All my life long I had arranged my food, sleep, and amusements with regard to those hours of specialized work, and besides that work I had done nothing.
The result was: first that I limited my circle of observation and knowledge and often lacked a subject of study, and often when setting myself the task of describing the lives of men (and the lives of men are the perpetual problem of all mental activity) I felt my ignorance and had to learn and inquire about things known to every man who is not occupied with specialized work; secondly, it happened that I sat down to write without any inner compulsion to write, and no one demanded of me writing for its own sake, that is to say for my thoughts, but only wanted my name for journalistic purposes.
I tried to squeeze what I could out of myself: sometimes nothing could be squeezed out, sometimes only something very poor, and I felt dissatisfied and dull. So that very often days and weeks passed when I ate and drank, slept and warmed myself, without doing anything, or doing only what nobody needed; that is to say, I committed an unquestionable and nasty crime of a kind hardly ever committed by a man of the labouring classes. But now after having recognized the necessity of physical work, both rough work and handicraft, something quite different happened: my time was occupied, however humbly, in a way that was certainly useful and joyous and instructive for me. And so I tore myself away from that unquestionably useful and joyous occupation to my speciality only when I felt an inner need a saw a demand directly addressed to me for my work as a writer. And just these demands conditioned the quality, and therefore the value and joyousness of my specialized work.
So it turned out that occupation with the physical work necessary for me as for every man, not only did not hinder my specialized activity but was a necessary condition of the utility, quality, and pleasurability of that activity. . .
A bird is so made that it is necessary for it to fly, walk, peck, and consider, and when it does all that it is satisfied and happy, in a word, it is then really a bird. Just so is it with man: when he walks, turns about, lifts, draws things along, works with his fingers, eyes, ears, tongue, and brain-then and only then is he satisfied and really a man.
A man conscious that it is his vocation to labour will naturally aim at such a rotation of work as is natural for the satisfaction of his internal and external needs, and he will change this order only if he feels within him an irresistible vocation for some exceptional work and if other people require that work of him.
The nature of work is such that the satisfaction of all man’s needs requires just the change to different kinds of work that makes it not burdensome but gladsome. Only a false belief that work IS a .curse could bring people to such an emancipation of themselves from certain kinds of work-that is, to such a seizure of the work of others-as requires the compulsory engagement of others in special occupations, which is called ‘the division of labour’.
We are so accustomed to our false conception of the arrangement of work, that it seems to us that it will be better for a boot maker, a mechanic, a writer, or a musician, if he exempts himself from the labour natural to all men.
Where there is no violence exercised to seize other people’s work and no false faith in the pleasure of idleness, no one will free himself from the physical work necessary for the satisfaction of his needs, in order to occupy himself with specialized work; for specialized work is not an advantage, but a sacrifice a man makes to his special bent and to his fellow men.
A boot maker in a village tearing himself from his customary and joyous field labour and taking to that of mending or making boots for his neighbours, deprives himself of the very joyous and useful field-work only because he likes sewing, and knows that no one can do it as well as he and that people will be grateful to him for it. But he cannot desire to deprive himself for life of joyous change of work. And so it is with a village Elder, a mechanic, a writer, or a scholar. It is only we, with our perverted notions, who suppose that if a master dismisses a clerk from the counting-house and sends him back to work as a peasant, or if a minister is dismissed and deported, that he has been punished and placed in a worse position. In truth he has been benefited, that is to say his special oppressive and difficult work has been changed for a joyous alteration of labour.
In a natural society this is quite different. I know of a Commune in which the people grew their own food. One of the members of this Commune1 was more educated than the others, and he was required to give lectures, which he had to prepare during the day and deliver in the evening. He did this willingly, feeling that he was being of use to others and doing good work. But he grew tired of doing exclusively mental work and his health suffered, and the members of the Commune took pity on him and invited him to work on the land.
For people who look on labour as the essence and joy of life, the background and basis of life will always be the struggle with nature-work on the land, handicraft, mental work, and the establishment of intercourse among men.
A withdrawal from one or several of these kinds of work and a specialization of work will only occur when the specialist, loving such work and knowing that he does it better than other people, sacrifices his own advantage to satisfy direct demands made on him. Only by such an opinion about work and by the natural division of labour that results from it, is the curse lifted which in our imagination is laid on work; and all labour becomes joyful, because either a man does unquestionably useful and joyful work that is not burdensome, or he will be conscious of sacrificing himself in the performance of a more difficult and exceptional task done for the good of others.
‘But the subdivision of labour is more advantageous!’ For whom is it more advantageous?
It is advantageous for the production of more boots and cotton-prints. But who will have to make those boots and prints?
People such as those who for generations have made pin-heads and nothing else. Then how can it be more profitable for them?
If the chief thing were to make as many prints and pins as possible, it would be all right; but men and their welfare are the chief consideration. And the welfare of men lies in life, and their life is in their work. Then how can compulsion to do tormenting and degrading work be advantageous?
If the aim were the advantage of some men regardless of the welfare of all, then the most advantageous thing might be for some men to eat others; it is said that they taste nice. But
1 The Commune in question was the one founded by N. Chaikovsky, in Kansas State, in the eighteen seventies; and the man referred to in this passage was V. K. Heins, who changed his name to William Frey. He visited Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, and an account of him is given in Chap. VI, Vol. 2 of my Life of Tolstoy.-A. M.
what is most profitable for all is what I desire for myself: the greatest possible welfare and satisfaction of all the needs of body and soul and conscience and reason implanted within me. And personally I found that for my welfare and the satisfaction of these needs, I only had to be cured of the madness in which I-like the Krapivenski madman-lived, believing that gentlefolk ought not to work and that all should be done by others-and, without any subtleties, that I had to do only what is natural for a man to do when satisfying his needs. And when I found this out, I became convinced that this work for the satisfaction of one’s needs naturally divides itself into different kinds of work, each of which has its charm and not only is not burdensome but serves as a rest from the other kinds of labour.
Roughly (without at all insisting on the correctness of such a division) I divided that work, according to the demands I make on life, into four parts corresponding to the four spells of work which make up the day, and I endeavour to satisfy those demands.
So these are the replies I found to my question: What must we do?
First: not to lie to myself; and-however far my path of life may be from the true path disclosed by my reason-not to fear the truth.
Secondly: to reject the belief in my own righteousness and in privileges and peculiarities distinguishing me from others, and to acknowledge myself as being to blame.
Thirdly: to fulfil the eternal, indubitable law of man, and with the labour of
