And I came to the following simple conclusion, that in order not to cause suffering and depravity I must make as little use as possible of the work of others and must myself work as much as possible. By a long path I reached the inevitable conclusion reached thousands of years ago by the Chinese in the saying: ‘If there is one idle man, another will be starving.’ I came to the simple and natural conclusion that if I pity a tired horse on which I am riding, the first thing I must do if I am really sorry for it, is to get off and walk on my own feet.
That reply, which gives full satisfaction to our moral feelings, was clear to my eyes and is clear to the eyes of us all, but we look aside and do not see it.
In our search for a cure of our social evils we seek on all sides-in governmental, anti-governmental, scientific, and philanthropic superstitions, and do not see what strikes everyone’s eyes.
We use a close-stool and want others to carry it out for us, and we pretend to be very sorry for them and to want to make it easier for them and we invent all kinds of devices except the very simple one of carrying it out for ourselves if we want to use the stool in the house, or of going outside to do our business.
For him who sincerely suffers at seeing the sufferings of those about us, there is a very clear, simple, and easy means, the only possible one for the cure of the evils surrounding us and to enable us to feel that we are living legitimately-the same that John the Baptist gave in reply to the question: ‘What then must we do?’ and which Christ confirmed: not to have more than one coat and not to have money, that is, not to make use of other people’s labour and therefore first to do all we can with our own hands.
This is so simple and so clear. But it is simple and clear when the needs are simple and clear and when a man is still fresh and not spoilt to the marrow of his bones by laziness and idleness. I live in a village and lie on the stove,1 and I order a neighbour who is in debt to me, to chop wood and heat my stove. It is very clear that I am lazy and am taking my neighbour from his work; and I shall feel ashamed, and it will be tiresome to be always lying down, and if my muscles are strong and I am accustomed to work I shall go and chop the wood myself.
But the temptation of slavery of all kinds has existed so long and so many artificial wants have grown up on it, there are so many people bound up one with another who are accustomed in various degrees to these wants, and people have been so spoilt and pampered for generations, and so complex are the temptations and the justifications that have been devised for luxury and idleness, that for a man at the top of the ladder of idle
1 In Russian peasant huts the brick stove is built so as to heat the hut and to serve as an oven, and its flat top furnishes a warm and convenient place to sleep on.-A. M.
people it is far from being as easy to understand his sin as it is for a peasant who makes his neighbour heat his stove.
It is terribly hard for people who are on the upper rungs of that ladder to understand what is demanded of them. Their heads are made dizzy by the height of the ladder of lies they stand on, when they see the place below to which they must descend in order to live their life not entirely well but even not quite inhumanly; and therefore this simple and clear truth seems strange to them.
For a man with ten servants, liveries, coachmen, a chef, pictures, and pianos, it certainly seems strange and even ridiculous to do what is the simplest and first action of anyone who is, I will not say a good man but merely a man and not an animal: himself to chop the wood with which his food is cooked and with which he is warmed; himself to clean the boots and goloshes with which he has carelessly stepped into some dirt; himself to bring the water with which he keeps himself clean, and carry out the dirty water in which he has washed.
But besides the remoteness of people from the truth, there is another cause which keeps them from seeing that it is obligatory for them to undertake the simplest and most natural physical work: this is the complexity of the circumstances and inter-connected interests of those among whom a rich man lives.
This morning I went out into the corridor where the stoves are lighted. A peasant was heating the stove that warms my son’s room. I went into his room; he was still asleep. It was eleven o’clock. To-day is a holiday; and so excuses-there are no lessons.
A plump eighteen-year-old lad with a beard, who has eaten much the evening before, sleeps till eleven o’clock. But a peasant of his own age has got up in the morning, has already done a lot of things and is heating the tenth stove, while my son sleeps. ‘Better let the peasant not heat the stove to warm that sleek lazy body!’ thought 1. But at once I remembered that this stove warms also the housekeeper’s room, who is a woman of forty and till three in the morning prepared everything for the supper my son ate, and then put away the dishes, but who still got up at seven. She could not heat the stove for herself, she would not have time. The peasant was heating for her also, and on her account the lazy fellow gets warmed.
It is true that the interests of all are interwoven, but with no prolonged reckoning each man’s conscience tells him on whose side is the labour and on whose the idleness. And not only does conscience tell it, it is told most clearly of all by his account-book. The more money anyone spends the more he obliges others to work for him; the less he spends the more he works.
But industry, public works, and finally that most terrible of words: culture-the development of science and art?
CHAPTER XXIV
LAST year,1 in March, I was returning home late one evening. Turning from Zubov street to Khamovniki side-street I saw some black spots on the snow of the Virgin’s Field. Something was moving there. I should not have paid attention to it if a policeman standing at the entrance to the side-street had not shouted in the direction of the black spots:
‘Vasili! Why don’t you bring her?’
‘She won’t come!’ replied a voice from there, and after that the black spots moved towards the policeman.
I stopped and asked him what it was. He said: ‘They have arrested the wenches at the Rzhanov House and taken them to the police-station. This one lagged behind, you see she won’t move.’
A yard-porter in a sheepskin coat was fetching her. She walked in front and he kept pushing her from behind. We, the porter, the policeman, and I, were all wearing winter things, but she had only her dress on. In the dusk I could only make out a brown dress, and a kerchief on her head and neck. She was short, as starvelings are, with short legs and a disproportionately broad ill shaped figure.
‘Now, carrion, we’re waiting for you. Get along, I say! I’ll give it you!’ shouted the policeman. It was plain he was tired and had lost patience with her. She went a few steps and again stopped. The elderly yard-porter, a good-natured fellow (I know him personally), pulled her by the arm:
‘There, I’ll teach you to stop! Go on!’ he said, pretending to be angry. She staggered and began to speak in a grating voice. Every sound she uttered was a false note, hoarse and squeaking.
‘Now then! What are you shoving for? I’ll get there!’ ‘You’ll freeze,’ said the porter. ‘Our kind don’t freeze. I’m a hot ‘un.’
She meant it as a jest but it sounded like abuse. Near the lamp-post that stands not far from the gate of our house she again stopped and leant almost fell-against the wooden fence of the yard, and began fumbling in her skirts with clumsy benumbed fingers. They again shouted at her, but she only muttered and went on with what she was doing. In one hand she held a cigarette bent like an are, and in the other some sulphur matches. I stopped, ashamed to go past her though also ashamed to stand and look on. At last I made up my mind and went up to her. She leant with her shoulder against the wooden fence, and vainly trying to strike the sulphur matches against it threw them away. I looked at her face. She was a starveling, but it seemed to me no
