Yes, before doing good I must myself stand aside from evil, in conditions where one may cease to do evil. For my whole life is evil. I might give away a hundred thousand rubles and still not be in a position to do good, for I should still have five hundred thousand left. Only when I have nothing left shall I be in a position to do even a little good, if but as much as the prostitute who for three days looked after the sick woman and her baby. And that had seemed to me so little! And I dared to think of doing good! What I felt from the first at the sight of the hungry and cold people at Lyapin House: namely, that I was to blame for it, and that one could not, could not, could not go on living as I was doing, was the one thing that was really true!
What then must we do? To this question, if anyone still needs an answer, I will, God willing, furnish a detailed reply.
1 34s., the price of Tolstoy’s collected works at that time.-A, M.
CHAPTER XVI
IT was hard for me to realize this, but when I came to it I was horrified at the delusion in which I had been living. I was up to my ears in the mire, yet thought I could drag others out of it.
What indeed do I want? I want to do good, to arrange that people should not be cold or hungry but should live in a way fit for human beings.
I want this, and I see that by violence, extortion, and various devices in which I participate, the workers’ bare necessities are taken from them, while the non-workers (of whom I am one) consume in superfluity the fruits of the labour of those who toil.
I see that this exploitation is so arranged that the more cunning and complex the devices a man employs (or which those from whom he inherits have employed) the more he commands of the work of others and the less he works himself.
First comes a Stieglitz, a Derviz,1 a Morozov,2 a Demidov,3 a Yusupov,4 and then the great bankers, merchants, landowners, and officials. Then the middle-sized bankers, merchants, officials, and landowners-of whom I am one. Then the lower order of petty traders, inn-keepers, usurers, police officers and constables, school teachers, chanters, and business clerks; then the house porters, footmen, coachmen, water-carriers, cabmen, and pedlars; and then at last come the working people, the factory-hands and peasants, who in number are to the others as ten to one.
I see that the life of nine-tenths of the people-the workers-demands by its nature strain and labour as all natural life does, but that in consequence of the various devices which deprive these people of necessities and make their life hard, it becomes worse and more full of privations year by year, while our life-the life of the non-workers-by the help of science and art directed to that aim, becomes each year more superabundant, attractive, and secure.
I see that in our time working folk, especially the old men, women, and children, simply perish from intense labour and insufficient nourishment and that they are not sure of obtaining even the most elementary necessities; while side by side with this the non-working class, of which I am a member, is year by year more and more provided ,with superfluities and luxuries, becomes yet more and more secure, and has finally, among its lucky members (of whom I am one), reached such a degree of security as in olden times people only dreamt of in fairy tales. We have reached the condition of the owner of the magic inexhaustible purse; that is to say, a condition in which a man is not only completely freed from the law of labour for the support of life, but is able without labour to avail himself of all life’s bounties and to hand on that magic inexhaustible purse to his children or to whom he pleases.
I see that the produce of man’s toil passes more and more from the labouring people to those who do no labour, and that the pyramid of the social structure is, as it were, reconstructed so that the foundation stones pass to the top, and the rapidity of this movement increases almost in geometrical progression. I see that what is happening is as though in an ant-hill the society of ants were to lose its sense of a
1 Prominent financiers and railway concessionaires in Russia when Tolstoy was writing this book.
2 The Morozovs were very wealthy cotton-mill owners, of peasant origin.
3 The Demidovs were the enormously wealthy founders of the mining industry in Russia.
4 The Princes Yusupov were very large landowners, having held important official positions from the time of Peter the Great. They are descendants of a Khan of the Nogay tribe.
common law, and some ants began to carry the produce of toil from the bottom of the heap to the top, ever narrowing the base and enlarging the top and so compelling the other ants to shift from the base to the top.
I see that the ideal of an industrious life has been replaced by the ideal of a magic purse. The rich, and I among them, have by various devices obtained that magic purse for themselves, and to enjoy it we move to town-that is, to the place where nothing is grown but everything is consumed. The poor labouring man who is plucked that the rich man may have this magic purse, tries to follow him to town, and there also takes to tricks, and either secures a position in which while working little he obtains much, thus laying yet more burdens on the working folk; or, not reaching such a position, he perishes and becomes one of those cold and hungry inmates of the night lodging-houses-who are increasing in number with extraordinary rapidity.
I belong to the class who by various devices deprive the working people of necessities, and who by these devices have provided a magic purse for themselves which is a temptation to those same unfortunates. I want to aid people, and therefore it is clear, above all, that I should not pluck them as I am doing, and on the other hand I should not tempt them.
Otherwise, by most complex cunning and cruel devices, which have been elaborated through the ages, I have arranged for myself the condition of any owner of a magic purse, that is, a condition which enables me without ever doing any work, to compel hundreds and thousands of people to work for me-as I am doing; and I imagine that I pity people and wish to help them. I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means-except by getting off his back.
It is really so simple. If I want to aid the poor, that is, to help the poor not to be poor, I ought not to make them poor. But as it is at my own choice I give away to the poor who have strayed from the path of life, rubles, or tens or hundreds of rubles; but of exactly such rubles I take thousands from people who have not yet strayed from the path, and thus make them poor and also pervert them.
It is very plain; yet it was terribly difficult for me to understand it fully without any compromises or excuses which would justify my position; but as soon as I acknowledged my guilt all that had before seemed strange, complicated, obscure, and insoluble, became quite intelligible and simple. Above all, my own path of life resulting, from this explanation became simple, clear and agreeable, instead of being tangled insoluble and tormenting, as it had been before.
Who am I who wish to help people? I wish to help people and-having got up at noon after playing bridge with four candles on the table-enfeebled, pampered, needing the aid and service of hundreds of people, I came to help whom? People who rise at five o’clock, sleep on boards, feed on bread and cabbage, are able to plough, to mow, to fix an axe-handle, to plane, to harness a horse, and to sew-people who in strength, endurance, skill, and abstemiousness are a hundred times superior to me who come to help them! What else but shame could I experience on coming into contact with these people? The weakest among them-a drunkard living in Rzhanov House, whom they call a loafer-is a hundred times more industrious than I; his balance (so to say), that is, the proportion between what he takes from people and what he gives to them, is a thousand times superior to my balance if I reckon what I take from people as against what I give to them.
And those are the people I go to help. I go to help the poor. But who is poor? Not one of them than I am. I am a quite enfeebled, good-for-nothing parasite, who can only exist under most exceptional conditions found only when thousands of people labour to support a life that is of no value to anyone. And it is I, an insect
