So we demanding bodily food for ourselves, have undertaken to supply spiritual food, but as a result of an imaginary division of labour allowing us not only to dine first and then work, but allowing whole generations to eat well without producing anything-we have prepared as payment to the people for our sustenance something that is only suitable, or it appears to us suitable, for science and art-but unsuitable and (like Limburg cheese) quite incomprehensible and repulsive to the very people whose labour we have devoured on the pretext that we would supply them with spiritual food.
We in our blindness have to such an extent lost sight of the obligation we had taken upon ourselves, that we have even forgotten the purpose for which our work is done and have made the very people we had undertaken to serve a subject for our scientific and artistic activity.
We study and depict them for our own amusement and distraction, and have quite forgotten that we should not study and depict them-but should serve them.
To such an extent have we lost sight of the obligation we took upon ourselves, that we do not even notice that what we had undertaken to do in the sphere of science and art has been done not by us but by others, and that our place has been occupied. It turns out that while we were disputing-as the theologians disputed about the Immaculate Conception-now about the spontaneous generation of organisms, now about spiritualism, now about the form of atoms, now about pangenesis, and now about what there is in protoplasm, and so on-the people all the same required spiritual food, and men who were the failures and outcasts of science and art began, at the order of business men anxious solely for profit, to supply the masses with spiritual food, and have supplied it. For some forty years elsewhere in Europe, and for some ten years past in Russia, millions of books and pictures and song-books have been circulated, and shows have been opened, and the people look on, and sing, and receive their spiritual food, but not from us who had undertaken to supply it-while we who justify our idleness by the spiritual food we are supposed to supply, sit and gape. But we must not gape, for our last justification is slipping from under our feet.
We have specialized. We have our special functional activity. We are the brain of the people. They feed us, and we have undertaken to instruct them. Only on that account have we emancipated ourselves from labour. What have we taught the labourers and what are we teaching them? They have waited one year, ten years, hundreds of years. And still we discuss and teach and entertain one another, but have forgotten them. To such an extent have we forgotten them that others have started to teach and entertain them and we did not even notice it, so little was our talk of the division of labour serious, and so evident is it that what we say of the benefit we confer on the masses is merely a shameless pretence.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THERE was a time when the Church guided the spiritual life of the people of our world; the Church promised people welfare and on that score excused itself from participation in humanity’s struggle for life. And as soon as it did that it went astray from its vocation and the people turned away from it. It was not the errors of the Church that ruined it but the abandonment of the law of labour by its servants, secured by the aid of the government in the time of Constantine; their privilege of idleness and luxury begot the errors of the Church. With that privilege began the Church’s care for the Church and not for the people whom it had undertaken to serve. And the servants of the Church abandoned themselves to idleness and depravity.
The State undertook to guide the lives of men. The State promised men justice, tranquility, security, order, the satisfaction of their general spiritual and material needs, and on this account the men who served the State emancipated themselves from participation in humanity’s struggle for life. And the servants of the State, as soon as ever it was possible for them to exploit the labour of others, did what the servants of the Church had done. Their aim became not the people but the State, and the servants of the State-from kings down to the lowest officials and employees-in Rome, France, England, Russia, and America, abandoned themselves to idleness and depravity.
And people ceased to believe in the State, and anarchy is already consciously presented as an ideal.
The State lost its fascination for people only because its servants considered that they had a right to exploit the people’s labour.
The same thing has been done by science and art with the help of the State authorities whom they have undertaken to support. They too stipulated for the right to idleness and to the use of other people’s labour, and have similarly been false to their vocation.
And they too ran into error only because the servants of science, having adopted the wrongly understood principle of division of labour, allowed themselves the right to appropriate other people’s labour and lost the meaning of their own vocation, taking for their aim not the benefit of the people but the mystic benefit of science and art; like their predecessors they yielded to idleness and depravity, not so much sensuous as intellectual.
It is said that science and art have given much to humanity. That is perfectly true.
The Church and the State gave much to humanity, not because they misused their power and their servants neglected the eternal obligation of man to labour for his livelihood-which applies to all men-but in spite of it.
So also science and art have given much to humanity, not because the scientists and artists on the plea of a division of labour live on the back of the working class but despite that fact. The Roman republic was strong not because its citizens were able to lead depraved lives, but because there were among them some worthy citizens. And it is the same with science and art.
Science and art have given much to humanity not because their servants sometimes formerly had, and now always have, opportunity to emancipate themselves from labour, but because there were men of genius who, not availing themselves of that opportunity, moved humanity forward.
The class of the learned and of artists who on the ground of a false division of labour demand the right to exploit the labour of others cannot contribute to the success of true science and true art, for falsehood cannot produce truth.
We are so accustomed to our pampered, fat, or enfeebled representatives of mental work, that it seems to us barbarous that a learned man or an artist should plough or cart manure. It seems to us as if all his wisdom would perish or be shaken to pieces on the cart, and the manure would soil the grand artistic images he carries in his breast; but we are so accustomed to it that it does not seem strange when a servant of science, that is a servant and teacher of truth, compelling others to do for him what he could do for himself, spends half his time in eating tasty food, in smoking, gossip, or liberal tittle-tattle, reading the papers and novels, and visiting the theatres. It does not surprise us to see our philosopher at a restaurant, a theatre, or a ball; nor does it seem strange to us to learn that those artists who delight and ennoble our souls spend their lives in drunkenness, card playing, or with wenches-if not doing something worse…
Science and art are beautiful things, but just because they are beautiful they should not be spoilt by joining depravity to them, that is, by freeing oneself from a man’s obligation to support his own and other people’s lives by labour.
Science and art have advanced humanity, yes! but not because the men of science and art, on the plea of a division of labour, by word and above all by deed have taught people to avail themselves of violence, and of the poverty and suffering of others, to free themselves from the first and most unquestionable human obligation of working with their own hands in the struggle with nature that is common to all humanity.
CHAPTER XXXIV
‘BUT it is only the division of labour, and the emancipation of the men of science and art from the necessity of producing their own food, that has made possible the extraordinary progress of science that we see in our time,’ is what people. say to this.
‘If everyone had to plough, those enormous results could not have been attained that have been attained in our time; there would not have been the striking progress which has so increased man’s power over nature, nor those astronomical discoveries which have so impressed man’s mind and made navigation safer, nor those steamers, railroads, marvellous bridges, tunnels, steam engines, telegraphs, photographs, telephones, sewing-machines, phonographs, electricity, telescopes, spectroscopes, microscopes, chloroform, antiseptics, and carbolic acid.’
I cannot enumerate all the things our age so prides itself on. That enumeration, and the raptures over ourselves and over our achievements, can be found in almost any newspaper or popular book. Those raptures over ourselves are so often repeated, we are so overjoyed at ourselves, that we are seriously convinced, with Jules Verne, that science and art never made such progress
