What did it all mean?
I had lived in the country and had entered into relations with the
country-poor. It is not out of false modesty, but that I may state the
truth, which is necessary in order to understand the run of all my
thoughts and feelings, that I must say that in the country I had done
perhaps but little for the poor, the help which had been required of me
was so small; but even the little I had done had been useful, and had
formed round me an atmosphere of love and sympathy with my
fellow-creatures, in the midst of whom it might yet be possible for me
to quiet the gnawing of my conscience as to the unlawfulness of my life
of luxury.
On going to the city I had hoped for the same happy relations with the
poor, but here things were upon quite another footing. In the city,
poverty was at once less truthful, more exacting, and more bitter, than
in the country. It was chiefly because there was so much more of it
accumulated together, that it produced upon me a most harrowing
impression. What I experienced at Liapin's house made my own luxurious
life seem monstrously evil. I could not doubt the sincerity and strength
of this conviction; yet, notwithstanding this, I was quite incapable of
carrying out a revolution which demanded an entire change in my mode of
life: I was frightened at the prospect, and so I resorted to
compromises. I accepted what I was told by everyone, and what has been
said by everybody since the world began,--that riches and luxury are in
themselves no evil, that they are given by God, and that whilst
continuing to live luxuriously it is possible to help those in need. I
believed this and wanted to do so. And I wrote an article in which I
called upon all rich people to help. These all admitted themselves
morally obliged to agree with me, but evidently did not wish to do or
give anything for the poor, or could not do so.
I then began visiting, and discovered what I had in no way expected to
see. On the one hand, I saw in these dens (as I had at first called
them) men whom it was impossible for me to help, because they were
working-men, accustomed to labour and privation, and therefore having a
much firmer hold on life than I had. On the other hand, I saw miserable
men whom I could not aid because they were just such as I was myself.
The majority of the poor whom I saw were wretched, merely because they
had lost the capacity, desire, and habit of earning their bread; in
other words, their misery consisted in the fact that they were just like
myself. Whereas, of poor people to whom it was possible to give
immediate assistance--those suffering from illness, cold, and hunger,--I
found none, except the starving Agafia; and I became persuaded that,
being so far removed from the life of those whom I wished to succour, it
was almost impossible to find such need as I sought, because all real
need was attended to by those amongst whom these unhappy creatures
lived: and my principal conviction now was, that, with money, I could
never reform that life of misery which these people led.
I was persuaded of this: yet a feeling of shame to leave off all I had
begun, and self-deception as to my own virtues, made me continue my plan
for some time longer till it died a natural death; thus, only with great
difficulty and the help of Iván Fedotitch, I managed to distribute in
the tavern at Rzhanoff's house the thirty-seven rubles which I
considered were not my own.
Of course I might have continued this style of thing and have
transformed it into a kind of charity; and, by importuning those who
promised to give me money, I might have obtained and distributed more,
thus comforting myself with the idea of my own excellence: but I became
convinced on the one hand that we rich people do not wish,--and are also
unable,--to distribute to the poor a portion of our superfluities (we
have so many wants ourselves), and that money should not be given to any
one if we really wish to do good, instead of merely distributing it at
random as I had done in the Rzhanoff tavern. So I dropped the affair
entirely and in despair quitted Moscow for my own village.
I intended on returning home to write a pamphlet on my experience, and
to state why my project had not succeeded. I wanted to justify myself
from the imputations which resulted from my article on the census; I
wanted also to denounce society and its heartless indifference; and I
desired to point out the causes of this town misery, and the necessity
for endeavouring to remedy it, as well as the means which I thought were
requisite for this purpose. I began even then to write, and fancied I
had many very important facts to communicate. But in vain did I rack my
brain: I could not manage it, notwithstanding the super-abundance of
material at my command, because of the irritation under which I wrote,
and because I had not yet learned by experience what was necessary to
grasp the question rightly; still more because I had not become fully
conscious of the cause of it all,--a very simple cause, deep-rooted in
myself. So the pamphlet was not finished at the commencement of the
present year (1884-1885).
In the matter of moral law we witness a strange phenomenon to which men
pay too little attention. If I speak to an unlearned man about geology,
astronomy, history, natural philosophy, or mathematics, he receives the
information as quite new to him, and never says to me, "There is nothing
new in what you tell me; every one knows it, and I have known it for a
long time." But tell a man one of the highest moral truths in the
simplest manner, in such a way as it has never been before formulated,
and every ordinary man, particularly one who does not take any interest
in moral questions, and, above all, one who dislikes them, is sure to
say, "Who does not know that? It has been always known and expressed."
And he really believes this. Only those who can appreciate moral truths
know how to value their elucidation and simplification by a long and
laborious process, or can prize the transition from a proposition or
desire at first vaguely understood to a firm and determined expression
calling for a corresponding change of conduct.
We are all accustomed to consider moral doctrine to be a very insipid
and dull affair in which there can be nothing new or interesting;
whereas, in reality, human life, with all its complicated and varied
actions which seem to have no connection with morals,--political
activity, activity in the sciences, in the arts, and in commerce,--has
no other object than to elucidate moral truths more and more, and to
confirm, simplify, and make them accessible to all.
I recollect once while walking in a street in Moscow I saw a man come
out and examine the flag-stones attentively; then, choosing one of them,
he sat down by it and began to scrape and rub it vigorously.
"What is he doing with the pavement?" I wondered; and, having come up
close to him, I discovered he was a young man from a butcher's shop, and
was sharpening his knife on the flag-stone. He was not thinking about
the stones when examining them, and still less while doing his work; he
was merely sharpening his knife. It was necessary for him to do so in
order to cut the meat, but to me it seemed that he was doing something
to the pavement.
In the same way mankind seems to be occupied with commerce, treaties,
wars, sciences, arts; and yet for them one thing only is important, and
they do only that,--they are elucidating those moral laws by which they
live.
Moral laws are already in existence, and mankind has been and is merely
re-discovering them: this elucidation appears to be unimportant and
imperceptible to one who has no need of moral law, and who does not
desire to live by it. Yet this is not only the chief but is the sole
business of all men. The elucidation is imperceptible in the same way as
the difference between a sharp knife and a blunt one is imperceptible. A
knife remains a knife; and one who has not to cut anything with it will
not notice its edge: but for one who understands that all his life
depends more or less upon whether his knife is blunt or sharp, every
improvement in sharpening it is important; and such a man knows that
there must be no limit to this improvement, and that the knife is only
really a knife when it is sharp, and when it cuts what it has to cut.
The conviction of this truth flashed upon me when I began to write my
pamphlet. Previously it seemed to me that I knew everything about my
subject, that I had a thorough understanding of everything connected
with those questions which had been awakened in me by the impressions
made in Liapin's house and during the census; but when I tried to sum
them up, and to put them on paper, it turned out that the knife would
not cut, and had to be sharpened: so it is only now after three years
that I feel my knife is sharp enough for me to cut out what I want. It
is not that I have learned new things: my thoughts are still the same;
but they were blunt formerly; they kept diverging in every direction;
there was no edge to them; nor was anything brought, as it is now, to
one central point, to one most simple and plain conclusion.