Let us look more closely, let us examine each of these two halves separately, and perhaps we shall come to some conclusion. Let us first investigate the half concerning ‘personal perfection in the spirit of Christian love.’ You write:
‘M. Dostoyevsky calls to men to work upon themselves and to humble themselves. Personal self-perfeetion in the spirit of Christian love is, of course, the first premiss of any activity, great or small! But it does not follow that men who are personally perfected in the Christian sense will infallibly form a perfect society.
I shall allow myself to put forward an instance.
4 Paul the Apostle instructs slaves and masters concerning their mutual relations. Slaves and masters alike could hearken, and usually did hearken to the word of the apostle. Personally they were good Christians; but slavery was not sanctified thereby. It remained an immoral institution. In the same way, M. Dostoyevsky, like all of us, has known splendid Christians, landlords and peasants alike. But serfdom remained an abomination in the sight of God, and the Tsar Liberator appeared as the spokesman of the demands not merely of personal but of social morality as well, of whieh social morality there was no right conception in the olden time, although perhaps there were then as many good people as there are now.
‘Personal and social morality are not one and the same. Whence it follows that no social perfection can be attained solely through the improvement of the personal qualities of those who form the society.
Let us take another example. Suppose that, beginning from the year 1800, a whole series of preachers of Christian love and humility had begun to improve the morality of the Korobochkas and the Sobakieviches. Can it be supposed that they would have achieved the abolition of serfdom, so that the word of authority would not have been necessary for the removal of that phenomenon? On the contrary, a Korobochka would have begun to demonstrate that she was a true Christian and a genuine “mother” of her peasants, and she would have remained in this conviction in spite of all the arguments of the preachers.
‘The improvement of the people in the social sense cannot be effected by work “upon oneself” alone and by “ humbling oneself.” To work upon oneself and to subdue one’s own passions — this can be done even in the wilderness or upon a desert island.
But as social beings, people develop and improve by work beside one another, for one another and with one another. That is why the social perfection of a people very greatly depends upon the degree of perfection of their political institutions, which educate in man the civic, if not the Christian virtues. . . .’
You see how much of you I have copied out! It is all very high and mighty, and ‘personal perfection in the spirit of Christian love ‘gets much the worst of it. It appears that in civic affairs it is good for nothing, or almost so.
You have a strange way of understanding Christianity. Only imagine that Korobochka and Sobakievich should become real Christians, already perfect — you yourself speak of perfection — can they be persuaded to renounce serfdom? That is the artful question whieh you ask, and, of course, reply: ‘No, it’s quite impossible to persuade Koroboehka, even if she were to become a perfect Christian.’
To this I will reply immediately, that if only Koroboehka could become, and became, a genuine, perfect Christian, then serfdom would no longer exist on her estate at all, so that there would be no need to trouble, notwithstanding that the title deeds and conveyances remained in her strong-box as before. But Koroboehka was a Christian before and was born a Christian! So that when you speak of the new preachers of Christianity you understand by the word something whieh is in essence the same as the old Christianity, but in a strengthened, perfect form, as it were having reached its ideal? Well, how could there be slaves and masters then?
But one must have some small understanding of Christianity! What would it matter to Korobochka, already a perfect Christian, whether her peasants were serfs or not? She is ‘a mother ‘to them, a genuine mother, and the ‘mother’ would instantly abolish the ‘lady ‘that was. That would come of itself. The lady and the slave that were would dissolve away like mist before the sun, and quite new people would appear, in quite new relations with one another, relations that had never been heard of before. And an unheard-of thing would be accomplished. Everywhere would appear perfect Christians, who, when they were scattered individuals, were so few that no one was sensible of their presence.
You made that fantastic supposition yourself, M. Gradovsky; you yourself opened the door upon that wonderful fantasy, and since you opened the door, then you must take the consequences. I assure you, M. Gradovsky, that Korobochka’s peasants would themselves refuse to leave her, for the simple reason that every man seeks what is better for himself. Would it be better for them among your institutions than with the mother-lady who loved them? I also venture to assure you that if slavery existed in the clays of Paul the Apostle, it was only because the churches which had sprung up in those days were as yet imperfect — which we can also see from the epistles of the Apostle. And those members of the churches who had then attained to personal perfection, no longer had nor could have slaves because the slaves turned brothers, and a brother who is a true brother cannot have his brother as a slave. According to you, it follows somehow that the preaching of Christianity was impotent.
At all events, you write that slavery was not sanctified by the Apostle’s preaching. But other learned men, particularly European historians as a whole, have rebuked Christianity because, as they say, it sanctifies slavery. Which means that they fail to understand the essence of the matter. Is it possible even to imagine that Mary of Egypt could have serfs and yet not want to set them free!
What absurdity! In Christianity, in true Christianity, there are and there will ever be, masters and servants, but a slave can never be even conceived. I speak of a true and perfect Christianity. Servants are not slaves. The pupil Timothy served Paul when they journeyed together; but read Paul’s epistle to Timothy. Is it written to a slave, to a servant even? He is in truth his ‘child Timothy,’
his beloved son. These, these are indeed the relations that will be between master and servant, if master and servant became perfect Christians! Servants and masters there will be, but masters will be no longer lords nor servants slaves. Imagine that there will be a Kepler, a Kant, and a Shakespeare in the society of the future. They are working at a great work for all men, and all men acknowledge it and respect them.
But Shakespeare has no time to tear himself away from his work to tidy his room, to clean up everything. Be sure another citizen will infallibly come to wait upon him, of his own desire. He will come of his own free will and tidy up Shakespeare’s room. Will he be thereby degraded? Will he be a slave? By no means. He knows that Shakespeare is infinitely more useful than himself. ‘Honour and glory to thee,’ he will say, ‘and I am glad to serve thee.
Thereby I wish to do though it be only a little service to the common good, for thus I will save thy time for thy great work, but I am not a slave. Indeed, by confessing that thou, Shakespeare, are higher than myself by thy genius, and coming to serve thee, by this my admission I have, proved that in the moral dignity I am not in the least below thee, and as a man, I am thy equal.’
But he will not even say that then, for the simple reason that such questions then will not arise; they will not be even thinkable. For verily all men will be new men, the children of Christ, and the beast of old will be conquered. You will, of course, say that this is another dream. But it was not I who was the first to dream, but you: it was you who imagined a Korobochka, already a perfect Christian, holding ‘children serfs ‘whom she will not set free. This a worse dream than mine.
Here the clever people will laugh and say: ‘After that, it’s all very well to worry about self-perfection in the spirit of Christian love, when there is no real Christianity at all on the earth, or so little of it that it is hard to see, because otherwise everything would be right in an instant, all slavery would be abolished, every Korobochka would be regenerated into a shining genius, and one thing alone would be left for all to do — to sing a hymn to God.’
Yes, of course, you sneering gentlemen, real Christians are still terribly few (though they do exist). But how do you know how many indeed are wanted that the ideal of Christianity should not perish from the people, and the people’s great hope perish with it? Apply the thought to secular conceptions. How many real citizens are wanted that civic virtue should not perish from society? And this you will not answer.
Here is a strange political economy, one of a quite different kind and wholly unknown to you, even
