or that it was the influence of Carlsbad on me. But since I
have been here, my mind’s been set at rest. I see that there
are people besides me who’re only interested in Russia, and
not in their Slavonic brethren. Here’s Konstantin too.’
‘Personal opinions mean nothing in such a case,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch; ‘it’s not a matter of personal opinions
when all Russia—the whole people—has expressed its will.’
‘But excuse me, I don’t see that. The people don’t know
anything about it, if you come to that,’ said the old prince.
‘Oh, papa!…how can you say that? And last Sunday in
church?’ said Dolly, listening to the conversation. ‘Please
give me a cloth,’ she said to the old man, who was looking at
the children with a smile. ‘Why, it’s not possible that all…’
‘But what was it in church on Sunday? The priest had
been told to read that. He read it. They didn’t understand a
word of it. Then they were told that there was to be a collection for a pious object in church; well, they pulled out their
halfpence and gave them, but what for they couldn’t say.’
‘The people cannot help knowing; the sense of their own
destinies is always in the people, and at such moments as
the present that sense finds utterance,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch with conviction, glancing at the old bee-keeper.
The handsome old man, with black grizzled beard and
thick silvery hair, stood motionless, holding a cup of honey,
1403
looking down from the height of his tall figure with friendly
serenity at the gentlefolk, obviously understanding nothing
of their conversation and not caring to understand it.
‘That’s so, no doubt,’ he said, with a significant shake of
his head at Sergey Ivanovitch’s words.
‘Here, then, ask him. He knows nothing about it and
thinks nothing,’ said Levin. ‘Have you heard about the war,
Mihalitch?’ he said, turning to him. ‘What they read in the
church? What do you think about it? Ought we to fight for
the Christians?’
‘What should we think? Alexander Nikolaevitch our
Emperor has thought for us; he thinks for us indeed in all
things. It’s clearer for him to see. Shall I bring a bit more
bread? Give the little lad some more?’ he said addressing
Darya Alexandrovna and pointing to Grisha, who had finished his crust.
‘I don’t need to ask,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, ‘we have seen
and are seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who give
up everything to serve a just cause, come from every part of
Russia, and directly and clearly express their thought and
aim. They bring their halfpence or go themselves and say
directly what for. What does it mean?’
‘It means, to my thinking,’ said Levin, who was beginning to get warm, ‘that among eighty millions of people
there can always be found not hundreds, as now, but tens of
thousands of people who have lost caste, ne’er-do-wells, who
are always ready to go anywhere—to Pogatchev’s bands, to
Khiva, to Serbia…’
‘I tell you that it’s not a case of hundreds or of ne’er-do1404
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wells, but the best representatives of the people!’ said Sergey
Ivanovitch, with as much irritation as if he were defending
the last penny of his fortune. ‘And what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people directly expressing
their will.’
‘That word ‘people’ is so vague,’ said Levin. ‘Parish clerks,
teachers, and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe,
know what it’s all about. The rest of the eighty millions, like
Mihalitch, far from expressing their will, haven’t the faintest idea what there is for them to express their will about.
What right have we to say that this is the people’s will?’
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Chapter 16
Sergey Ivanovitch, being practiced in argument, did not
reply, but at once turned the conversation to another aspect
of the subject.
‘Oh, if you want to learn the spirit of the people by arithmetical computation, of course it’s very difficult to arrive
at it. And voting has not been introduced among us and
cannot be introduced, for it does not express the will of the
people; but there are other ways of reaching that. It is felt
in the air, it is felt by the heart. I won’t speak of those deep
currents which are astir in the still ocean of the people, and
which are evident to every unprejudiced man; let us look at
society in the narrow sense. All the most diverse sections of
the educated public, hostile before, are merged in one. Every division is at an end, all the public organs say the same
thing over and over again, all feel the mighty torrent that
has overtaken them and is carrying them in one direction.’
‘Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,’ said
the prince. ‘That’s true. But so it is the same thing that all
the frogs croak before a storm. One can hear nothing for
them.’
‘Frogs or no frogs, I’m not the editor of a paper and I
don’t want to defend them; but I am speaking of the unanimity in the intellectual world,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch,
addressing his brother. Levin would have answered, but the
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old prince interrupted him.
‘Well, about that unanimity, that’s another thing, one
may say,’ said the prince. ‘There’s my son-in-law, Stepan
Arkadyevitch, you know him. He’s got a place now on the
committee of a commission and something or other, I don’t
remember. Only there’s nothing to do in it—why, Dolly, it’s
no secret!—and a salary of eight thousand. You try asking
him whether his post is of use, he’ll prove to you that it’s
most necessary. And he’s a truthful man too, but there’s no
refusing to believe in the utility of eight thousand roubles.’
‘Yes, he asked me to give a message to Darya Alexandrovna about the post,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch reluctantly,
feeling the prince’s remark to be ill-timed.
‘So it is with the unanimity of the press. That’s been
explained to me: as soon as there’s war their incomes are
doubled. How can they help believing in the destinies of the
people and the Slavonic races…and all that?’
‘I don’t care for many of the papers, but that’s unjust,’
said Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘I would only make one condition,’ pursued the old
prince. ‘Alphonse Karr said a capital thing before the war
with Prussia: ‘You consider war to be inevitable? Very good.
Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special
regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of
every attack, to lead them all!’’
‘A nice lot the editors would make!’ said Katavasov, with
a loud roar, as he pictured the editors he knew in this picked
legion.
‘But they’d run,’ said Dolly, ‘they’d only be in the way.’
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‘Oh, if they ran away, then we’d have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips behind them,’ said the prince.
‘But that’s a joke, and a poor one too, if you’ll excuse my
saying so, prince,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘I don’t see that it was a joke, that…’ Levin was beginning,
but Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.
‘Every member of society is called upon to do his own
special work,’ said he. ‘And men of thought are doing their
work when they express public opinion. And the singlehearted and full expression of public opinion is the service
of the press and a phenomenon to rejoice us at the same
time. Twenty years ago we should have been silent, but
now we have heard the voice of the Russian people, which
is ready to rise as one man and ready to sacrifice itself for
its oppressed brethren; that is a great step and a proof of
strength.’
‘But it’s not only making a sacrifice, but killing Turks,’
said Levin timidly. ‘The people make sacrifices and are
ready to make sacrifices for their soul, but not for murder,’
he added, instinctively connecting the conversation with
the ideas that had been absorbing his mind.
‘For their soul? That’s a most puzzling expression for
a natural science man, do you understand? What sort of
thing is the soul?’ said Katavasov, smiling.
‘Oh, you know!’
‘No, by God, I haven’t the faintest idea!’ said Katavasov
with a loud roar of laughter.
‘‘I bring not peace, but a sword,’ says Christ,’ Sergey
Ivanovitch rejoined for his part, quoting as simply as though
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it were the easiest thing to understand the very passage that
had always puzzled Levin most.
‘That’s so, no doubt,’ the old man repeated again. He
was standing near them and responded to a chance glance
turned in his direction.
‘Ah, my dear fellow, you’re defeated, utterly defeated!’
cried Katavasov good-humoredly.
Levin reddened with vexation, not at being defeated, but
at having failed to control himself and being drawn into argument.
‘No, I can’t argue with them,’ he thought; ‘they wear impenetrable armor, while I’m naked.’
He saw that it was impossible to convince his brother
and Katavasov, and he saw even less possibility of himself
agreeing with them. What they advocated was the very
pride of intellect that had almost been his ruin. He could
not admit that some dozens of men, among them his brother, had the right, on the ground of what they were told by
some hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the capital,
to say that they and the newspapers were expressing the will
and feeling of the people, and a feeling which was expressed
in vengeance and murder. He could not admit this, because
he neither saw the expression of such feelings in the people
among whom he was living, nor found them in himself (and
he could not but consider himself one of the persons making up the Russian people), and most of all because he, like
the people, did not know and could not know what is for the
general good, though he knew beyond a doubt that this general good could be attained only by the strict observance of
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that law of right and wrong which has been revealed to every
man, and therefore he could not wish for war or advocate
war for any general objects whatever. He said as Mihalitch
did and the people, who had expressed their feeling in the
traditional invitations of the Varyagi: ‘Be princes and rule
over us. Gladly we promise complete submission. All the labor, all humiliations, all sacrifices we take upon ourselves;
but we will not judge and decide.’ And now, according to
Sergey Ivanovitch’s account, the people
