I saw that the cause of the sufferings and depravity of men lies in the
fact that some men are in bondage to others; and therefore I came to the
obvious conclusion that if I want to help men I have first of all to
leave off causing those very misfortunes which I want to remedy,--in
other words, I must not share in the enslaving of men.
I was led to the enslaving of men by the circumstance that from my
infancy I had been accustomed not to work, but to profit by the labour
of others, and that I had been living in a society which is not only
accustomed to this slavery but which justifies it by all kinds of
sophistry, clever and foolish.
I came to the following simple conclusion, that, in order to avoid
causing the sufferings and depravity of men, I ought to make other men
work for me as little as possible and to work myself as much as
possible.
It was by this roundabout way that I arrived at the inevitable
conclusion to which the Chinese arrived some thousand years ago, and
which they express thus: "If there is one idle man, there must be
another who is starving."
I came to this simple and natural conclusion, that if I pity the
exhausted horse on whose back I ride the first thing for me to do if I
really pity him is to get off his back and walk. This answer, which
gives such complete satisfaction to the moral sense, had always been
before my eyes, as it is before the eyes of every one, but we do not all
see it, and look aside.
In seeking to heal our social diseases we look everywhere,--to the
governmental, anti-governmental, scientific, and philanthropic
superstitions,--and yet we do not see that which meets the eyes of every
one. We fill our drains with filth and require other men to clean them,
and pretend to be very sorry for them and want to ease their work; and
we invent all sorts of devices except one, the simplest; namely, that we
should ourselves remove our slops so long as we find it necessary to
produce them in our rooms.
For him who really suffers from the sufferings of the other men
surrounding him, there exists a most clear, simple, and easy means, the
only one sufficient to heal this evil and to confer a sense of the
lawfulness of one's life. This means is that which John the Baptist
recommended when he answered the question, "What shall we do then?" and
which was confirmed by Christ: not to have more than one coat, and not
to possess money,--that is, not to profit by another man's labour. And
in order not to profit by another's labour, we must do with our own
hands all that we can do. This is so plain and simple! But it is plain
and simple and clear only when our wants are also plain, and when we
ourselves are still sound and not corrupted to the backbone by idleness
and laziness.
I live in a village, lie by the stove, and tell my neighbour, who is my
debtor, to chop wood and light the stove. It is obvious that I am lazy
and take my neighbour away from his own work; and at last I feel ashamed
of it; and besides, it grows dull for me to be always lying down when my
muscles are strong and accustomed to work,--and I go to chop the wood
myself.
But slavery of all kinds has been going on so long, so many artificial
wants have grown about it, so many people with different degrees of
familiarity with these wants are interwoven with one another, through so
many generations men have been spoiled and made effeminate, such
complicated temptations and justifications of luxury and idleness have
been invented by men, that for one who stands on the top of the pyramid
of idle men, it is not at all so easy to understand his sin as it is for
the peasant who compels his neighbour to light his stove.
Men who stand at the top find it most difficult to understand what is
required of them. From the height of the structure of lies on which they
stand they become giddy when they look at that spot on the earth to
which they must descend in order to begin to live, not righteously, but
only not quite inhumanly; and that is why this plain and clear truth
appears to these men so strange.
A man who employs ten servants in livery, coachmen and cooks, who has
pictures and pianos, must certainly regard as strange and even
ridiculous the simple preliminary duty of, I do not say a good man, but
of every man who is not an animal, to hew that wood with which his food
is cooked and by which he is warmed; to clean those boots in which he
carelessly stepped into the mud; to bring that water with which he keeps
himself clean; and to carry away those slops in which he has washed
himself.
But besides the estrangement of men from the truth, there is another
cause which hinders them from seeing the duty of doing the most simple
and natural physical work; that is the complication and intermingling of
the conditions in which a rich man lives.
This morning I entered the corridor in which the stoves are heated. A
peasant was heating the stove which warmed my son's room. I entered his
bedroom: he was asleep, and it was eleven o'clock in the morning. The
excuse was, "To-day is a holiday; no lessons." A stout lad of eighteen
years of age, having over-eaten himself the previous night, is sleeping
until eleven o'clock; and a peasant of his own age, who had already that
morning done a quantity of work, was now lighting the tenth stove. "It
would be better, perhaps, if the peasant did not light the stove to warm
this stout, lazy fellow!" thought I; but I remembered at once that this
stove also warmed the room of our housekeeper, a woman of forty years of
age, who had been working the night before till three o'clock in the
morning to prepare everything for the supper which my son ate; and then
she put away the dishes, and, notwithstanding this, got up at seven. She
cannot heat the stove herself: she has no time for that. The peasant is
heating the stove for her, too. And under her name my lazy fellow was
being warmed.
True, the advantages are all interwoven; but without much consideration
the conscience of each will say, On whose side is the labour, and on
whose the idleness? But not only does conscience tell this, the
account-book also tells it: the more money one spends, the more people
work for us. The less one spends, the more one works one's self. "My
luxurious life gives means of living to others. Where should my old
footman go, if I were to discharge him?" "What! every one must do
everything for himself? Make his coat as well as hew his wood? And how
about division of labour? And industry and social undertakings?" And,
last of all, come the most horrible of words,--civilization, science,
art!