 
 Tickets for the dinner at six roubles may be had . . ." 
 (Follows a list of places where tickets may be obtained.) 
 
 But this is not the only dinner ; there will be dozens 
 of such dinners, — in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, and in 
 the provinces. The 12th of January is the hohday of the 
 oldest Russian university, a holiday of Russian enlighten- 
 ment. The flower of enlightenment is celebrating its 
 holiday. 
 
 One would think that men who stand at the two 
 extreme ends of enlightenment, the wild peasants and 
 the most cultured of Russian men, — the peasants who 
 celebrate Presentation or the Virgin of Kaz^n, and the 
 cultured people who celebrate this very holiday of en- 
 lightenment, — ought to celebrate their holidays in quite 
 different manners. But it turns out that the holiday of 
 the most cultured of people in no way differs from that 
 
THE HOLIDAY OF EKLIGHTENMENT 43l 
 
 of the most savage of men, except in external forms. 
 The peasants stick to Visitation or the Virgin of Kazan 
 without the slightest reference to the meaning of the 
 holiday, in order to eat and drink ; the cultured use as a 
 pretext the day of St. Tatiana, in order to stuff themselves 
 with food and drink, without the slightest reference to 
 St. Tatiana. The peasants eat gelatine and noodles ; the 
 cultured eat sea crabs, different kinds of cheese, soups, 
 fillets, etc. The peasants drink vodka and beer ; the cul- 
 tured drink liquors of every description, — wines, vodkas, 
 liqueurs, — dry, and strong, and weak, and bitter and 
 sweet, and white and red, — and champagne. The cost of 
 each peasant's treat is from twenty kopeks to one rouble ; 
 the treat of the cultured costs from six to twenty 
 roubles for each. The peasants talk of their love for 
 their gossips, and sing Russian songs ; the cultured speak 
 of loving their Alma Mater, and with faltering tongues 
 sing senseless Latin songs. The peasants fall into the 
 mud, and the cultured — upon velvet divans. The peas- 
 ants are taken and dragged home by their wives and sons, 
 and the cultured — by scornful, sober lackeys. 
 
 Indeed, it is terrible ! Terrible, because people who, in 
 their opinion, stand on the highest level of human educa- 
 tion, are not able in any other way to celebrate the holi- 
 day of enlightenment except by eating, drinking, smoking, 
 and shouting senselessly for several hours in succession. 
 What is terrible is this, that old men, the guides of the 
 young, contribute to poisoning them by means of alcohol, 
 — which poisoning, like quicksilver poisoning, never dis- 
 appears entirely and leaves traces for the rest of the life. 
 (Hundreds and hundreds of young men 'have, encouraged 
 by their teachers, for the first time become beastly drunk 
 upon this hohday of enlightenment, thus ruining and cor- 
 rupting themselves for the rest of their lives.) But most 
 terrible is this, that the men who are doing all this have 
 to such an extent befogged themselves in their conceit 
 
432 THE HOLIDAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT 
 
 that they are unable to distinguish between what is good 
 and what bad, between what is moral and what immoral. 
 These people have so convinced themselves that the con- 
 dition in which they are is a condition of culture and 
 enlightenment, and that culture and euHghtenment give 
 them the right to pamper to all their weaknesses, that 
 they are unable to see the beam in their own eyes. 
 These people, who abandon themselves to what cannot 
 be called otherwise than monstrous drunkenness, amidst 
 this debauch admire themselves and commiserate the 
 unenhghtened masses. 
 
 Every mother suffers, — I shall not say at the sight of 
 her drunken son, but even at the thought of such a possi- 
 bility ; every master avoids a drunken labourer ; every 
 uncorrupted man is ashamed of himself, if he has been 
 drunk. All know that drunkenness is bad. But here 
 cultured, enlightened men are drunk, and they are fully 
 convinced that there is not only nothing shameful or bad 
 in it, but that it is very charming, and with pleasure and 
 laughter narrate episodes from their past drunken bouts. 
 Things have come to such a pass that the most abomi- 
 nable orgy, in which young men are made drunk by their 
 elders, — an orgy which is annually repeated in the name 
 of education and enlightenment, — does not offend any- 
 body, and does not keep people, during their drunkenness 
 and after it, from admiring their exalted sentiments and 
 thoughts, and boldly judging and valuing the morality of 
 other people, and especially of the coarse and ignorant 
 masses. 
 
 Every peasant regards himself as guilty when he is 
 drunk, and begs everybody to forgive him for his drunk- 
 enness. In spite of his temporal fall, the consciousness 
 of what is good and bad is ahve in him. In our society 
 this consciousness is being lost. 
 
 Very well, you are in the habit of doing so and cannot 
 refrain from it, — all right, continue doing so, if you can- 
 
THE HOLIDAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT 433 
 
 not restrain yourselves; but know this much, that on 
 January 12th, 15th, and 17th, and in February, and in 
 all the other months, this is disgraceful and low, and, 
 knowing this, abandon yourselves to your vicious inclina- 
 tions in secret, and not as you do now, — triumphantly, 
 entangling and corrupting the youth and your so-called 
 younger brothers. Do not confuse the youth with the 
 doctrine that there is another, a civil morality, which 
 does not consist in restraint, and another, a civil immoral- 
 ity, which does not consist in lack of restraint. All 
 know, and you know it, too, that before all other civil 
 virtues one needs restraint from vices, and that every 
 lack of restraint is bad, and that especially the lack of 
 restraint in drinking is ' exceedingly dangerous, because it 
 kills conscience. All know this, and so, before speaking 
 of any exalted sentiments and objects, we must free our- 
 selves from the base and savage vice of drunkenness, and 
 not speak of exalted subjects v/hile we are drunk. Do 
 not deceive yourselves and other meu, especially do not 
 deceive the youths : the youths feel that, taking part in 
 the savage custom, they are not doing the right thing, 
 and lose something very precious and irretrievable. 
 
 And you know this, — you know that there is nothing 
 better and more important than physical and spiritual 
 purity, which is lost in drunkenness ; you know that aU 
 your rhetoric, with your eternal Alma Mater, does not 
 move you, even when you are half-drunk, and that you 
 have nothing to give to the youths in place of that inno- 
 cence and purity which they lose when taking part in 
 your monstrous orgies. Do not debauch them, nor con- 
 fuse them, but know that as it was with Noah, as it is 
 with every peasant, so it has been and will be with each 
 person : it is disgraceful not only to get so drunk as to 
 yell, swing people, get up on the tables, and do all kinds 
 of foolish things, but also, without any need, in com- 
 memoration of the holiday of enlightenment, to eat 
 
434 THE HOLIDAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT 
 
 savoury food, and become intoxicated with alcohoL Do 
 not debauch the youths, and do not debauch the servants 
 which surround you by your own example. The hun- 
 dreds and hundreds of people who serve you, who bring 
 to you wine and food, and take you to your homes, are 
 men, live men, for whom there exist, as for all of us, the 
 most important questions of life, as to what is good and 
 what bad. Whose example are they to follow? It is 
 fortunate that all these lackeys, drivers, porters, these 
 Eussian villagers, do not regard you as what you think 
 yourselves to be, and as what you would like others to 
 regard you, — as representatives of enlightenment. K 
 this were the case, they, looking upon you, would be 
 disappointed in all enlightenment, and would despise it ; 
 but even now, though they do not consider you to be 
 representatives of enhghtenment, they none the less see 
 in you learned gentlemen, who know everything, and 
 who, therefore, can and must be emulated. And what is 
 it that they, the unfortunate, learn from you ? It is a 
 good question to put to yourselves. 
 
 What is more powerful, that enhghtenment which is 
 disseminated among the masses by the giving of public 
 lectures, and by museums, or that savagery which is 
 supported and disseminated among the masses by the 
 spectacle of such holidays as that of the 12th of Jan- 
 uary, which is celebrated by the most enlightened men 
 of Kussia? I think that if all lectures and museums 
 came to a stop, and if at the same time all such celebra- 
 tions and dinners were given up, and the cooks, chamber- 
 maids, drivers, and janitors communicated to one another 
 in conversations that all the enlightened people whom 
 they serve never celebrate the holidays by gorging them- 
 selves with food, and getting drunk, but know how to 
 make merry and converse without wine, the enlighten- 
 ment would not lose anything by it. It is time to under- 
 stand that the enhghtenment is disseminated, not only 
 
THE HOLIDAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT 435 
 
 by magic lantern and other pictures, not only by the oral 
 and the printed word, but by the strikiug example of the 
 whole life of people, and that an enhghtenment which 
 is not based on the moral life has never been and never 
 will be an enlightenment, but only an eclipse and a 
 corruption. 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 1886 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 HOW THE DEVIL EEDEEMED THE CEUST OF 
 BKEAD 
 
 A POOK peasant went out to plough, without having 
 had his breakfast, and took with him from home a crust 
 of bread. The peasant turned over the plough and un- 
 tied the beam, which he put under a bush ; here he also 
 placed his crust of bread, which he covered with his caftan. 
 
 The horse grew tired, and the peasant was hungry. 
 The peasant stuck fast the plough, unhitched the horse 
 and let it go to graze, and himself went to his caftan, to 
 have his dinner. He raised the caftan, but the crust was 
 not there ; he searched and searched for it, and turned his 
 caftan around and shook it, but the crust was gone. The 
 peasant marvelled. 
 
 " This is remarkable, " he thought. " I have not seen 
 any one, and yet somebody has carried off the crust of 
 bread." 
 
 But it was a little devil who, while the peasant had 
 been ploughing, had carried off the crust ; he sat down 
 behind a bush to hear how the peasant would curse and 
 scold him, the devil. 
 
 The peasant looked a bit dejected. 
 
 "Well," he said, "I shall not starve. Evidently the 
 one who carried it off needed it. May he eat it to his 
 health ! " 
 
 m 
 
440 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 And the peasant went to the well, drank some water, 
 rested himself, caught the horse, hitched it up, and began 
 once more to plough. 
 
 The little devil felt sad because he had not led the 
 peasant into sin, and went to the chief devil to tell him 
 about it. 
 
 He appeared before the chief devil and told him how 
 he had carried off the peasant's crust, and how the 
 peasant, instead of cursing, had told him to eat it to 
 his health. The chief devil grew angry. 
 
 " If the peasant has in this business got the better of 
 you," he said, " it is your own fault, — you did not know 
 any better. If the peasants, and the women, after them, 
 take such a notion, we shall have a hard time of it. 
 This matter cannot be left in such a shape. Go," he said, 
 " once more to the peasant, and earn the crust. If in 
 three years you do not get the better of the peasant, 
 I will bathe you in holy water." 
 
 The httle devil was frightened. He ran down upon 
 the earth, and began to think how he might redeem his 
 guilt. He thought and thought, and finally thought it 
 out. He turned into a good man, and hired himself out 
 as a labourer to the peasant. He taught the peasant in a 
 dry year to sow in a swamp. The peasant listened 
 to his hired hand and sowed the grain in the swamp. 
 The other peasants had all their grain burned up by the 
 sun, but the poor peasant's corn grew thick, taU, and 
 with fuU ears. The peasant had enough to eat until 
 the next crop, and much corn was left. In the sum- 
 mer the hired hand taught the peasant to sow on the 
 uplands. It turned out to be a rainy summer. The corn 
 of the other peasants fell down and rotted and made no 
 ears, but this peasant's corn on the uplands was heavy 
 with ears. The peasant had now even more com left, 
 and he did not know what to do with it. 
 
 The hired hand taught the peasant to mash the grain 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 441 
 
 and brew liquor. The peasant brewed some liquor, and 
 began to drink himself and to give it to others. The 
 little devil came to his chief, and began to boast that he 
 had earned the crust. The chief devil went to look for 
 himself. 
 
 He came to the peasant, and saw that the peasant had 
 invited some rich men, to treat them to liquor. The 
 hostess was carrying the liquor around to the guests. As 
 she walked around, her foot caught in the table, and she 
 spilled a glass. The peasant grew angry, and scolded 
 his wife. 
 
 '* Devil's fool," he said. " Is this slops that you, with 
 your clumsy hands, spill such precious liquor on the 
 ground ? " 
 
 The little devil nudged his chief. 
 
 " Watch him ! " he said. " Now he will regret his 
 crust." 
 
 The host scolded his wife, and began himself to carry 
 the liquor around. A poor peasant, who had not been 
 invited, came back from his work. He greeted the com- 
 pany and sat down, watching the people drink the liquor ; 
 as he was tired he wanted to have a drink himself. He 
 sat and sat, and swallowed his spittle, — but the host did 
 not offer him any ; he only muttered : 
 
 "Where will a man get enough liquor for the whole 
 lot of you ? " 
 
 This, too, pleased the chief devil ; but the little devil 
 boasted : 
 
 " Wait, it will be worse than that." 
 
 The rich peasants had a glass, and so had the host. 
 They began to flatter one another and to praise one 
 another, and to speak oily, deceptive words. The chief 
 devil listened to that, too, and was glad of it. 
 
 " If this drink will make them so foxy, and they will 
 deceive one another," he said, " they wiU be in our 
 hands." 
 
442 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 " Wait," said the little devil, " and see what is coming ; 
 let them drink another glass. Now they wag their tails 
 to one another, like foxes, and want to deceive one 
 another, but look, they will soon be hke fierce wolves." 
 
 The peasants had another glass, and their words became 
 louder and coarser. Instead of oily speeches, they began 
 to curse and to get angry with one another, and they 
 fell to, and mauled one another's noses. The host, too, 
 took a hand in the fight. And he was also beaten. 
 
 The chief devil saw this, too, and was glad. 
 
 " This," he said, " is nice." 
 
 But the little devil said : 
 
 " Wait, it will be better yet ! Let them have a third 
 glass. Now they are like mad wolves, but let them have 
 a third glass, and they will become like swine." 
 
 The peasants had a third glass. They went completely 
 to pieces. They muttered and yelled, they did not know 
 themselves what, and paid no attention to one another. 
 They began to scatter, some going away by themselves, 
 and some by twos and threes ; they all fell down and 
 wallowed in the street. The host went out to see them 
 off, and he fell with his nose in the gutter, and he became 
 all soiled and lay there like a pig, grunting. 
 
 This pleased the chief devil even more. 
 
 " Well," he said, " you have invented a fine drink, and 
 you have earned the crust. Tell me how you made this 
 drink. It cannot be otherwise than that you have first 
 let into it some fox blood, — and this made the peasant 
 as sly as a fox. And then you let in some wolf blood, — 
 and this made him as fierce as a wolf. And finally you 
 poured in some pig blood, and this made him a pig." 
 
 " No," said the little devil, " that was not the way I 
 did. All I did was to let him have more com than he 
 needed. That beast blood has always lived in him, but 
 it has no chance so long as he gets barely enough 
 Qom. At that time he was not sorry even for the last 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 443 
 
 crust, but when he began to have a surplus from his corn, 
 he began to think of how he might have his fun from it. 
 And I taught him the fun of drinking liquor. And when 
 he began to brew God's gift into liquor for his fun, there 
 arose in him his fox, wolf, and pig blood. Let him now 
 drink liquor, and he will always be a beast." 
 
 The chief praised the little devil, forgave him for the 
 crust of bread, and made him a captain. 
 
THE EEPENTANT SINNEK 
 
 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou 
 comest into thy kingdom. 
 
 And Jesus said unto him. Verily I say unto thee, To-day 
 Shalt thou be with me in paradise. (Luke xxiii. 42, 43.) 
 
 There was a man who had lived seventy years in 
 the world, and had passed all his life in sins. And he 
 grew sick, and did not repent. And when his time came 
 to die, he wept in the last hour, and said : 
 
 O Lord ! Forgive me as Thou f orgavest the thief on the 
 cross. 
 
 No sooner had he said this than his soul left him. 
 
 And the soul of the sinner loved God, and believed in 
 His goodness, and came to the gate of heaven. And the 
 sinner knocked at the door, and begged to be let in. And 
 he heard a voice behind the door : 
 
 "What man is this that is knocking at the door of 
 heaven? And what deeds has this man done in his 
 life?" 
 
 And the voice of the arraigner answered, and counted 
 out all the sinful deeds of this man, and did not mention 
 a single good deed. 
 
 And a voice answered behind the door : 
 
 " Sinners cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. Go 
 hence." 
 
 And the man said : 
 
 " Lord, I hear thy voice, but do not see thy face, and 
 do not know thy name." 
 
 444 
 
POPULAK LEGENDS 445 
 
 And the voice answered : 
 
 " I am Peter the apostle." 
 
 And the sinner said : 
 
 "Have pity on me, Peter the apostle. Remember 
 human weakness and God's love. Wert thou not Christ's 
 disciple, and heardst thou not His teaching from His very 
 lips, and sawest thou not the examples of His life ? 
 Kemember, when He was dejected and troubled in spirit, 
 and commanded thee three times not to sleep, but to 
 pray, thou didst sleep, because thy eyes were heavy, and 
 three times He found thee sleeping. Even so it is with 
 me. And remember again, how thou didst promise Him 
 not to renounce Him until His death, and how thou didst 
 deny Him three times, when they took Him before Cai- 
 aphas. Even so it is with me. And remember again, 
 how the cock crew, and thou didst go out and weep bit- 
 terly. Even so it is with me. Thou canst not keep me 
 out." 
 
 And the voice behind the door of heaven grew silent. 
 
 And the sinner stood awhile, and began once more to 
 knock at the door, and to beg to be admitted into the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 And another voice was heard behind the door, saying : 
 
 "Who is this man, and how did he live in the 
 world?" 
 
 And the voice of the arraigner answered, again repeat- 
 ing all the evil deeds of the sinner, and did not mention 
 any good deeds whatsoever. 
 
 And the voice behind the door answered : 
 
 "Go hence, for such sinners cannot live with us in 
 heaven." 
 
 And the sinner said : 
 
 " Lord, I hear thy voice, but do not see thy face, and 
 do not know thy name." 
 
 And the voice said to him : 
 
 " I am David, the king and prophet." 
 
446 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 But the sinner did not despair. He did not go away 
 from the door of heaven, but said : 
 
 "Have mercy on me, King David, and remember 
 human weakness and God's love. God loved thee and 
 exalted thee above men. Thou hadst everything, a king- 
 dom, and glory, and riches, and wives, and children, but 
 when thou sawest from thy roof the wife of a poor man, 
 sin entered thee, and thou tookest the wife of Uriah, and 
 slewest him with the sword of the Ammonites. Thou, a 
 rich man, tookest the last sheep away from a poor man, 
 and then didst destroy him. Even so did I. Then re- 
 member how thou repentedst, saying, * I confess my guilt, 
 and am contrite on account of my sin.* Even so did I. 
 Thou canst not keep me out." 
 
 And the voice behind the door grew silent. 
 
 And having tarried awhile, the sinner began to knock 
 once more and to beg to be let into the kingdom of 
 heaven. And a third voice was heard, saying : 
 
 " Who is this man ? And how did he live in the 
 world?" 
 
 And the voice of the arraigner answered, for the third 
 time recounting the evil deeds of the man, and did not 
 mention any good deeds. 
 
 And a voice behind the door answered : 
 
 " Go hence. Sinners cannot enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven." 
 
 And the sinner answered : 
 
 " I hear thy voice, but do not see thy face, and do not 
 know thy name." 
 
 And the voice replied : 
 
 " I am John the Divine, the beloved disciple of Christ." 
 
 And the sinner rejoiced and said : 
 
 " Now I cannot be kept out. Peter and David will let 
 me in, because they know human weakness and God's 
 love ; but thou wilt let me in, because there is much love 
 in thee. Didst thou, John the Divine, not write in thy 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 447 
 
 book that God is love, and that he who does not love 
 does not know God? Didst thou not in thy old age 
 say this word to men : ' Brethren, love one another ' ? 
 How, then, canst thou hate me and drive me away ? 
 Either thou shalt renounce what thou didst say, or thou 
 shalt love me and let me enter into the kingdom of God." 
 And the gates of heaven opened, and John embraced 
 the repentant sinner, and let him enter into the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
THE KERNEL OF THE SIZE OF A HEN'S EGG 
 
 One day some children found in a ravine something 
 that looked like a hen's egg with a parting in the middle 
 and resembling a kernel. A traveller saw this thing in 
 the children's hands, and he bought it from them for 
 a nickel, and took it to town, and sold it to the king as a 
 rarity. 
 
 The king called the wise men and commanded them to 
 find out what the thing was, whether an egg or a kernel. 
 The wise men thought and thought, but could give no 
 answer. The thing was lying on the window-sill, and 
 a hen flew in and picked at it, until it picked a hole in 
 it : then all saw that it was a kernel. The wise men went 
 to the king and told the king that it was a rye kernel. 
 
 The king was surprised. He commanded the wise men 
 to find out where and when this kernel had grown. The 
 wise men thought and thought, and hunted through 
 books, and could not find out. In our books nothing is 
 written about it; it was necessary to ask the peasants 
 whether one of the old men had not heard when and 
 where such a kernel had been sowed. 
 
 The king commanded that a very old peasant be 
 brought into his presence. They found such a man, and 
 brought him to the king. There arrived a green-skinned, 
 toothless old man, and he barely could walk with his two 
 crutches. 
 
 The king showed him the kernel; but the old man 
 could not see well. He half looked at it, and half felt it 
 with his hands. 
 
 The king began to ask him : " Do you not know, grand- 
 448 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 449 
 
 father, where such a kernel was raised ? Have you not 
 raised such grain ? Or did you not some day during your 
 life buy such a seed ? " 
 
 The old man was deaf, and he barely heard what the 
 king was saying, and barely made it out. Then the old 
 man began to speak : 
 
 " No, I have not raised such grain in my field, and 
 have never reaped such, nor have I bought such. When- 
 ever I bought grain, it was always small. But I must 
 ask my father," he said, " perhaps he has heard of such 
 grain." 
 
 The king sent for the old man's father, and commanded 
 that he be brought into his presence. They found the 
 old man's father, and brought him to the king. The old 
 man came on one crutch. The king showed him the 
 kernel. The old man could see with his eyes. He took 
 a good look at it. The king began to ask him : 
 
 " Do you not know, old man, where such a kernel was 
 grown ? Have you never raised such in your own field ? 
 Or have you ever bought such kernels in your life ? " 
 
 Though the old man was rather hard of hearing, he 
 heard better than his son. 
 
 " No," he said, " I have never sowed such seed in my 
 field, and have never reaped such. Nor have I ever 
 bought such, as in my day money was not yet in exist- 
 ence. We all lived on our own grain, and in case of need 
 shared with our neighbours. I do not know where such 
 a kernel was grown. Though our grain used to be larger 
 and more millable than what it is now, I never saw such. 
 I used to hear my father say that in his day the grain 
 was larger and more millable than ours. You will have 
 to ask him." 
 
 The king sent for his father. They found the man, and 
 he was brought to the king. The old man walked into 
 the king's room without any crutches. He walked 
 lightly, — his eyes were bright, and he could hear well, 
 
450 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 and talked distinctly. The king showed the kernel to 
 the old man. The old man looked at it, and turned 
 it around. 
 
 " It is now long since I last saw such grain." 
 
 The old man bit off a piece of the kernel, and chewed it. 
 
 " It is that," he said. 
 
 " Tell me, grandfather, when and where such a kernel 
 was raised ? Did you never sow such in your own field ? 
 Or did you ever buy it of people in your lifetime ? " 
 
 And the old man said : 
 
 " In my day such grain was raised everywhere. With 
 such corn I fed myself and other people. Such grain 
 I sowed, and reaped, and threshed." 
 
 And the king asked : 
 
 " Tell me, grandfather, did you buy such grain, or did 
 you sow it in your own field ? " 
 
 The old man smiled. 
 
 " In my day," he said, " no one ever thought of such 
 a sin as selling or buying grain. We did not know any- 
 thing about money. Everybody had enough corn of his 
 own." 
 
 And the king asked : 
 
 " Then tell me, grandfather, where you sowed such 
 corn, and where your field was ? " 
 
 And the old man said : 
 
 "My field was God's earth. Wherever I ploughed, 
 there was the field. The land was free. They did not 
 call it one's own land. People called nothing but their 
 labour their own." 
 
 " Tell me, then," said the king, " two more things : one 
 is, why formerly you used to grow such grain, and now 
 such grain does not grow. The other is, why your grand- 
 son walked with two crutches, while your son came with 
 one, and you walk entirely at your ease : your eyes are 
 bright, your teeth strong, and your speech clear and pleas- 
 ing. Grandfather, how did these two things happen ? ** 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 451 
 
 And the old man said : 
 
 "These things are so because people have stopped 
 living by their own labour, and are having an eye to 
 other people's labour. They did not live that way of old ; 
 of old they lived in godly fashion, — they owned what 
 was their own, and did not profit by what belonged to 
 others." 
 
HOW MUCH LAND A MAN NEEDS 
 
 The elder sister came with her younger sister to the 
 country. The elder was married to a merchant in 
 the city, and the younger to a peasant in the vil- 
 lage. The sisters were drinking tea, and talking. The 
 elder hegan to boast, — to praise her city life, — telling 
 how comfortably and how cleanly they lived in the city, 
 how she dressed up the children, what savoury food and 
 drink she had, and how she went to picnics and en- 
 tertainments and theatres. 
 
 The younger sister felt offended, and began to speak 
 disparagingly of the merchant life, and to extol the life 
 of the peasants. 
 
 "I would not exchange my life for yours," she said. 
 " It is true, we Hve uncleanly, but we do not know what 
 fear is. You live more cleanly, but you either make 
 a lot of money, or you lose it all. And the proverb 
 says, ' Gain loves more.' And it happens that to-day you 
 are rich, and to-morrow you he in the gutter. But our 
 peasant business is surer; a peasant's life is slim, but 
 long ; we are not rich, but have enough to eat." 
 
 The elder sister said : 
 
 " Yes, enough to eat, but with pigs and calves ! You 
 aren't dressed up, and have no manners. No matter how 
 much your man may work, you live in manure, and so 
 you will die, leaving nothing to your children." 
 
 " What of it ? " said the younger. " Such is our busi- 
 ness. But we are independent, and do not bow to any 
 
 452 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 453 
 
 one, and fear no one. But you live in the cities among 
 temptations: to-day it is all right, and to-morrow the 
 unclean one will turn up and tempt your man either 
 with cards, or with wine, or with some damseL And 
 then all will go to the winds. Do not such things 
 happen ? " 
 
 Pakhdm, her husband, lying on the oven, heard the 
 women's prattle. 
 
 " That is the gospel truth," he said. " Our kind have 
 been turning over mother earth ever since our childhood, 
 and so foolishness has no time to enter into our heads. 
 There is just this trouble, — we have not enough land ! 
 If I had as much land as I want, I would not be afraid of 
 the devil himself." 
 
 The women drank their tea, prattled awhile about 
 dresses, put away the dishes and went to sleep. 
 
 But the devil had been sitting behind the oven, and 
 listening to all they said. He was glad to hear the 
 peasant woman make her husband boast that if he had 
 enough land, the devil would not take him. 
 
 " Very well," he thought, " we shall have a tussle : I 
 wUl give you lots of land. I will overcome you by means 
 of the land." 
 
 By the side of the peasants there lived a small pro- 
 prietress. She had 120 desyatmas of land. So far she 
 had lived in peace with the peasants, and had offended no 
 one ; but an ex-soldier hired out to her as a steward, and 
 he began to wear the peasants out with fines.. No matter 
 how careful Pakhom was, either his horse would run into 
 the oats, or a cow would lose her way in the garden, or 
 the calves would stray into the meadow, — for everything 
 he had to pay a fine. 
 
 Pakh6m paid the fines, and scolded and beat his home 
 people. And so Pakh(5m suffered many an insult from 
 
454 ' POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 that steward during the summer, and was glad when they 
 began to stable the cattle, — though he was sorry 
 they could not graze, he at least had no more fear. 
 
 In the winter the rumour was spread that the propriet- 
 ress was going to sell her land, and that an innkeeper on 
 the highway was trying to buy it. When the peasants 
 heard this, they groaned. 
 
 " Well," they thought, " if the innkeeper gets the land, 
 he will wear us out with fines even worse than the pro- 
 prietress. We cannot live without this land, — we live 
 all around it." 
 
 The peasants went to the proprietress and began to ask 
 her not to sell it to the innkeeper, but to let them have it. 
 They promised they would pay more for it. The lady 
 consented. The peasants were thinking of buying the 
 land in common : they met once and twice to discuss 
 the matter, but it did not work. The evil one brought 
 discord among them, and they could not agree. Finally 
 the peasants agreed to buy the land in lots, as much as 
 each could afiford to buy. The lady agreed even to this. 
 Pakhom heard that a neighbour of his had bought twenty 
 desyatinas, and that she had given him time for half the 
 sum. Pakhdm felt jealous: "They will buy up all 
 the land," he thought, " and I shall be left with nothing." 
 He began to take counsel with his wife. 
 
 "People are buying the land," he said, "and we, too, 
 ought to buy a few desyatinas of it. We cannot get 
 along now, for the steward has ruined me with the fines." 
 
 They considered how they might buy it. They had 
 one hundred roubles put away, and they sold a colt, and 
 half of the* bees, and hired out their son as a labourer, 
 and borrowed some from a relative, and thus got together 
 half the sum. 
 
 Pakh(5m took the money, picked out fifteen desyatinas 
 with a little grove, and went to the lady to strike a bar- 
 gain. He bought the fifteen desyatinas, clinched the 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS * 455 
 
 bsBTgain, and paid an earnest. They drove to the city and 
 made out a deed, and he paid half the sum and promised 
 to pay the rest in two years. 
 
 Thus Pakhom became possessed of land. He borrowed 
 seed and sowed in the purchased land, and it produced a 
 good crop. In one year he paid his debt to the lady and 
 to his relative. And so Pakhom became a proprietor : he 
 ploughed and sowed in his own land, mowed on his 
 own land, cut poles off his own land, and pastured his 
 cattle on his own land. Pakhom took great delight in 
 ploughing the land which belonged to him for all time, 
 and in going out to look at the sproutiag corn and at the 
 meadows. It seemed to him as though the grass grew 
 and the flowers bloomed quite differently on them. He 
 had crossed this land many a time before, and it had been 
 just land to him; but now it was something quite dif- 
 ferent. 
 
 in. 
 
 Thus Pakhom lived, enjoying himself. All would have 
 been well, but the peasants began to trespass on Pakhom's 
 fields and meadows. He begged them in kiadness, but 
 they paid no attention to him : now the shepherds let the 
 cows get into his meadows, and now the horses would leave 
 their right pastures and run into his corn. Pakhom drove 
 them off, and forgave the peasants, and did not sue them ; 
 finally he got tired of it, and began to complain in the 
 township office. He knew that the peasants were not 
 doing it from malice, but because they were crowded, but 
 he thought : " I cannot let them off, for they will ruin all 
 my fields. I must teach them a lesson." 
 
 He taught them one or two lessons in court, and this 
 and that man were fined. His neighbours began to have 
 a grudge against him, and occasionally trespassed on his 
 land intentionally. Some one stole in the night into 
 his grove and cut down ten lindens for bast. As Pakhdm 
 
456 • POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 passed by the grove, he noticed something white there. 
 He drove up to the spot, and found the barked liudens 
 on the ground, and the stumps standing. " If he had just 
 cut off the outer bushes and left the main tree standing ! 
 But no, the rascal has cut them all down." Pakhdm 
 grew angry. 
 
 " Oh," he thought, " if I could just find out who did it ; 
 I would get my revenge on him." He thought and 
 thought who it could be ; " It cannot be any one but 
 S^mka." 
 
 He went into S^mka's yard to look for them, but found 
 there nothing, and they only had a quarrel. Pakh6m 
 became even more convinced that it was S^mka. He 
 entered a complaint. They were summoned to court. 
 They tried and tried the case, and discharged the peasant, 
 for there was no evidence. Pakhdm grew angrier than 
 ever, and he scolded the elder and the judges. 
 
 " You are in with the thieves," he said. " If you your- 
 selves lived honestly, you would not let the thieves go 
 free." 
 
 Pakhdm quarrelled with the judges and with his neigh- 
 bours. They began to threaten to set fire to his house. 
 Pakh6m lived more comfortably on his land, but less 
 comfortably in the Commune. 
 
 Just then they began to spread a. rumour that people 
 were going to new places. And Pakhdm thought : 
 
 « I have no reason for leaving my own land ; but if 
 some of our men would go there, there would be more 
 room here. I would take up their land and would attach 
 it to my own. I should Hve more comfortably than I do 
 now, for now I am crowded ! " 
 
 Pakhdm was sitting at home one day, when a transient 
 peasant stepped in. They invited the peasant to stay 
 overnight, and gave him to eat, and talked with him, 
 asking him whence God had brought him. The peasant 
 said that he had come from farther down, from beyond 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 457 
 
 the Volga, where he had been working. One word led to 
 another, and he told them how people were rushing 
 to settle down there. He told them that men from his 
 village had settled there, joining the Commune, and re- 
 ceiving ten desyatinas to each soul. The land was such, 
 he said, that they planted rye which grew to be higher 
 than a horse, and so thick that about five handfuls made 
 a sheaf. There was one peasant, he said, who had been 
 poor, and had come with nothing but his hands, and now 
 had six horses and two cows. 
 
 This excited Pakhom. He thought : 
 
 " Why suffer here where it is crowded, if it is possible 
 to live better ? I will sell the land and the farm ; there 
 I will start a new farm with this money, and will provide 
 myself with everything. Here, where it is crowded, it is 
 just a shame to stay. But I must first find it all out 
 myself." 
 
 He got ready in the summer, and started out. Down 
 to Samara he went on a steamer, then he made four hun- 
 dred versts on foot. He reached the place. It was all 
 as he had been told : the peasants were living freely, with 
 ten desyatinas of land to each soul, and glad to receive 
 people into their Communes. And if a man had money, 
 he could, in addition to the grant, buy in perpetual pos- 
 session the very best land at three roubles : he could get 
 all the land he wanted. 
 
 Pakhom found out everything he wanted. He returned 
 home in the fall, and began to sell everything. He sold 
 his land at a profit, and his farm, and all his cattle ; he 
 gave up his membership in the Commune, and waited for 
 spring, and went with his whole family to the new places. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Pakh6m arrived with his family in the new places, 
 where he joined the Commune of a large village. He 
 
458 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 treated the old men and got all the papers made out. 
 They received Pakhom, and apportioned to him for his 
 five souls fifty desyatinas in various fields, not counting 
 the common pasture. 
 
 Pakhom built a hut and bought cattle. He had now 
 three times as much land as before, and it was fruitful 
 land. He began to live ten times as well as before. He 
 had all the fields and meadows he wanted. He could 
 keep as many cattle as he pleased. 
 
 At first, while he was building and getting things into 
 shape, everything looked nice to Pakhom ; but when he 
 got used to it, he began once more to feel crowded. The 
 first year Pakhdm sowed wheat on the grant land, and 
 he had a good crop. He got it into his head to sow 
 wheat, but the grant land was not enough for him, and 
 what there was of it was no good. There they were 
 sowing wheat on prairie land. They sowed it in for two 
 years, and then let it He fallow, to gi'ow up again with 
 prairie grass. There were many who wanted to have 
 such land, so that there was not enough land to go 
 around. And there were quarrels about it: those who 
 were better off wanted to sow on it themselves, and the 
 poor people gave it to the merchants for the taxes. Pak- 
 h6m wanted to sow as much as possible. He went the 
 next year to a merchant, and bought land for the period 
 of a year. He went the next year to the merchant, 
 and again bought land for a year. He sowed more 
 wheat, and he had a good crop, only it was far away 
 from the village, — he had to haul the wheat fifteen 
 versts. He saw the merchant peasants of the district 
 living in their estates, and getting rich. 
 
 " It would be nice," thought Pakhdm, " if I myself 
 bought land in perpetuity, and established an estate for 
 myself. Everything would be adjoining me." 
 
 And Pakhdm began to think how he might buy land 
 in perpetuity. 
 
POPULAR LEGEIiq-DS 459 
 
 Thus Pakhom lived for three years. He rented land, 
 and sowed wheat. The years were good, and the wheat 
 grew well, and he had some money laid by. He could 
 live and live, but it appeared tiresome to Pakhom to buy 
 new land from people each year, and to have to fuss 
 about the land : where there was any good land the 
 peasants would swoop down on it and take it all up, 
 and unless he was quick in getting it, he would not have 
 any land to sow in. And in the third year he rented 
 with a merchant a pasture on shares, and they ploughed 
 it all up, but the peasants from whom they rented it 
 went to court about it, and all their work was lost. " If 
 it were all my land," he thought, " I should not bow to 
 any one, and there would be no worry." 
 
 Pakhom began to inquire where he could buy land in 
 perpetuity, and he found a peasant who would sell. The 
 peasant had bought five hundred desyatinas, but he had 
 lost money, and now wanted to sell the land cheap. 
 Pakhom began to bargain with him. He bargained and 
 bargained, and finally got it for fifteen hundred roubles, 
 half of it on time. They had almost settled the matter, 
 when a transient merchant stopped at his farm to get 
 something to eat. They drank tea, and started to talk. 
 The merchant told him that he had come from the far- 
 off country of the Bashkirs. There, he said, he had 
 bought about five thousand desyatinas from the Bashkirs, 
 and for this he had to pay only one thousand roubles. 
 Pakhom began to question him. The merchant told him 
 all about it. 
 
 " All I had to do," he said, " was to gain over the old 
 men. I gave in presents about one hundred roubles* 
 worth of cloaks and rugs, and a caddy of tea, and filled 
 up with wine those who would drink. I gave twenty 
 kopeks per desyatina." He showed the deed. "The 
 land," he said, " lies along a river, and it is all a prairie." 
 
 Pakhdm began to question him all about it. 
 
460 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 " You can't walk around the land in a year," he said, 
 "and it all belongs to the Bashkirs. And the people 
 •have no sense, just like sheep. You can get it almost 
 for nothing." 
 
 "Well," thought Pakhdm, "why do I want to buy 
 five hundred desyatinas for one thousand roubles, and 
 take a debt on my neck ? There I can get rich for one 
 thousand roubles." 
 
 Pakhdm inquired how to get there, and as soon as he 
 saw the merchant off he got ready to go. He left his 
 house to his wife, and took his hired help, and went with 
 him. They travelled to the city, bought a caddy of tea, 
 presents, and wine, just as the merchant had said. They 
 travelled and travelled, until they had five hundred versts 
 behind them. On the seventh day they came to the 
 Bashkir roaming-grounds. Everything was as the mer- 
 chant had said. They all live in the steppe, above the 
 river, in felt tents. They themselves neither plough 
 nor eat bread, but the cattle and horses run in droves in 
 the steppe. Back of the tents the colts are tied, and 
 twice a day they drive the mares there, and milk them, 
 and make kumys of the milk. The women churn the 
 kumys and make cheese, and all the men do is to drink 
 kumys and tea, eat mutton, and play a pipe. They look 
 sleek and merry, and they celebrate the whole summer. 
 The people are all ignorant, and know no Russian, but 
 they are kind. 
 
 As soon as they saw Pakh6m, they came out of their 
 tents, and surrounded the guest. There was an inter- 
 preter there. Pakhdm told him that he had come to see 
 about some land. The Bashkirs were happy, and they 
 took Pakhdm by his arms, and led him to a nice tent, 
 seated him on rugs, placed down pillows under him, sat 
 around him in a circle, and began to treat him to tea and 
 
POPULAK LEGENDS 461 
 
 to kumys. They killed a sheep, and filled him with mut- 
 ton. Pakhdm fetched the presents from the tarantas, and 
 began to distribute them to the Bashkirs. Pakhom gave 
 the presents to the Bashkirs, and distributed the tea among 
 them. The Bashkirs were happy. They prattled among 
 themselves, and then told the interpreter to translate. 
 
 « They command me to tell you," said the interpreter, 
 " that they like you, and that it is our custom to give 
 our guests every pleasure, and to return presents. You 
 have given us presents ; now tell us what you like us to 
 give you of our things." 
 
 " What I like," said Pakhdm, " most of all, here, is 
 your land. Where I live," he said, " the land is crowded 
 and worn out by ploughing, but you have much and good 
 land. I have never seen such before." 
 
 The interpreter translated. The Bashkirs talked among 
 themselves. Pakhom did not understand what they were 
 saying, but he saw that they were merry, shouting and 
 laughing. Then they grew silent, and looked at Pakhdm, 
 but the interpreter said : 
 
 "They command me to tell you that for the good 
 which you have done them they are glad to give you as 
 much land as you want. You have just to point to it, 
 and it is yours." 
 
 Then they talked again, and disputed among them- 
 selves. Pakhdm asked what they were disputing, and 
 the interpreter said : 
 
 "Some say that they must ask the elder about the 
 land, and that they cannot do it without him. But 
 others say that they can do it without him." 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Bashkirs went on disputing, when suddenly a 
 man in a fox cap came in. They all grew silent and got 
 up, and the interpreter said : 
 
462 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 « This is their elder." 
 
 Pakhdm immediately took out the best cloak and five 
 pounds of tea, and took this to the elder. The elder 
 received the presents, and sat down in the place of 
 honour. The Bashkirs began at once to talk to him. 
 The elder listened and Hstened to them, and shook his 
 head to them, for them to keep quiet. Then he began to 
 speak in Russian to Pakhdm. 
 
 " Well, you may have it," he said. "Take it wherever 
 you like. There is a great deal of land here." 
 
 " How can I take as much as I want ? " thought 
 Pakhdm. " I must get some statement, or else they will 
 say that it is mine, and then they will take it away from 
 me." 
 
 "Thank you," he said, "for your kind words. You 
 have a great deal of land, but I want only a small part 
 of it. How shall I know which is mine? I must 
 measure it off, and get a statement of some kind. For 
 God disposes of life and of death. You good people give 
 it to me, but your children may come and take it away." 
 
 " You are right," said the elder, " we shall give you a 
 statement." 
 
 Then Pakhdm said : 
 
 " I have heard that a merchant came to see you. You 
 made him a present of some land and gave him a deed : 
 I ought to get one myself." 
 
 The elder understood it all. 
 
 "That is all possible," he said. "We have a scribe, 
 and we will go to town, and affix our seals." 
 
 " And what will the price be ? " asked Pakhdm. 
 
 " We have but one price : one thousand roubles a 
 day." 
 
 Pakhdm did not understand him. 
 
 " What kind of a measure is a day ? How many 
 desyatlnas are there in it?" 
 
 " We cannot figure it out," he said. " We sell by the 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 463 
 
 day ; as much as you can walk over in one day is yours, 
 and a day's price is one thousand roubles." 
 
 Pakhom was surprised. 
 
 " But in one day you can walk around a great deal of 
 land," he said. 
 
 The elder laughed. 
 
 "It is all yours," he said. "But there is just one 
 condition : if you do not come back in one day to the 
 place from which you start, your money is lost." 
 
 " But how 'can I mark off what I walk over ? " asked 
 Pakhom. 
 
 "We shall stand on the spot which you will choose, 
 and you will start on the circuit : take with you a spade, 
 and wherever necessary, in the corners, dig a hole, and 
 pile up some turf, and we shall later make a furrow with 
 a plough from hole to hole. Make any circuit you please, 
 but by sundown you must come back to the spot from 
 which you have started. Whatever ground you cover is 
 yours." 
 
 Pakhdm was happy. They decided to go out early in 
 the morning. They talked awhile, drank more kumys, 
 ate some mutton, and had tea again ; it was getting dark. 
 They bedded Pakhom on feather beds, and then the Bash- 
 kirs went away. They promised to meet him at daybreak, 
 and to go out to the spot before the sun was up. 
 
 vn. 
 
 Pakhom lay down on the feather bed and could not 
 sleep : he was thinking all the time of the land. 
 
 " I will slice off a mighty tract," he thought. " I can 
 walk about fifty versts in one day. The day is long now ; 
 in fifty versts there will be a lot of land. The worst I will 
 sell, or let to the peasants, and the best I will keep, and 
 will settle on myself. I will buy me two ox-teams 
 and will hire two more hands; I will plough up about 
 
464 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 fifty desyatinas, and on the rest I will let the cattle 
 roam." 
 
 Pakhdm could not fall asleep all night. It was only 
 before daybreak that he forgot himseK. The moment he 
 became unconscious, he had a dream. He saw himseK 
 lying in the same tent, and some one on the outside was 
 roaring with laughter. He wanted to see who was laugh- 
 ing there, and he thought he went out of the tent, and 
 saw the same Bashkir sitting before the tent, holding his 
 belly with both his hands and swaying in .his laughter. 
 He went up to him and said : " What are you laughing 
 about ? " And it seemed to him that it was not the 
 Bashkir, but the merchant who had stopped at his house 
 aud had told him all about the land. And he asked the 
 merchant: "How long have you been here?" But it 
 was no longer the merchant ; it was the peasant that long 
 ago had come from the lower country. And Pakhdm saw 
 that it was not the peasant, but the devil himself with 
 horns and hoofs : he was sitting, and laughing, and before 
 him lay a man, in his bare feet, and in a shirt and trou- 
 sers. And Pakhom took a closer look to see who the 
 man was. And he saw that it was a dead man, — him- 
 self. Pakh(5m was frightened, and awoke. " A man will 
 dream anything," he said, as he awoke. He looked around 
 through the open door, and day was breaking, and it was 
 getting Hght. 
 
 " I must wake the people now," he thought, " it is time 
 to start." 
 
 Pakhdm got up, woke his labourer in the tarantds, ordered 
 him to hitch up, and went himself to wake the Bashkirs. 
 
 " It is time to go out to lay off the land," he said. 
 
 The Bashkirs got up, and gathered together, and the 
 elder arrived. The Bashkirs began agaiQ to drink kumys 
 and wanted to treat Pakhdm to tea, but he would not 
 wait so long. 
 
 " If we are to go, let us go," he said. « It is time." 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 465 
 
 VIIL 
 
 The Bashkirs came together, and some went on horse- 
 back, and others in tarantases, and they started. Pakhdm 
 went with his labourer in his little tarantas, taking a spade 
 with them. They arrived in the steppe just as it was 
 dawning. They rode up a mound, called " shikhan " in 
 the Bashkir language. They got out of their tarantases 
 and dismounted from their horses, and gathered in a 
 circle. The elder walked over to Pakhom, and pointed 
 with his hand. 
 
 " Everything you see," he said, " is ours. Choose what- 
 ever you please." 
 
 Pakhom's eyes were burning: it was all prairie land, 
 as smooth as the palm of the hand and as black as the 
 poppy, and wherever there was a hollow there were 
 different kinds of grass, breast-high. 
 
 The elder took off his fox cap and put it on the 
 ground. 
 
 " This will be the goal," he said. " From here you will 
 start, and here you will come back. Whatever you circle 
 about will be yours." 
 
 Pakhom took out the money, put it on the cap, and 
 pulled off his caftan, and so was left in his sleeveless 
 coat. He pulled his girdle tighter over his belly, drew 
 up his trousers, put a wallet with bread in his bosom, tied 
 a can of water to his belt, pulled up his boot-legs, took the 
 spade from his labourer, and got ready to go. He thought 
 for awhile in what direction to start, — it was nice every- 
 where. He thought : " It makes no difference. I will go 
 eastward." He turned his face toward the sun, stretched 
 himself, and waited for the sun to peep out. He thought : 
 " I must not waste time in vain. It is easier to walk while 
 it is fresh." The moment the sun just ghstened over the 
 edge, Pakh6m threw the spade over his shoulder and started 
 over the steppe. 
 
466 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 Pakhdm walked neither leisurely, nor fast. He walked 
 about a verst ; he stopped, dug a hole, and put some turf 
 in a heap, so as to make the sign clearer. He went on. 
 He was getting limbered up, and he increased his step. 
 After walking a distance, he dug another hole. 
 
 Pakhom looked around. The shikhan could easily be 
 seen in the sunshine, and the people were standing there, 
 and the tires on the wheels of the tarantdses glistened. 
 Pakhom guessed that he had walked five versts. He was 
 getting warm, so he took off his coat, threw it over his 
 shoulder, and marched on. It grew warm. He looked 
 at the sun. It was time to think of breakfast. 
 
 " I have walked the distance of a ploughing," thought 
 Pakhdm, "and there are four pf them in a day, — it is 
 too early yet to turn. I must just take off my boots." 
 
 He sat down, pulled off his boots, stuck them in his 
 girdle, and started off again. It was easy to walk now. 
 He thought : " I wiU walk another five versts, then I will 
 turn to the left. The land is so fine, it is a pity to leave 
 it out." The farther he went, the nicer it was. He went 
 straight ahead. He turned back to look : the shikhan 
 was barely visible, and the people looked like black ants, 
 and something could barely be seen glistening in the 
 sun. 
 
 « Well," thought Pakhdm, " I have walked enough in 
 this direction. I must turn in. I am hot, too : I must 
 take a drink." 
 
 He stopped, dug a large hole, piled up the turf, untied 
 the can, took a drink, and bent sharply to the left. He 
 walked on and on, and the grass was high, and he felt 
 hot. 
 
 Pakh(5m was beginning to grow tired ; he looked at the 
 sun, and saw that it was exactly noon. 
 
 " Well," he thought, " I must take a rest." 
 
 Pakh6m stopped and sat down. He ate a piece of 
 bread and drank some water, but did not lie down : he 
 
POPULAK LEGENDS 467 
 
 was afraid he might fall asleep. After sitting awhile 
 he started off again. At first the walking was easy. The 
 lunch gave him new strength. It grew very hot, and 
 he felt sleepy; but he kept walking, thinking that he 
 would have to suffer but a httle while, and would have to 
 live long. 
 
 He walked quite a distance in this direction. He was 
 on the point of turning, when, behold, he came upon a 
 wet hollow; it was a pity to lose this. He thought 
 that flax would do well there. He walked on straight. 
 He took in the hollow, then dug a hole beyond it, and 
 turned around the second corner. Pakhom looked back 
 at the shikhan ; it was mist-covered from the heat, quiv- 
 ering in the air, and through the haze he could barely see 
 the people. 
 
 "Well," thought Pakhdm, "I have taken two long 
 sides. I must make this one shorter." 
 
 He started on his third side, and began to increase his 
 speed. He looked at the sun, and it was already near 
 the middle of the afternoon, but he had made only two 
 versts on the third side. To the goal it was still fifteen 
 versts. 
 
 " Yes," he thought, " though it is going to be a crooked 
 estate, I must walk in a straight line. I must not take in 
 too much, — as it is I have a great deal." 
 
 Pakhom quickly dug a hole, and turned straight toward 
 the shikhan. 
 
 Pakh6m walked straight toward the shikhan, and it 
 was getting hard. He was thirsty, and he had cut and 
 hurt his feet, and he began to totter. He wanted to rest, 
 but he could not, for he would not get back by sundown. 
 The sun did not wait, and kept going down and down. 
 
 " Oh," he said, " I hope I have not made a mistake and 
 taken in too much. What if I do not get back in time ? " 
 
468 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 He looked ahead of Mm at the shikhan and up at the 
 sun : it was still far to the shikhan, and the sun was not 
 far from the horizon. 
 
 Pakhdm walked, and it was hard for him, but he kept 
 increasing his gait. He walked and walked, and it was 
 far still, so he began to trot. He threw away his coat, 
 his boots, and the can ; he threw away his cap, but held 
 on to the spade, to lean on it. 
 
 " Oh," he thought, " I have made a mistake and have 
 ruined the whole affair. I shall not get back before sun- 
 down." 
 
 And terror took his breath away. He ran, and his 
 shirt and trousers stuck to his body from perspiration, and 
 his mouth was dry. In his breast it was as though bel- 
 lows were being pumped, and in his heart there was a 
 hammering, and his legs gave way under him. Pakhom 
 felt badly: he was afraid he might die from too much 
 straining. 
 
 He was afraid he might die, but he did not dare to stop. 
 
 " I have run so much," he thought, " so how can I stop 
 now ? They will only call me a fool." 
 
 He ran and ran, and was getting near, and could hear 
 the Bashkirs screaming and shouting to him, but their 
 noise made him still more excited. He ran with all his 
 might, and the sun was getting near the edge : it was lost 
 in the mist, and looked as red as blood. It was just 
 beginning to go down. The sun was nearly gone, but it 
 was no longer far to the goal. He saw the people wav- 
 ing their hands at him from the shikhan, and encouraging 
 him. He saw the fox cap on the ground and the money 
 on top of it ; and he saw the elder sitting on the ground, 
 holding his hands over his belly. And Pakhdm recalled 
 his dream. 
 
 " There is a lot of land," he thought, " but will God 
 grant me to live on it ? Oh, I have ruined myself," he 
 thought. " I shall not reach the spot" 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 469 
 
 Pakh6m looked at the sun, and it was down to the 
 ground, — a part of it was down, and only an arch was 
 standing out from the horizon. Pakhdm made a last 
 effort and bent forward with his whole body : his legs 
 hardly moved fast enough to keep him from falling. He 
 ran up to the shikhan, when suddenly it grew dark. 
 He looked around, and the sun was down. He groaned. 
 
 " My labour is lost," he thought. 
 
 He wanted to stop, but he heard the Bashkirs shouting 
 to him, and then he recalled that here below it seemed to 
 him that the sun was down, but that on the shikhan 
 it was not yet down. Pakhom made a last effort, and 
 ran up the shikhan. On the shikhan it was still light. 
 He ran up, and saw the cap. In front of the cap sat the 
 elder, laughing and holding his hands on his belly. 
 Pakhom recalled the dream. He groaned, and his legs 
 gave way, and he fell forward, and his hands touched the 
 cap. 
 
 " You are a fine fellow ! " cried the elder. " You have 
 come into a lot of land." 
 
 Pakhom's labourer ran up, wishing to raise him, but 
 blood was flowing from his mouth, and he was dead. 
 
 The Bashkirs clicked their tongues, pitying him. 
 
 The labourer picked up the spade, and dug a grave for 
 Pakhom, as much as he measured from his feet to his 
 head, — three arshins, — and buried him in it. 
 
THE GODSON 
 
 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, 
 and a tooth for a tooth : but I say unto you, That ye resist 
 not evil (Matt. v. 38, 39). 
 
 Vengeance is mine ; I will repay (Bom. xii. 19). 
 
 A SON was born to a poor peasant. The peasant was 
 delighted, and he went to his neighbour to call a god- 
 father. The neighbour refused, — what pleasure is there 
 in being godfather to a poor peasant's child ? The poor 
 peasant went to another neighbour, and he, too, refused. 
 
 He went through the whole village, but no one would 
 be godfather. The peasant went to another village. On 
 his way he met a man and the man stopped him. 
 
 " Good morning," he said, " whither does God cany you, 
 man ? " 
 
 " The Lord has given me a child," said the peasant, " in 
 childhood a care, in old age a consolation, and after death 
 for my soul's remembrance ; but as I am poor, no one in 
 our village wants to be godfather. I am on my way to 
 look for a godfather." 
 
 And the stranger said : 
 
 " Take me for a godfather." 
 
 The peasant was happy, thanked the stranger, and 
 said: 
 
 " And whom shall I call in as a godmother ? " 
 
 " Call a merchant's daughter," said the stranger. " Go 
 into the town : on the square there is a stone house with 
 
 470 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 471 
 
 shops ; at the entrance into the house ask the merchant 
 to let his daughter go as a godmother." 
 
 The peasant hesitated. 
 
 " How can I," he said, " oh, godfather, go to the rich 
 merchant ? He will hold me in contempt, and will not 
 let his daughter go." 
 
 " That is not your grief. Go and ask him. Be pre- 
 pared to-morrow morning, — I will come to be sponsor." 
 
 The poor peasant returned home, and he went to town 
 to see the merchant. He put up the horse in the yard, 
 when the merchant himself came out. 
 
 " What do you want ? " he asked. 
 
 " It is like this, Mr. Merchant. The Lord has given 
 me a child, in childhood a care, in old age a consolation, 
 and after death for my soul's remembrance. Please, let 
 your daughter be his godmother." 
 
 " When will the christening be ? " 
 
 " To-morrow morning." 
 
 " Very well, God be with you. She will come to-mor- 
 row to mass." 
 
 On the next day the godmother came, and so did the 
 godfather, and the child was christened. The moment 
 the christening was over, the godfather went away, and 
 no one found out who he was, or ever saw him again. 
 
 n. 
 
 The child began to grow to his parents' joy : he was 
 strong, and willing to work, and clever, and well-behaved. 
 The boy was ten years old, when his parents had him 
 taught to read. What it takes others five years to learn, 
 the boy learned in one, and there was nothing else they 
 could teach him. 
 
 Easter week came. The boy went down to see his 
 godmother, to exchange the Easter greeting with her. 
 When he returned home, he asked : 
 
472 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 " Father and mother, where does my godfather live ? I 
 should like to exchange the Easter greeting with him." 
 
 And the father said to him : 
 
 " We do not know, beloved son, where your godfather 
 lives. We ourselves feel sorry for it. We have not seen 
 him since he christened you. We have not heard of him, 
 and we do not know where he lives, or whether he is 
 alive." 
 
 The boy bowed to his father and to his mother : 
 
 " Father and mother," he said, " let me go to find him. 
 I want to find him, — to exchange the Easter greeting 
 with him." 
 
 The parents let him go, and he went to find his god- 
 father. 
 
 in. 
 
 The boy left the house, and travelled on the highway. 
 After walking half a day, he met a stranger. 
 
 The stranger stopped. 
 
 "Good day, boy," he said, "whither does God carry 
 you?" 
 
 And the boy said : 
 
 "I went to exchange the Easter greeting with my 
 godmother ; when I came back home I asked my parents 
 where my godfather lived, as I wanted to exchange the 
 Easter greeting with him. My parents said to me: 
 ' We do not know, son, where your godfather lives. After 
 christening you, he went away from us, and we know 
 nothing about him, and we do not know whether he is 
 alive.' But I am anxious to see my godfather, and so I 
 have started out to find him." 
 
 And the stranger said : 
 
 " I am your godfather." 
 
 The boy was happy, and exchanged the Easter greeting 
 with his godfather. 
 
 " Whither are you, godfather, wending your way ? " he 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 473 
 
 asked. " If you are going in our direction, come to our 
 house ; and if you are going home, I will go with you." 
 
 And the godfather said : 
 
 " I have no time to go now to your house, — I have 
 some business in the villages. But I shall be at home 
 to-morrow, so come to me then." 
 
 « But how shall I find you, father ? " 
 
 "Walk all the time toward the rising of the sun, 
 straight ahead, and you will come to a forest, and in the 
 forest there is a clearing. Sit down in that clearing, rest 
 yourself, and watch what will happen. When you come 
 out of the forest, you will see a garden, and in the garden 
 there is a booth with a golden roof : that is my house. 
 Walk up to the gate, and I will come out to meet you." 
 
 Thus the godfather spoke, and disappeared from the 
 godson's view. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The boy went as the godfather had told him. He 
 walked and walked, and came to the forest. He came 
 out on the clearing and saw in the middle of it a fir-tree, 
 and on the fir-tree a rope was attached to a branch, and 
 to the rope was tied an oak log weighing some three puds. 
 Under the log there was a trough with honey. 
 
 The boy was wondering why the honey was placed 
 there, and the log attached above it, when there was a 
 crashing through the woods, and he saw bears coming 
 out: in front was the she-bear; she was followed by a 
 yearling, and behind by three small cubs. The she-bear 
 scented the air and went straight to the trough, and the 
 cubs after her. 
 
 The she-bear stuck her muzzle into the honey: she 
 called up the cubs, and they rushed up and made for 
 the trough. The log moved away a httle and turned 
 back and struck the cubs. When the she-bear saw this, 
 she moved the log away with her paw. The log moved 
 
474 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 back farther, came back again, and struck into the midst 
 of the cubs, hitting some on the back and some on the 
 head. 
 
 The cubs howled and jumped away. The she-bear 
 grew furious, grabbed the log above her head with both 
 her paws, and swung it far away from herself. The log 
 flew up high ; in the meantime the yearling ran up to the 
 trough, stuck his muzzle into the honey, and began to 
 lap it, and the others, too, began to come up to it. They 
 had barely come up, when the log swept back and 
 whacked the yearling on the head, killing him on the 
 spot. The she-bear growled more than ever, and grabbed 
 the log and sent it with all her strength flying upward. 
 
 The log flew higher than the branch, so that even the 
 rope was slackened, and the she-bear ran up to the 
 trough, and all the cubs with her. The log flew up and 
 up, and stopped, and started downward. The lower it 
 went, the faster it flew. It came down with a crash and 
 banged the she-bear on the head. She rolled over, jerked 
 her legs, and was dead. The cubs ran away. 
 
 The boy marvelled at this, and walked on. He came 
 to a large garden, and in it there was a high palace with a 
 golden roof. The godfather was standing at the gate, and 
 smihng. He exchanged greetings with his godson, led 
 him through the gate, and took him through the garden. 
 Even in his dream the boy had not thought of such 
 beauty and joy as there were in this garden. 
 
 The godfather led the boy into the palace. The palace 
 was even more beautiful. He took the boy through all 
 the rooms : they were one more beautiful than the other, 
 and one more cheerful than the other, and he brought 
 him to a locked door. 
 
 " Do you see this door ? " he said. " There is no lock 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 475 
 
 on it, — there are only some seals. It is possible to open 
 it, but I command you not to do so. Live and enjoy 
 yourself wherever and however you please; enjoy all 
 joys, but this is the one commandment: do not enter 
 through this door. But if you do go in through it, re- 
 member what you saw in the woods." 
 
 The godfather said this, and went away. The godson 
 was left alone, and began to live. He was so happy 
 and so cheerful that he thought he had lived here but 
 three hours, whereas thirty years had passed. When the 
 tbirty years had passed, the godson went up to the sealed 
 door and thought : 
 
 " Why did my godfather not permit me to enter this 
 room ? I will go and see what there is there." 
 
 He pushed the door, the seals flew back, and the door 
 opened. The godson went in, and he saw larger and 
 more beautiful rooms than any, and in the middle of the 
 rooms stood a golden throne. The godson walked from 
 one room to another, and he went up to the throne, and 
 walked up its steps and sat down. Near the throne he 
 saw a sceptre. He took the sceptre into his hands. The 
 moment he lifted it, all four walls of the room disap- 
 peared, and he saw everything which was going on in the 
 world. He looked straight ahead of him, and he saw 
 the sea, and ships sailing on it. He looked to the right 
 and he saw where foreign, non-Christian people were 
 living. He looked to the left, and he saw where Christian 
 people, but not Eussians, were living. He looked into 
 the fourth side, and there were our Eussians. 
 
 " I will just see," he said, " what is going on at home, — 
 whether the corn grows well there." 
 
 He looked at his field and saw cocks of corn there. 
 He began to count the cocks, to see how much corn 
 there was, and he saw a cart coming into the field, and a 
 man sitting inside of it. The godson thought that his 
 father was coming in the night to haul away the ricks. 
 
476 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 He took a good look at him, and saw that it was Vdska 
 Kudrashdv, the thief, who was coming in the cart. He 
 drove up to the cocks, and began to load them on. That 
 made the godson angry. He shouted : 
 
 " Father, your sheaves are being stolen from the field ! " 
 
 His father woke up in the pasture. 
 
 " I had a dream that they are stealing my sheaves," he 
 said. " I must go and see." 
 
 He jumped on a horse, and rode off. When he came 
 to the field, he saw VasiH, and so he called the peasants 
 together. They beat Vasili, and tied him, and took him 
 to the jail. 
 
 The godson now looked into the town where his god- 
 mother was living. He saw her married to a merchant. 
 She was lying and sleeping, but her husband got up and 
 went to his mistress. The godson cried to his god- 
 mother : 
 
 " Get up ! Your husband is doing something bad." 
 
 His godmother jumped up, dressed herself, found out 
 where her husband was, disgraced and beat the mistress, 
 and drove her husband away from her. 
 
 Then the godson looked at his mother, and saw her 
 lying in the hut, and a robber slinking into the house 
 and breaking into her trunk. 
 
 The mother awoke, and cried aloud. When the robber 
 saw her, he took hold of an axe, and swung it, wishing 
 to kill her. 
 
 The godson did not hold out, but hurled the sceptre at 
 the robber, and struck him straight on his temple, and 
 killed him on the spot. 
 
 VL 
 
 The moment the godson killed the robber, the walls 
 closed up again, and the room became what it was. 
 The door opened, and the godfather came in. He 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 477 
 
 walked over to his godson, took his hand, led him down 
 from the throne, and said : 
 
 "You did not obey my command, — you have done 
 a bad thing in opening the forbidden door ; another bad 
 thing you did when you ascended the throne and took 
 my sceptre ; a third bad thing you did, — you added 
 much evil to the world. If you had been sitting here 
 another hour, you would have ruined half the people." 
 
 And the godfather led his godson up to the throne, and 
 took the sceptre into his hand. And again were the walls 
 removed, and everything became visible. 
 
 And the godfather said : 
 
 " See now what you have done to your father ! Vasili 
 has been a year in prison, where he has learned all kinds 
 of evil deeds and has become entirely a beast. See there ! 
 He has driven off two of your father's horses, and, you 
 see, he is setting fire to his farmhouses. This is what 
 you have done to your father." 
 
 The moment the godson saw his father's house on fire, 
 the godfather hid this from him, and ordered him to look 
 in another direction. 
 
 " Here," he said, " the husband of your godmother has 
 abandoned his wife for more than a year, and is making 
 free with other women, while she, from grief, has taken 
 to drink, and his former mistress is entirely lost. This is 
 what you have done to your godmother." 
 
 And the godfather hid this from him, and showed him 
 his house. And he saw his mother: she was weeping 
 on account of her sins, and repenting them, and saying, 
 " It would have been better if the murderer had killed 
 me then, for I should not have committed so many sins." 
 
 " This is what you have done to your mother." 
 
 And the godfather hid this, too, from him, and pointed 
 downward. And the godson saw the robber; two guard* 
 were holding him before the dark place. 
 
 And the godfather said to him : 
 
478 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 " This man has ruined nine souls. He ought to redeem 
 his own sins ; but you have killed him, and so have taken 
 all his sins upon yourself. Now you will have to answer 
 for all his sins. That is what you have done to yourself. 
 The she-bear pushed away the log, and so disturbed the 
 cubs; she pushed it away a second time, and killed 
 the yearling; she pushed it away a third time, and 
 killed herself. You have done the same. I give you 
 now thirty years' time. Go into the world, and redeem 
 the sins of the robber. If you do not redeem them, you 
 will have to go in his place." 
 
 And the godson said : 
 
 " How can I redeem his sins ? " 
 
 And the godfather said : 
 
 " When you shall have freed the world from as much 
 evil as you have carried into it, you will have redeemed 
 your sins as well as those of the robber." 
 
 And the godson asked : 
 
 " How can I free the world from sins ? ** 
 
 And the godfather said : 
 
 " Go straight toward the rising sun, and you will come 
 to a field, with men upon it. Watch the people to see 
 what they are doing, and teach them what you know. 
 Then walk on, and take note of what you see; on the 
 fourth day you will come to a forest ; in the forest there 
 is a cell, and in the cell lives a hermit. Tell him every- 
 thing that has happened. He will teach you what to do. 
 When you have done everything that the hermit com- 
 mands you to do, you will have redeemed your sins and 
 those of the robber." 
 
 Thus spoke the godfather, and he saw his godson out 
 of the gate. 
 
 vn. 
 
 The godson went away. As he walked, he thought : 
 " How can I free the world from evil ? They destroy 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 479 
 
 evil by sending evil people to hard labour, locking them 
 up in prisons, and putting them to death. What shall I 
 do, then, to destroy evil, and not to take other people's 
 sins upon myself ? " 
 
 The godson thought and thought, but could not think 
 out anything. He walked for a long time, and finally 
 came to a field. In the field the corn had grown large 
 and thick, and it was time to harvest it. The godson 
 saw a heifer get into the corn. When the people saw it, 
 they mounted their horses, and began to drive the heifer 
 through the corn, now from one side and now from 
 another. The moment the heifer was ready to run out 
 of the com, a rider passed by, which frightened the heifer, 
 and she went back into the com ; agaiu they galloped 
 after her through the com. But a woman was standing in 
 the road, and weeping : " They are going to get my heifer." 
 
 And the godson said to the peasants : 
 
 " Why are you doing this ? Eide all of you out of the 
 com. Let the woman call her heifer ! " 
 
 The people obeyed him. The woman went up to the 
 edge and began to call her heifer: "Tpryusi, tpryusi, 
 browny, tpryusi, tpryusi!" 
 
 The heifer pricked her ears, stopped to listen, and ran 
 straight toward the woman, and put her mouth into 
 the woman's lap, almost knocking her down. And the 
 peasants were glad, and the woman was glad, and 
 the heifer was glad. i 
 
 The godson walked on, thinking : 
 
 "Now I see that evil increases through evil. The 
 more people persecute evil, the more do they multiply it. 
 It is evident that evil cannot be destroyed through evil. 
 But I do not know how to destroy it. It is well that the 
 heifer obeyed her mistress ; but how could she have been 
 called out, if she had not obeyed ? " 
 
 The godson thought and thought, but could not think 
 it out. He went farther. 
 
480 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 VIIL 
 
 He walked and walked, until he came to a village. 
 He asked at the outer hut to be allowed to stay 
 there overnight. The mistress let him in. There 
 was no one in the hut but the mistress, and she was 
 washing. 
 
 The godson went in, climbed on the oven, and began to 
 look around, to see what the mistress was doing. He saw 
 that she had washed the house, and was now washing the 
 table. After she had washed the table, she began to wipe 
 it with a dirty towel. She began to wipe it on one side, 
 but the table did not get clean : the dirty towel left strips 
 of dirt on the table. She began to wipe in another direc- 
 tion ; she wiped off some of the stripes, but made other 
 stripes come out. She began once more to rub length- 
 wise, and again it was the same : she soiled the table 
 with the dirty towel. She wiped off the dirt in one 
 place, and rubbed it on in another. The godson looked 
 at it for awhile, and said : 
 
 " Mistress, what are you doing there ? " 
 
 " Do you not see ? " she said. " I am cleaning up for 
 the holiday. I somehow cannot get the table clean, — it 
 is so dirty. I am all worn out from it." 
 
 "If you would just wash the towel," he said, "you 
 would be able to get it clean." 
 
 The mistress did so, and she got her table clean. 
 
 " Thank you," she said, " for having taught me." 
 
 Next morning the godson bade the mistress good-bye, 
 and went away. He walked and walked, and came to a 
 forest. There he saw some peasants bending hoops. 
 The godson went up to them, and saw the peasants 
 walking in a circle, but the hoop did not bend. He 
 looked on awhile, and saw that the vise was not fastened, 
 but turning around. So he said : 
 
 " Friends, what are you doing there ? " 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 481 
 
 "We are bending hoops. We have steamed them 
 twice, and we are all worn out, — they do not bend." 
 
 " Friends, fasten the vise, for you are turning around 
 with it." 
 
 The peasants obeyed him, fastened the vise, and things 
 went after that. 
 
 The godson remained with them overnight, and went 
 farther. He walked a whole day and a night, and before 
 the dawn came to some drovers. He lay down near them. 
 He saw that the drovers had put away the cattle, and were 
 trying to start a fire. They took dry leaves and set them 
 on fire, and before they burned well, they put on them wet 
 twigs. The twigs hissed, anfl the fire went out. The 
 drovers took some more dry leaves and set them on fire, 
 and again put on wet twigs. The fire was again put out. 
 They worked for a long time, but the fire would not 
 burn. 
 
 And the godson said : 
 
 " Don't be in a hurry to put on the twigs, but first let 
 the leaves burn well. When the fire is well started, you 
 may put on the twigs." 
 
 The drovers did so : they started a good fire, and then 
 heaped up the twigs. The twigs caught fire and burned 
 well. The godson remained with them awhile, and then 
 went farther. He thought and thought why he had seen 
 these three things, but he could not understand. 
 
 K. 
 
 The godson walked and walked. A day passed. He 
 came to a forest, and in the forest was a cell. He went 
 up to the cell, and knocked. A voice inside asked : 
 
 "Who is there?" 
 
 "A great sinner: I want to redeem other people's 
 sins." 
 
 The hermit came out, and asked : 
 
482 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 " What are those sins of other people which are upon 
 you?" 
 
 The godson told him everything : ahout his godfather, 
 and about the she-bear and her cubs, and about the throne 
 in the sealed room, and about what the godfather had 
 commanded him to do, and about his having seen the 
 peasants trample down all the com, and about the heifer's 
 coming out herself to her mistress. 
 
 " I now understand that evil cannot be destroyed by 
 evil, but I cannot understand how it is to be destroyed. 
 Teach me how." 
 
 And the hermit said : 
 
 " Tell me what else you Saw on the road." 
 
 The godson told him about the woman's cleaning up, 
 and about the peasants' bending of the hoops, and about 
 the drovers' making a fire. 
 
 When the hermit had heard it all, he went back to his 
 cell and brought out a notched and battered axe. 
 
 " Come with me," he said. 
 
 The hermit went a distance away from the cell, and 
 pointed to a tree. 
 
 " Cut it down," he said. 
 
 The godson cut the tree, and it fell down. 
 
 " Cut it now into three parts." 
 
 The godson cut it into three parts. The hermit went 
 again into the cell, and brought some fire. 
 
 " Burn the three logs," he said. 
 
 The godson started the fire and burned the three logs, 
 and three smudges were left. 
 
 " Bury them half into the ground, — like this." 
 
 The godson buried them. 
 
 " You see, at the foot of the hill is a river : bring the 
 water from there in your mouth, and water them. Water 
 this smudge as you taught the woman ; water this smudge 
 as you taught the coopers; water this smudge as you 
 taught the drovers. When all three shall have sprouted 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 483 
 
 and three apple-trees shall have grown from the smudges, 
 you will know how to destroy evil among men; and 
 then you will redeem the sins." 
 
 Having said this, the hermit went back to his cell. 
 The godson thought and thought, but could not under- 
 stand what the hermit had told him. However, he did 
 as he was commanded. 
 
 X. 
 
 The godson went to the river, filled his mouth full of 
 water, poured it out on a smudge, and went back for 
 more, — and so he watered the other two smudges. The 
 godson grew tired, and wanted to eat. He went to 
 the cell, to ask the hermit for something to eat. He 
 opened the door, but the hermit lay dead on a bench. 
 The godson looked around and found some hardtack, 
 which he ate ; then he found a spade, and began to dig 
 a grave for the hermit. In the night he carried water to 
 the smudges, and in the daytime he dug the grave. He 
 had just finished the grave and was about to bury the 
 hermit, when people came from the village, bringing food 
 for the hermit. 
 
 The people learned that the hermit had died, and that 
 he had blessed the godson in his place. The people 
 buried the hermit, and left the bread for the godson; 
 they promised to bring him more, and went away. 
 
 And so the godson remained to live in the place of the 
 hermit. He lived there, and ate what the people brought 
 to him, and kept doing the work which he had been com- 
 manded to do, carrying water in his mouth from the river, 
 to water the smudges. 
 
 Thus the godson passed a year, and many people began 
 to come to him. The rumour went abroad that a holy 
 man was living in the forest, finding his salvation in 
 carrying water in his mouth from the river at the foot of 
 the hill, and watering the burned stumps. A multitude 
 
484 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 began to come to him. Kich merchants, too, began to 
 come to him, bringing him presents. The godson 
 took nothing from them, except what he needed, and 
 what they gave him, he turned over to other poor 
 people. 
 
 And this is the way the godson lived: half the day 
 he carried water in his mouth, watering the smudges, 
 and the other half he rested himself and received the 
 people. 
 
 And the godson came to think that he had been com- 
 manded to live in this manner, thus destroying evil and 
 redeeming sins. 
 
 So the godson lived another year, and did not miss 
 watering the smudges a single day, but they did not 
 sprout. 
 
 One day he was sitting in the cell, when he heard a 
 man ride by him singing songs. The godson went out to 
 see who the man was. He saw that he was a strong lad. 
 He wore good clothes, and his horse and the saddle under 
 him were fine. 
 
 The godson stopped him, and asked him what kind of 
 a man he was and whither he was riding. 
 
 The man stopped. 
 
 " I am a robber,'* he said, " and am travelling along the 
 roads, killing people : the more people I kill, the merrier 
 the songs are which I sing." 
 
 The godson was frightened, and said : 
 
 " How can I destroy the evil in this man ? It is easy 
 enough for me to talk to those who come to me, and 
 themselves repent their sins. But this one boasts of 
 evil." 
 
 The godson did not say anything, but went away, and 
 thought what to do now. "If the robber takes it into 
 his head to rove here, the people will become scared, and 
 will stop coming to see me. They will lose their advan- 
 tage, and how shall I live then ? " 
 
POPULAB LEGENDS 
 
 485 
 
 And the godson stopped, and said to the robber : 
 
 " People come here, not to boast of evil, but to repent 
 and to pray for their sins. Kepent, if you are afraid of 
 God ; if you do not wish to repent, go away from here, 
 and never come back to disturb me, and to frighten the 
 people. If you will not pay any attention to me, God 
 will punish you." 
 
 The robber laughed. 
 
 " I am not afraid of God," he said, " and I will pay no 
 attention to you. You are not my master. You live by 
 your praying, and I live by robbery. All have to Hve in 
 some way. Teach the women that come to see you, but 
 you cannot teach me. Since you have mentioned God to 
 me, I will kill two additional men to-morrow. I should 
 have killed you, but I do not want to soil my hands. 
 Don't ever get in my way again." 
 
 Thus the robber threatened him, and went away. He 
 never came back, and the godson lived quietly, as before, 
 for eight years. 
 
 XL 
 
 One night the godson went out to water his smudges. 
 He came back to the cell, to rest himself, and he sat and 
 looked at the footpath, to see whether people would come 
 soon. On that day not one man came. The godson sat 
 there alone until evening, and he felt lonely, and thought 
 about his life. He remembered how the robber had 
 rebuked him for living by praying. And so the godson 
 looked back upon his life. 
 
 " I am not living as the hermit told me to," he thought. 
 " The hermit imposed a penance on me, while I have 
 earned a living and fame by it. And I have been so 
 tempted by it that I feel lonely when people do not come 
 to me. I have not redeemed my former sins, and have 
 only added new ones. I will go into the woods, to 
 another place, so that the people may not find me. I 
 
486 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 will live all by myself, so as to redeem my old sins, and 
 not add new ones." 
 
 Thus thought the hermit, and he took a bag full of 
 hardtack and a spade, and went away from the cell, 
 toward a ravine, in order to build him an earth hut in a 
 hidden place, where the people might not see him. 
 
 The godson was walking with his bag and with his 
 spade, when the robber rode up to him. The godson 
 became frightened, and wanted to run, but the robber 
 overtook him. 
 
 " Whither are you going ? " he said. 
 
 The godson told him that he wanted to go away from 
 the people, to a place where the people could not reach 
 him. The robber was surprised. 
 
 " What will you now live by, if people stop coming to 
 you?" 
 
 The godson had not thought of it before, but when the 
 robber asked him this, he thought of the food. 
 
 " By what God will give me," he said. 
 
 The robber said nothing, and rode on. 
 
 "Why did I not tell him anything about his life?" 
 thought the godson. " Maybe he wodd repent now. He 
 seems to be kinder to-day, and did not threaten to kill 
 me." 
 
 And the godson called out to the robber : 
 
 "But still you must repent. You cannot get away 
 from God." 
 
 The robber turned his horse around. He pulled his 
 knife out of the girdle, and swung it to strike the godson. 
 The godson became frightened, and ran into the forest. 
 
 The robber did not run after him, but only said : 
 
 " Twice have I forgiven you, but if you come in my 
 way the third time, I will kiU you." 
 
 Having said this, he rode off. In the evening the 
 godson went to water the smudges, and, behold, one of 
 them had sprouted ; an apple-tree was growing from it. 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 487 
 
 XIL 
 
 The godson hid himself from the people, and began to 
 live alone. His hardtack gave out. 
 
 " Well," he thought, " now I will look for herbs." 
 
 He went out to look for herbs, when he saw a bag with 
 hardtack hanging on a branch. He took it, and lived 
 on that hardtack. 
 
 When this hardtack gave out, another bag of it was 
 hanging on the same branch. And thus the godson 
 lived. But he had this grief, — he was afraid of the 
 robber. Whenever he heard the robber, he hid himself; 
 He thought : 
 
 " If he kills me, I shall not have a chance to redeem 
 my sins." 
 
 Thus he lived another ten years. The one apple-tree 
 grew, but the other smudges remained such as they 
 were. 
 
 One morning the godson went early to do his work; 
 he watered the earth around the smudges, and he was 
 tired and sat down to rest himself. He was sitting and 
 resting himself, and thinking : 
 
 " I have sinned, to be afraid of death. If God so 
 wishes, I can redeem my sins by my death." 
 
 No sooner had he said this, than he heard the robber 
 riding along, and cursing. The godson heard him, and 
 thought : 
 
 " Except from God, nothing good nor evil will befall 
 me from anybody," and he went to meet the robber. 
 
 He saw that the robber was not travelling by himself, 
 but was bringing a man with him on the saddle. The 
 man's hands and mouth were tied. The man was silent, 
 and the robber kept cursing him. The godson went up 
 to the robber, and stood in front of the horse. 
 
 " Whither are you taking this man ? " he asked. 
 
 " I am taking him to the forest. He is the son of a 
 
488 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 merchant. He will not tell me where his father's money 
 is hidden, and I will flog him until he does tell." 
 
 The robber wanted to ride on ; but the godson did not 
 let him, — he seized the horse by the bridle. 
 
 " Let this man go," he said. 
 
 The robber grew angry at the godson, and wanted to 
 strike him. 
 
 " Do you want me to do the same to you ? I have 
 told you I would kill you. Let me go ! " 
 
 The godson was not frightened. 
 
 " I will not let you go," he said. " I am not afraid of 
 you, but only of God. God does not allow me let you 
 go. Set the man free ! " 
 
 The robber scowled, took out his knife, cut the ropes, 
 and set free the merchant's son. 
 
 " Get away from me," he said. " Let me not catch you 
 again ! " 
 
 The merchant's son leaped down and ran away. The 
 robber wanted to ride on, but the godson stopped him 
 again ; he began to talk to him about giving up his bad 
 life. The robber stood still awhile and hstened to all he 
 had to say, but said nothing, and rode off. 
 
 The next morning the godson went to water the 
 smudges. Behold, another smudge had sprouted, — again 
 it was an apple-tree that was growing from it. 
 
 XIIL 
 
 Another ten years passed. One day the godson was 
 sitting. He was not wishing for anything, and he was not 
 afraid of anything, and his heart was glad. And the god- 
 son thought : 
 
 "What grace is given by God to men! But they 
 torment themselves in vain. They ought to live in joy 
 all the time." 
 
 And he thought of aU the evil of men, and how they 
 
POPULAR LEGENDS 489 
 
 tormented themselves. And he began to feel sorry for 
 men. 
 
 " In vain," he thought, " I live this way ; I must go 
 and tell people what I know." 
 
 No sooner had he thought so, than he heard the robber 
 coming along. He let the robber pass by him, and 
 thought : 
 
 " What use is there in speaking to him ? He will not 
 understand." 
 
 At first he thought so, but he thought it over again, 
 and went out on the road. The robber passed by, look- 
 ing gloomy and staring at the ground. The godson looked 
 at him, and felt sorry for him, and ran up to him, and 
 seized him by his knee. 
 
 " Dear brother," he said, " have pity on thy soul ! 
 God's spirit is in you ! You are suffering yourself, and 
 are causing others to suffer, and you will suffer even more. 
 But God loves you, and has such grace in store for you ! 
 Do not ruin yourself, brother ! Change your life ! " 
 
 The robber scowled, and turned his face away. 
 
 " Get away from me," he said. 
 
 The godson embraced the robber's knee even more 
 firmly and began to weep. 
 
 The robber raised his eyes to the godson. He looked 
 and looked at him, and climbed down from his horse, and 
 knelt before the godson. 
 
 " You have vanquished me, old man," he said. " Twenty 
 years have I struggled with you, and you have overcome 
 me. I have no power over myself ; you can do with me 
 what you please. When you tried to persuade me the first 
 time, I only grew more savage. I began to think of 
 your speeches only when you went away from people 
 and found out that you yourself did not need anything 
 from men." 
 
 And the godson recalled that the woman washed the 
 table clean only when she washed the towel. When he 
 
490 POPULAR LEGENDS 
 
 stopped caring for himself, and cleansed his own heart, 
 he was able to cleanse also the hearts of others. 
 
 And the robber said : 
 
 " And my heart turned in me only when you did not 
 fear death." 
 
 And the godson recalled that the coopers could bend 
 the hoop only when the vise was made firm. When he 
 stopped fearing death, and made his life firm in God, the 
 unruly heart was vanquished. 
 
 And the robber said : 
 
 " And my heart melted completely only when you took 
 pity on me and wept before me." 
 
 The godson was happy, and led the robber to where 
 the smudges were. When they came up to them, an 
 apple-tree had sprouted from the third smudge. And 
 the godson recalled that the wet branches caught fire 
 with the drovers only when the fire burned bright. When 
 his heart burned bright, another man's heart, too, burned 
 up. 
 
 And the godson was glad, because now he had redeemed 
 the sins. 
 
 He told all this to the robber, and died. The robber 
 buried him, and began to live as the godson had com- 
 manded him, and so he taught the people. 
 
THREE SONS 
 
 1892 
 
THREE SONS 
 
 A FATHER gave his son some property, corn, and cattle, 
 and said to him : 
 
 " Live like me, and thou wilt always fare well." 
 The son took his patrimony, went away from the 
 father, and began to live for his pleasure. The father 
 had, indeed, told him to live like him. " He lives and 
 enjoys himself, and so will I." 
 
 Thus he lived a year, two, ten, twenty years, — and 
 wasted all his patrimony, and he had nothing left; 
 and he began to ask his father to give him more; but 
 his father did not listen to him. Then he began to pro- 
 pitiate his father and to give to him the best things he 
 had, and to ask him again. But his father made no reply 
 to him. Then the son began to ask his father's forgive- 
 ness, thinking that he had offended him in some way, 
 and again asked him to give him something; but his 
 father did not say a word. 
 
 Then the son began to imprecate his father, saying : 
 " If thou dost not give me now, why didst thou give 
 me before and dole out my part to me and promise me 
 that I should fare well ? All my former joys, when I 
 spent my estate, are not worth one hour of the present 
 torments. I see that I perish, and there is no salvation. 
 And who is to blame ? Thou. Thou knewest that my 
 estate would not be sufficient, and thou didst not give me 
 more. All thou toldest me was, " Live hke me, and thou 
 
 493 
 
494 THREE SONS 
 
 wilt fare well. And I lived like thee. Thou livedst for 
 thy joy, and I lived for mine. Thou hast more left 
 for thyself, so thou hast some, while I have not enough. 
 Thou art not a father, but a deceiver and evil-doer! 
 Cursed is my hfe, and cursed be thou, evil-doer and tor- 
 mentor, — I do not want to know thee, and I hate thee ! " 
 The father gave also some property to the second son, 
 saying only : 
 
 " Live like me, and thou wilt always fare welL" 
 The second son was not so much rejoiced at his estate 
 as had been the first. He thought that he received his 
 due; but he knew what had happened with his elder 
 brother, and so began to think that he might lose his 
 property like the first. He understood this much, that 
 his eldest brother had not understood correctly the words, 
 " Live like me," and that it was not right to live only for 
 one's own pleasure. 
 
 He began to brood over the words, " Live like me." 
 And he reasoned out that it was necessary, as his 
 father had done, to put to profit the estate which his father 
 gave him. And he began to ask his father how to do 
 this or that, but his father made no reply to him. Then 
 the son thought that his father was afraid to tell him, 
 and began to take to pieces all his father's things, in 
 order to see for himself how everything was done, and he 
 spoiled and ruined everything which he had received 
 from his father, and everything new which he did was 
 all to no profit. But he did not want to acknowledge 
 that he had spoiled everything, and so he lived in agony, 
 telHng all that his father had given him nothing, but that 
 he had made everything for himself. " We can "all of us 
 do better and better, and shall soon reach a point when 
 everything will be well." Thus spoke the second son, so 
 long as anything his father had given him was left with 
 him ; but when he had spent the last, and he had nothing 
 to live on, he laid hands on himself and killed himself. 
 
THREE SONS 495 
 
 The father gave just such an estate to the third son, 
 and told him too : 
 
 " Live like me, and then thou wilt always fare well." 
 
 And the third son, like the first and the second, was 
 glad to receive the estate, and went away from his father ; 
 but he knew what had happened with his elder brothers 
 and began to think of what was meant by the words, 
 " Live like me, and thou wilt always prosper." 
 
 The eldest brother had thought that to live like the 
 father meant to live for his own pleasure, and he squan- 
 dered everything, and was ruiued. 
 
 The second brother had thought that to live like his 
 father meant for him to do everything which his father 
 had done, and he, too, came to despair. What, then, is 
 meant by living like the father ? 
 
 And he began to recall everything he knew about his 
 father. And no matter how much he thought, he could 
 not think of anything else about his father except that 
 formerly there had been nothing, not even himself, and 
 that his father had begotten, brought up, and educated 
 him, and had taught and given him everything good, and 
 had said, " Live like me, and thou wilt always prosper." 
 Even thus his father had done with his brothers. And 
 no matter how much he thought, he could not think of 
 anything else about his father, except that his father had 
 done good to him and to his brothers. 
 
 And then he comprehended what these words meant. 
 He understood that to live like the father meant to do 
 what he was doing, to do good to men. And when he 
 thought of this, his father was already near him, and 
 said: 
 
 " Here we are again together, and thou wilt always fare 
 well. Go to thy brother and to all of my children, and 
 tell them what is meant by, 'Live like me,' and that 
 those who will live like me will always fare well." 
 
 And the third son went and told everything to his 
 
496 THREE SOKS 
 
 brother, and since then all the children, in receiving their 
 estate from their father, have not rejoiced because they 
 have a large estate, but because they can live like the 
 father, and will always fare welL 
 
 The father is God ; His sons are men ; the estate is life. 
 Men think that they can live alone without God. 
 
 Some of these men think that their life is given to 
 them in order to rejoice in this life. They rejoice and 
 waste this life, and when the time comes to die, they do 
 not understand why such life was given to them, since 
 its joys end in suffering and death. And these men die, 
 cursing God and calling Him evil, and depart from God. 
 
 This is the first son. 
 
 Other men think that life is given to them in order 
 that they may understand how it is made, and in order 
 that they may make it better than what is given them by 
 God. And they struggle over it, to make another, a better 
 life. But, in improving this life, they ruin it, and thus 
 deprive themselves of life. 
 
 Other people say : 
 
 " Everything we know of God is that He gives the 
 good to men and commands them to do the same, and so 
 let us do the same that He does, — good to men." 
 
 And the moment they begin to do so, God Himself 
 comes to them, and says : 
 
 " This is precisely what I wanted. Do with me what 
 I do, and as I live, so shall you live." 
 
LABOURER EMELYAN AND 
 THE EMPTY DRUM 
 
 A Fairy-Tale 
 1892 
 
LABOURER EMELYAN AND 
 THE EMPTY DRUM' 
 
 EmelyIn was working for a master. One day he was 
 walking over the field, to his work, when a frog jumped 
 up before him : he almost stepped on it. Emelyan 
 stepped over it. Suddenly he heard some one calling 
 him from behind. He looked around, and saw there 
 standing a beautiful maiden, and she said to him: 
 
 " Emelyan, why do you not get married ? " 
 
 " How can I marry, pretty maid ? All I have is what 
 I carry with me, and no one will have me." 
 
 And the maiden said : 
 
 " Take me for a wife ! " 
 
 Emelyan took a Mking to the maiden. 
 
 " I would gladly marry you," he said, " but where shall 
 we live ? " 
 
 « We shall think of that," said the maiden. " If only 
 we work much and sleep little, we shall be clothed and 
 fed anywhere." 
 
 " Very well," he said, " let us get married ! Whither 
 shall we go?" 
 
 " Let us go to the city." 
 
 Emely^ went with the maiden to the city. She took 
 him to a small house at the edge of the city, and they 
 were married, and began to live. 
 
 1 A popular tale, created along the V61ga in the remote past, and 
 reconstructed by Tolstdy. 
 
 499 
 
500 LABOURER EMELYAIT 
 
 One day the king drove beyond the city. As he passed 
 by Emelyan's house, his wife came out to look at the 
 king. The king saw her, and marvelled : 
 
 " Where was such a beauty bom ? " 
 
 The king stopped his carriage, and called up Emely^'s 
 wife, and began to ask her : 
 
 « Who are you ? " 
 
 " I am the wife of Peasant Emely^n," she said. 
 
 "Why have you, who are such a beauty, married a 
 peasant ? " he said. " You ought to be a queBn." 
 
 " I thank you for your kind words," she said. " I am 
 satisfied with a peasant." 
 
 The king spoke with her, and drove on. He returned 
 to his palace. He could not forget Emelyan's wife. He 
 could not sleep the whole night long, thinking all the 
 time how he might take Emelyan's wife away. He could 
 not think how it could be done. He called his servants, 
 and commanded them to think it out. And the servants 
 of the king said to him : 
 
 " Take Emely^n into your palace to work for you. We 
 will kill him with work, and his wife will be left a 
 widow, then you can take her." 
 
 So the king did: he sent for Emelydn, commanding 
 him to be a janitor in his palace, and to live in the palace 
 with his wife. 
 
 The messengers went to Emelydn, and told him so. 
 His wife said : 
 
 " Why not ? Go ! Work in the daytime, and come to 
 me in the night ! " 
 
 Emelydn went. When he came to the palace, the 
 king's steward asked him : 
 
 " Why did you come by yourself, without your wife ? " 
 
 " Why should I bring her ? She has a house of her 
 own." 
 
 They gave Emely^n work enough for two to do. 
 Emelydn took hold of the work, thinking he would never 
 
LABOURER EMELYAN 501 
 
 finish it ; but, behold, he finished it before night. When 
 the steward saw that he got through with it, he gave him 
 for the next day enough for four to do. Emelyan went 
 home ; but at his home everything was swept clean and 
 tidied : the fire was made in the oven, and everything was 
 baked and cooled. His wife was sitting at the table, 
 sewing at something, and waiting for her husband. She 
 met her husband, got the supper ready, gave him to eat 
 and to drink, and began to ask him about his work. 
 
 " Things are bad," he said. " They give me tasks be- 
 yond my strength : they will kill me with work." 
 
 " Do not think of work," she said. " Look neither for- 
 ward nor backward, whether you have done much, or 
 whether much is left to do. Work, and everything will 
 come out in proper time." 
 
 Emelyan lay down to sleep. In the morning he went 
 out again. He took hold of the work, and did not look back 
 once. Behold, in the evening everything was done, and 
 he went home to sleep, while it was yet light. They 
 kept increasing his task, but he finished his work in time, 
 and went home to sleep. 
 
 A week passed. The king's servants saw that they 
 could not wear out Emelyan with hard labour, and so 
 began to give him cunning tasks; but they could not 
 wear him out with these, either. No matter what they 
 gave him to do, whether carpenter's, or mason's, or 
 thatcher's work, he finished all by the set time, and went 
 home to his wife to sleep. Another week passed. The 
 king called up his servants, and said to them : 
 
 " Do I feed you for nothing ? Two weeks have passed, 
 and I do not see anything from you. You were going to 
 kill Emelyan with work, and I see each day through the 
 window that he goes home singing songs. Do you mean 
 to make fun of me ? " 
 
 The king's servants began to justify themselves. 
 
 " We have tried with all our might and main to wear 
 
502 LABOURER EMELYAN 
 
 him out, first of all, with menial labour, but we could not 
 vanquish him. No matter what we gave him to do, he 
 did, as though sweeping it clean, and feeling no weariness. 
 We began to give him cunning work to do, thinking that 
 he would not have sense enough, and still we could not 
 overcome him. Where does it all come from ? He un- 
 derstands everything, and does everything. Either there 
 is some witchery in him, or in his wife. We are our- 
 selves tired of him. We want to give him now such 
 work to do that he will be unable to finish it. We have 
 decided to ask him to build a cathedral in one day. Call 
 in Emelydn, and command him in one day to build a 
 cathedral opposite the palace. And if he does not build 
 it, we can chop off his head for his disobedience." 
 
 The king sent for Emelyan. 
 
 " Here is my command," he said : " Build me a new 
 cathedral opposite the palace, on the square. It has to 
 be ready by to-morrow evening. If you get it built, I 
 shall reward you ; but if you do not, I shall put you to 
 death." 
 
 When Emelyan had heard the king's words, he turned 
 around and went home. 
 
 " Well," he thought, " now my end has come." 
 
 He came to his wife and said : 
 
 " Wife, get ready ! you must run away wherever you 
 can, or else you will lose your life." 
 
 " What frightens you so," she said, " that you want to 
 run ? " 
 
 " How can I help being frightened ? The king has 
 commanded me to build a cathedral to-morrow, in one 
 day. If I do not get it built, he threatens to chop off my 
 head. There is nothing left to do but run away." 
 
 His wife did not accept his words. 
 
 "The king has many soldiers, and he will catch you 
 anywhere. You cannot run away from him. So long as 
 you have strength you must obey him." 
 
LABOURER EMELYAN 603 
 
 " But how shall I obey, if I have not the strength ? " 
 
 " Never mind, husband. Do not trouble yourself : eat 
 your supper and lie down to sleep ; get up early in the 
 morning, and all will go well." 
 
 Emelyan lay down to sleep ; his wife woke him up. 
 
 " Go," she said, " and finish the cathedral as quickly as 
 you can. Here are nails and a hammer. You will find 
 about a day's work left to do." 
 
 Emelyan went into .the city, and there, indeed, the 
 cathedral was standing in the middle of the square, just 
 a little unfinished. Emelyan began to put on the last 
 touches, wherever necessary, and by evening he had 
 everything done. The king woke up, looked out of the 
 palace, and, behold, there was the cathedral, and Emelyan 
 was walking to and fro, driving in nails here and there. 
 The king was not at all pleased with the cathedral : he 
 was angry, because he had no reason to put him to death, 
 and could not take his wife from him. The king again 
 called his servants. 
 
 " Emelyan has done this task, too, and I have no cause 
 to kill him. This task was not big enough for him. You 
 must invent something more cunning. Think out some- 
 thing, or else I will have you put to death before him." 
 
 The servants thought out to have Emelyan construct a 
 river around the palace, so that ships might sail on it. 
 The king called Emelyan, and commanded him to do a 
 new task. 
 
 " If you were able to build a cathedral in one night," 
 he said, " you are also able to do this work : everything 
 is to be ready by to-morrow as I command. If it is not 
 ready, I shall have your head cut off." 
 
 Emelyan was grieved more than ever, and came home 
 gloomy to his wife. 
 
 " Why are you so sad ? Has the king commanded you 
 to do something new ? " 
 
 Emelyan told her. 
 
504 LABOURER EMELY^N 
 
 " We must run away." 
 
 But his wife said : 
 
 " You cannot run away from the soldiers, — they will 
 catch you anywhere. You must obey." 
 
 " But how can I obey ? " 
 
 " Come now, come now, husband, do not worry ! Eat 
 your supper, and lie down to sleep. Get up as early as 
 possible, and all will be in good time." 
 
 Emelyan lay down to sleep. His wife woke him up in 
 the morning. 
 
 "Go to the castle," she said. ** Everything is ready. 
 Near the harbour, opposite the palace, a little mound is 
 left : so take a spade and even it up." 
 
 Emelyan went. When he came to the city he saw a 
 river round about the palace, and the ships were saihng 
 upon it. Emelyan went up to the harbour, opposite the 
 palace, and he saw an uneven place, and evened it up. 
 
 The king awoke, and he saw a river where there had 
 been none before ; ships were sailing on the river, and 
 Emelyan was evening up a mound with a spade. The 
 king was frightened and not at all glad of the river and 
 the ships, but annoyed, because he could not put Emelyan 
 to death. He thought to himself: "There is no task 
 which he cannot do. What shall I do ? " He called up 
 his servants and took counsel with them. 
 
 " Think out a task," he said, " which wiU be beyond 
 Emelyan ; for so far, no matter what we have given him 
 to do, he has done, and I am not able to get his wife from 
 him." 
 
 The courtiers thought and thought, and finally thought 
 out something. They came to the king and said : 
 
 " Emelydn ought to be called and told this : * Go there, 
 know not where, and bring that, know not what ! * He 
 will not be able to get away this time, for wherever he 
 may go, you will say that he did not go where it was 
 necessary, and no matter what he may bring, you will say 
 
LABOURER EMELYAN 605 
 
 that he did not bring the right thing. Then you can put 
 him to death and take his wife." 
 
 The king was happy. 
 
 " This is a clever thought of yours," he said. 
 
 The king sent for Emelyan, and said to him : 
 
 "Go there, know not where, bring that, know not 
 what. If you do not bring it, I shall have your head 
 cut off." 
 
 Emelyan came to his wife, and told her what the king 
 had said to him. The wife thought awhile. 
 
 " Well," she said, " they have instructed the king 
 cleverly. Now we must do it well." 
 
 His wife sat awhile thinking, and then she said to her 
 husband : 
 
 " You will have to go a long distance, — to our grand- 
 mother, the ancient peasant, soldier mother, — and you 
 must ask her favour. If you get anything from her, go 
 straight to the palace, and I will be there. Now I cannot 
 get out of their hands. They will take me by force, but 
 it will not be for long. If you do everything as the 
 grandmother tells you to, you will redeem me soon." 
 
 The wife got her husband ready, and gave him a wallet 
 and a spindle. 
 
 " Give this to her," she said. " By this will she tell 
 that you are my husband." 
 
 She showed him the road. Emelyan went away. 
 When he came outside the city, he saw them teaching 
 the soldiers. He stood still for awhile, watching them. 
 After the soldiers had practised, they sat down to rest 
 themselves. Emelyan went up to them, and asked : 
 
 " Brothers, can you tell me how to go there, know not 
 where, and how to bring that, know not what ? " 
 
 When the soldiers heard this, they marvelled. 
 
 " Who sent you to find that ? " they asked. 
 
 « The king," he said. 
 
 " We ourselves," they said, " ever since we have been 
 
506 LABOURER EMELyIn 
 
 made soldiers, have been going there, know not where, 
 and cannot get there, and have been seeking that, know 
 not what, and cannot find it. We cannot help you.". 
 
 Emelyan sat awhile with the soldiers, and went on. 
 He walked and walked, and came to a forest. In the 
 forest there was a hut. In the hut sat an old woman, — 
 the peasant, soldier mother, — spinning at the wheel 
 She was weeping and did not moisten her fingers with 
 her spittle in her mouth, but with the tears in her eyes. 
 When the old woman saw Emelydn, she called out to 
 him: 
 
 " What did you come here for ? " 
 
 Emelydn gave her the spindle, and said that his wife 
 had sent him to her. The old woman softened at once, 
 and began to put questions to him. And Emelyan told 
 her all about his life, how he had married the maiden ; 
 how he had gone to the city to live ; how he had been 
 made a janitor ; how he had served in the palace ; how 
 he had built the cathedral and had made a river with its 
 ships, and how the king had commanded him to go there, 
 know not where, and bring that, know not what. 
 
 The old woman listened to him and stopped weeping. 
 She began to mumble to herself : 
 
 " The time has evidently come. Very well," she said, 
 " sit down, my son, and have something to eat." 
 
 Emelyan had something to eat, and the old woman 
 said to him : 
 
 " Here you have a ball of twine : roll it before you, and 
 follow it, wherever it rolls. It will roll far away, to the 
 very sea. You will come to the sea, and there you will 
 see a large city. Go into the city, and ask them in the 
 outer house to let you stay there overnight. Then look 
 for what you need ! " 
 
 " How shall I know it, grandmother ? ** 
 
 " When you see that which people obey better than 
 their parents, you have found it. Grasp it and take it to 
 
LABOURER EMELYAN 507 
 
 the king ! When you bring it to the king, he will say 
 to you that you have not brought the right thing; 
 say then, * If it is not that I shall have to break it,' and 
 strike the thing and then take it to the river, break it to 
 pieces, and throw it into the water ; then you will get 
 your wife back, and you will dry up my tears." 
 
 Emelyan bade the old woman good-bye, and went 
 away, rolling the ball before him. He rolled it and 
 rolled it, and it brought him to the sea. Near the sea 
 was a large city. At the edge of it stood a large house. 
 Emelyan asked the people in the house to let him stay in 
 it overnight, and they let him. He lay down to sleep. 
 He woke up early in the morning, and heard the father 
 getting up and waking his son, to send him to cut some 
 wood. And the son did not obey him : 
 
 " It is early yet : I shall have time enough to do it." 
 
 He heard the mother say on the oven: 
 
 "Go, my son, your father's bones are aching, — how 
 can he go himself ? It is time." 
 
 The son only smacked his lips, and fell asleep again. 
 The moment he fell asleep, there was a thundering and 
 rattling in the street. The son jumped up, dressed him- 
 self, and ran out into the street. Emelyan, too, jumped 
 up and ran after him, to see what it was that the son 
 paid more attention to than to his father and his mother. 
 Emelyan ran out, and saw a man walking in the street, 
 carrying a round thing over his belly, and striking it 
 with sticks, and it was this that thundered so and made 
 the son pay attention to it. Emelyan ran up to take a 
 look at the thing. He saw that it was as round as a vat, 
 and skins were stretched over both sides of it. He asked 
 the people what they called this thing. 
 
 " A drum," they said. 
 
 " Is it empty ? " 
 
 " Yes," they said. 
 
 Emelyan wondered at the thing, and began to ask the 
 
508 LABOURER EMELYAN 
 
 man to give it to him. The man would not give it to 
 him. Emelyan stopped asking for it, but followed 
 the drummer. He walked the whole day, and when the 
 drummer lay down to sleep, Emelyan seized the drum, 
 and ran away with it. He ran and ran and came home 
 to his city. He went to see his wife, but she was not at 
 home. She had been taken to the king the next day. 
 Emelyan went to the palace, and had himself announced. 
 
 " The man has come," he said, " who went there, know 
 not where, and has brought that, know not what." 
 
 He was announced to the king. The king sent word 
 to Emelyan to come the next day. Emelyan asked to be 
 announced once more : 
 
 " I have come this day, and have brought what the 
 king has commanded. Let the king come to me, or else 
 will I go in myself." 
 
 The king came out. 
 
 " Where have you been ? " he asked. 
 
 He told him where. 
 
 " It is not there," he said. " And what did you 
 bring?" 
 
 Emelydn wanted to show it to him, but the king did 
 not look at it. 
 
 " It is not that," he said. 
 
 " If it is not that," he said, " I must break it, and the 
 devil take it ! " 
 
 Emelydn went out of the palace with the drum, and 
 struck it. The moment he struck it, the whole army of 
 the king gathered about Emelydn. They did not obey the 
 king, but followed after Emelydn. When the king saw 
 this, he ordered Emelydn's wife brought out to Emelydn, 
 and began to ask him to give him the drum. 
 
 " I cannot," said Emelydn. " I have been commanded 
 to break it to pieces, and to throw the pieces into the 
 river." 
 
 Emelydn went with the drum to the river, and the 
 
LABOURER EMELY^N 509 
 
 soldiers came after him. At the river, Emely^n broke 
 the drum and smashed it to splinters, and threw them 
 into the river. And all the soldiers ran away. But 
 Emelyan took his wife and went home with her. After 
 that the king stopped harassing him, and he began to 
 live happily, gaining what was good, and losing what was 
 evil. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 (P200l8l0)476— A-32 
 
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