That deduction, when I reached it and recognized its certainty, explained to me my feeling of shame with the cook’s wife and with all the poor people to whom I gave, or give, money.
What indeed is this money I give to the poor, and which the cook’s wife thought I was giving to her? In most cases it is such a small fraction of my property that it cannot be expressed in figures intelligible to Semen or to the cook’s wife; it is generally about a one-millionth part.
I give so little that for me it is not and cannot be a deprivation; it is only a diversion indulged in when and as I please. And that was how the cook’s wife understood me. H I give a ruble or a twenty kopek piece to a man from the street, why should I not give her a ruble? To give away money like that is in her eyes the same as for gentlefolk to throw gingerbreads among a crowd to be scrambled for; it is an amusement for those who possess much ‘mad money’. I was ashamed because the mistake she made showed me plainly how she, and all poor people, must regard me: ‘He throws mad (that is, unearned) money about.’
What indeed is my money, and where has it come from? Part of it I have got from the land I inherited from my father. A peasant sells his last sheep or cow to pay it to me. The other part of my money I have got for my writings, for books. If my books are harmful I only place temptation in the path of those who buy them and the money I receive is ill-gotten; but if my books are of use the case is still worse. I do not give them to people, but say, ‘Give me seventeen rubles,1 and then I will let you have them.’ And as in the former case the peasant sold his last sheep, so here a poor student, a teacher, or any poor man, deprives himself of things he needs, to give me that money.
And I have thus got together much money, and what do I do with it? I bring it to town and give some of it to the poor if they also come to town and obey my whims and clean the pavement and my lamps and boots, and work for me in factories. For this money I get all I can out of them: that is, I try to give them as little, and to take as much, as possible. And quite unexpectedly, without any particular reason, I suddenly begin giving away this same money to those same poor people; not to all of them, but to some whom I select. How can each of them help thinking that perhaps he may have the luck to be one of those with whom I shall amuse myself when I distribute my mad money?
That is how they all regard me, and how the cook’s wife also regarded me. And I was so greatly deluded that I called ‘doing good’, this chucking away farthings with one hand to those whom it pleased me to select, while gathering thousands from the poor with the other! It is not surprising that I felt ashamed.
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
