From another point of view than the one stated, I also came to the same
conclusion. Recollecting my connection with the town-poor during this
period, I saw that one cause which prevented me from helping them was
their insincerity and falseness. They all considered me, not as an
individual but merely as a means to an end. I felt I could not become
intimate with them; I thought I did not perhaps understand how to do so;
but without truthfulness, no help was possible. How can one help a man
who does not tell all his circumstances? Formerly I accused the poor of
this (it is so natural to accuse others), but one word spoken by a
remarkable man, Sutaief, who was then on a visit at my house, cleared up
the difficulty, and showed me wherein lay the cause of my failure.
I remember that even then what he said made a deep impression on me; but
I did not understand its full meaning until afterwards. It happened that
while in the full ardour of my self-deception I was at my sister's
house, Sutaief being also there; and my sister was questioning me about
my work.
I was relating it to her; and, as is always the case when one does not
fully believe in one's own enterprises, I related with great enthusiasm,
ardour, and at full length, all I had been doing, and all the possible
results. I was telling her how we should keep our eyes open to what went
on in Moscow; how we should take care of orphans and old people; how we
should afford means for impoverished villagers to return to their homes,
and pave the way to reform the depraved. I explained, that, if we
succeeded in our undertaking, there would not be in Moscow a single poor
man who could not find help.
My sister sympathized with me; and while speaking, I kept looking now
and then at Sutaief; knowing his Christian life, and the importance
attached by him to works of charity, I expected sympathy from him, and I
spoke so that he might understand me; for, though I was addressing my
sister, yet my conversation was really more directed to him.
He sat immovable, dressed in his black-tanned-sheepskin coat, which he,
like other peasants, wore in-doors as well as out. It seemed that he was
not listening to us, but was thinking about something else. His small
eyes gave no responding gleam, but seemed to be turned inwards. Having
spoken out to my own satisfaction, I turned to him and asked him what he
thought about it.
"The whole thing is worthless," he replied.
"Why?"
"The plan is an empty one, and no good will come of it," he repeated
with conviction.
"But why will nothing come of it? Why is it a useless business, if we
help thousands, or even hundreds, of unhappy ones? Is it a bad thing,
according to the gospel, to clothe the naked, or to feed the hungry?"
"I know, I know; but what you are doing is not that. Is it possible to
help thus? You are walking in the street; somebody asks you for a few
kopeks; you give them to him. Is that charity? Do him some spiritual
good; teach him. What you give him merely says, 'Leave me alone.'"
"No; but that is not what we were speaking of: we wish to become
acquainted with the wants, and then to help by money and by deeds. We
will try to find for the poor people some work to do."
"That would be no way of helping them."
"How then? must they be left to die of starvation and cold?"
"Why left to die? How many are there of them?"
"How many?" said I, thinking that he took the matter so lightly from not
knowing the great number of these men; "you are not aware, I dare say,
that there are in Moscow about twenty thousand cold and hungry. And
then, think of those in St. Petersburg and other towns!"
He smiled.
"Twenty thousand! And how many households are there in Russia alone?
Would they amount to a million?"
"Well; but what of that?"
"What of that?" said he, with animation, and his eyes sparkled. "Let us
unite them with ourselves; I am not rich myself, but will at once take
two of them. Here is a fellow you settled in your kitchen; I asked him
to go with me, but he refused. If there were ten times as many, we
should take them all into our families. You one, I another. We shall
work together; he will see how I work; he will learn how to live, and we
shall eat out of one bowl, at one table; and they will hear a good word
from me, and from you also. That is charity; but all this plan of yours
is no good."
These plain words made an impression upon me. I could not help
recognizing that they were true. But it seemed to me then, that,
notwithstanding the justice of what he said, my proposed plan might
perhaps be useful also.
But the longer I was occupied with this affair; and the closer my
intercourse with the poor, the oftener I recollected these words and the
greater meaning I found in them.
I, indeed, go in an expensive fur coat, or drive in my own carriage to a
man who is in want of boots: he sees my house which costs two hundred
rubles a month, or he notices that I give away, without thinking, five
rubles, only because of a caprice; he is then aware that if I give away
rubles in such a manner, it is because I have accumulated so many that I
have a lot to spare which I am not only never in the habit of giving to
any one, but which I have taken away from others without compunction.
What can he see in me but one of those persons who have become possessed
of something which should belong to him? And what other feelings can he
have towards me than the desire to get back as many as possible of these
rubles which were taken by me from him and from others?
I should like to become intimate with him, and complain that he is not
sincere. But I am afraid to sit down upon his bed for fear of lice or
some infectious disease; I am also afraid to let him come into my room;
and when he comes to me half-dressed, he has to wait, if fortunate, in
the entrance-hall, but oftener in the cold porch. And then I say that it
is all his fault that I cannot become intimate with him, and that he is
not sincere.
Let the most hard-hearted man sit down to dine upon five courses among
hungry people who have little or nothing to eat except dry bread, and no
one could have the heart to eat while these hungry people are around him
licking their lips.
Therefore, before one can eat well when living among half-starved men,
the first thing necessary is to hide ourselves from them, and to eat so
that they may not see us. This is the very thing we do in the first
place.
I looked into our own mode of life without prejudice, and became aware
that it was not by chance that closer intercourse with the poor is
difficult for us, but that we ourselves are intentionally ordering our
lives in such a way as to make this intercourse impossible. And not only
this; but, on looking at our lives, or at the lives of rich people from
without, I saw that all that is considered as the _happiness_ of these
lives consists in being separated as much as possible from the poor, or
is in some way or other connected with this desired separation.
In fact, the entire aim of our lives, beginning with food, dress,
dwelling and cleanliness, and ending with our education, consists in
placing a gulf between us and them. And we spend nine-tenths of our
wealth to erect impassable barriers in order to establish this
distinction and separation.
The first thing a man who has grown rich does is to leave off eating
with others out of one bowl. He arranges plates for himself and his
family, and separates himself from the kitchen and the servants. He
feeds his servants well so that their mouths may not water, and he dines
alone. But eating alone is dull. He invents whatever he can to improve
his food, embellish his table; and the very manner of taking food, as at
dinner-parties, becomes a matter of vanity and pride. His manner of
eating his food is a means of separating himself from other people. For
a rich man it is out of the question to invite a poor person to his
table. One must know how to hand a lady to table, how to bow, how to
sit, to eat, to use a finger-bowl, all of which the rich alone know how
to do.
The same holds good with dress.
If a rich man wore ordinary dress,--a jacket, a fur coat, felt shoes,
leather boots, an undercoat, trousers, a shirt,--he would require very
little to cover his body and protect it from cold; and, having two fur
coats, he could not help giving one away to somebody who had none. But
the wealthy man begins with wearing clothes which consist of many
separate parts, of use only on particular occasions, and therefore of no
use to a poor man. The man of fashion must have evening dress-coats,
waistcoats, frock-coats, patent-leather shoes; his wife must have
bodices, and dresses which, according to fashion, are made of many
parts, high-heeled shoes, hunting and travelling jackets, and so on. All
these articles can be useful only to people in a condition far removed
from poverty.
And thus dressing also becomes a means of isolation. Fashions make their
appearance, and are among the chief things which separate the rich man
from the poor one.
The same thing shows itself more plainly still in our dwellings. In
order that one person may occupy ten rooms we must manage so that he may
not be seen by the people who are living by tens in one room.
The richer a man is, the more difficult it is to get at him; the more
footmen there are between him and people not rich, the more impossible
it is for him to receive a poor guest, to let him walk on his carpets
and sit on his satin-covered chairs.
The same thing happens in travelling. A peasant who drives in a cart or
on a carrier's sledge must be very hard-hearted if he refuses to give a
pedestrian a lift; he has enough room, and can do it. But the richer the
carriage is, the more impossible it is to put any one in it besides the
owner. Some of the most elegant carriages are so narrow as to be termed
"_egotists_."
The same thing applies to all the modes of living expressed by the word
"cleanliness." Cleanliness! Who does not know human beings, especially
women, who make a great virtue of cleanliness? Who does not know the
various phrases of this cleanliness, which have no limit whatever when
it is procured by the labour of others? Who among self-made men has not
experienced in his own person the pains with which he carefully
accustomed himself to this cleanliness, which illustrates the saying,
"White hands are fond of another's labour"?
To-day cleanliness consists in changing one's shirt daily; to-morrow it
will be changed twice a day. At first, one has to wash one's hands and
neck every day, then one will have to wash one's feet every day, and
afterwards it will be the whole body, and in peculiar methods. A clean
table-cloth serves for two days, then it is changed every day, and
afterwards two table-cloths a day are used. To-day the footman is
required to have clean hands; to-morrow he must wear gloves, and clean
gloves, and he must hand the letters on a clean tray.
There are no limits to this cleanliness, which is of no other use to
anyone except to separate us, and to make our intercourse with others
impossible while the cleanliness is obtained through the labour of
others.
Not only so, but when I had deeply reflected upon this, I came to the
conclusion that what we term education is a similar thing. Language
cannot deceive: it gives the right name to everything. The common people
call education fashionable dress, smart conversation, white hands, and a
certain degree of cleanliness. Of such a man they say, when
distinguishing him from others, that he is an educated man.
In a little higher circle men denote by education the same things, but
add playing on the piano, the knowledge of French, good Russian
spelling, and still greater cleanliness.
In the still higher circle education consists of all this, with the
addition of English, and a diploma from a high educational
establishment, and a still greater degree of cleanliness. But in all
these shades, education is in substance quite the same.
It consists in those forms and various kinds of information which
separate a man from his fellow-creatures. Its object is the same as that
of cleanliness: to separate us from the crowd, in order that they,
hungry and cold, may not see how we feast. But it is impossible to hide
ourselves, and our efforts are seen through.
Thus I became aware that the reason why it was impossible for us rich
men to help the town poor was nothing more or less than the
impossibility of our having closer intercourse with them, and that this
barrier we ourselves create by our whole life and by all the uses we
make of our wealth. I became persuaded that between us rich men and the
poor there stood, erected by ourselves, a barrier of cleanliness and
education which arose out of our wealth; and that, in order to be able
to help them, we have first to break down this barrier and to render
possible the realization of the means suggested by Sutaief: to take the
poor into our respective homes. And so, as I have already said at the
beginning of this chapter, I came to the same conclusion from a
different point of view from that to which the train of thought about
town misery had led me; viz., the cause of it all lay in our wealth.