What was its nature?
I had lived in the country, and there I was connected with the rustic
poor. Not out of humility, which is worse than pride, but for the sake
of telling the truth, which is indispensable for the understanding of the
whole course of my thoughts and sentiments, I will say that in the
country I did very little for the poor, but the demands which were made
upon me were so modest that even this little was of use to the people,
and formed around me an atmosphere of affection and union with the
people, in which it was possible to soothe the gnawing sensation of
remorse at the independence of my life. On going to the city, I had
hoped to be able to live in the same manner. But here I encountered want
of an entirely different sort. City want was both less real, and more
exacting and cruel, than country poverty. But the principal point was,
that there was so much of it in one spot, that it produced on me a
frightful impression. The impression which I experienced in the
Lyapinsky house had, at the very first, made me conscious of the
deformity of my own life. This feeling was genuine and very powerful.
But, notwithstanding its genuineness and power, I was, at that time, so
weak that I feared the alteration in my life to which this feeling
commended me, and I resorted to a compromise. I believed what everybody
told me, and everybody has said, ever since the world was made,--that
there is nothing evil in wealth and luxury, that they are given by God,
that one may continue to live as a rich man, and yet help the needy. I
believed this, and I tried to do it. I wrote an essay, in which I
summoned all rich people to my assistance. The rich people all
acknowledged themselves morally bound to agree with me, but evidently
they either did not wish to do any thing, or they could not do any thing
or give any thing to the poor. I began to visit the poor, and I beheld
what I had not in the least expected. On the one hand, I beheld in those
dens, as I called them, people whom it was not conceivable that I should
help, because they were working people, accustomed to labor and
privation, and therefore standing much higher and having a much firmer
foothold in life than myself; on the other hand, I saw unfortunate people
whom I could not aid because they were exactly like myself. The majority
of the unfortunates whom I saw were unhappy only because they had lost
the capacity, desire, and habit of earning their own bread; that is to
say, their unhappiness consisted in the fact that they were precisely
such persons as myself.
I found no unfortunates who were sick, hungry, or cold, to whom I could
render immediate assistance, with the solitary exception of hungry
Agafya. And I became convinced, that, on account of my remoteness from
the lives of those people whom I desired to help, it would be almost
impossible to find any such unfortunates, because all actual wants had
already been supplied by the very people among whom these unfortunates
live; and, most of all, I was convinced that money cannot effect any
change in the life led by these unhappy people.
I was convinced of all this, but out of false shame at abandoning what I
had once undertaken, because of my self-delusion as a benefactor, I went
on with this matter for a tolerably long time,--and would have gone on
with it until it came to nothing of itself,--so that it was with the
greatest difficulty that, with the help of Ivan Fedotitch, I got rid,
after a fashion, as well as I could, in the tavern of the Rzhanoff house,
of the thirty-seven rubles which I did not regard as belonging to me.
Of course I might have gone on with this business, and have made out of
it a semblance of benevolence; by urging the people who had promised me
money, I might have collected more, I might have distributed this money,
and consoled myself with my charity; but I perceived, on the one hand,
that we rich people neither wish nor are able to share a portion of our a
superfluity with the poor (we have so many wants of our own), and that
money should not be given to any one, if the object really be to do good
and not to give money itself at haphazard, as I had done in the Rzhanoff
tavern. And I gave up the whole thing, and went off to the country with
despair in my heart.
In the country I tried to write an essay about all this that I had
experienced, and to tell why my undertaking had not succeeded. I wanted
to justify myself against the reproaches which had been made to me on the
score of my article on the census; I wanted to convict society of its in
difference, and to state the causes in which this city poverty has its
birth, and the necessity of combating it, and the means of doing so which
I saw.
I began this essay at once, and it seemed to me that in it I was saying a
very great deal that was important. But toil as I would over it, and in
spite of the abundance of materials, in spite of the superfluity of them
even, I could not get though that essay; and so I did not finish it until
the present year, because of the irritation under the influence of which
I wrote, because I had not gone through all that was requisite in order
to bear myself properly in relation to this essay, because I did not
simply and clearly acknowledge the cause of all this,--a very simple
cause, which had its root in myself.
In the domain of morals, one very remarkable and too little noted
phenomenon presents itself.
If I tell a man who knows nothing about it, what I know about geology,
astronomy, history, physics, and mathematics, that man receives entirely
new information, and he never says to me: "Well, what is there new in
that? Everybody knows that, and I have known it this long while." But
tell that same man the most lofty truth, expressed in the clearest, most
concise manner, as it has never before been expressed, and every ordinary
individual, especially one who takes no particular interest in moral
questions, or, even more, one to whom the moral truth stated by you is
displeasing, will infallibly say to you: "Well, who does not know that?
That was known and said long ago." It really seems to him that this has
been said long ago and in just this way. Only those to whom moral truths
are dear and important know how important and precious they are, and with
what prolonged labor the elucidation, the simplification, of moral
truths, their transit from the state of a misty, indefinitely recognized
supposition, and desire, from indistinct, incoherent expressions, to a
firm and definite expression, unavoidably demanding corresponding
concessions, are attained.
We have all become accustomed to think that moral instruction is a most
absurd and tiresome thing, in which there can be nothing new or
interesting; and yet all human life, together with all the varied and
complicated activities, apparently independent, of morality, both
governmental and scientific, and artistic and commercial, has no other
aim than the greater and greater elucidation, confirmation,
simplification, and accessibility of moral truth.
I remember that I was once walking along the street in Moscow, and in
front of me I saw a man come out and gaze attentively at the stones of
the sidewalk, after which he selected one stone, seated himself on it,
and began to plane (as it seemed to me) or to rub it with the greatest
diligence and force. "What is he doing to the sidewalk?" I said to
myself. On going close to him, I saw what the man was doing. He was a
young fellow from a meat-shop; he was whetting his knife on the stone of
the pavement. He was not thinking at all of the stones when he
scrutinized them, still less was he thinking of them when he was
accomplishing his task: he was whetting his knife. He was obliged to
whet his knife so that he could cut the meat; but to me it seemed as
though he were doing something to the stones of the sidewalk. Just so it
appears as though humanity were occupied with commerce, conventions,
wars, sciences, arts; but only one business is of importance to it, and
with only one business is it occupied: it is elucidating to itself those
moral laws by which it lives. The moral laws are already in existence;
humanity is only elucidating them, and this elucidation seems unimportant
and imperceptible for any one who has no need of moral laws, who does not
wish to live by them. But this elucidation of the moral law is not only
weighty, but the only real business of all humanity. This elucidation is
imperceptible just as the difference between the dull and the sharp knife
is imperceptible. The knife is a knife all the same, and for a person
who is not obliged to cut any thing with this knife, the difference
between the dull and the sharp one is imperceptible. For the man who has
come to an understanding that his whole life depends on the greater or
less degree of sharpness in the knife,--for such a man, every whetting of
it is weighty, and that man knows that the knife is a knife only when it
is sharp, when it cuts that which needs cutting.
This is what happened to me, when I began to write my essay. It seemed
to me that I knew all about it, that I understood every thing connected
with those questions which had produced on me the impressions of the
Lyapinsky house, and the census; but when I attempted to take account of
them and to demonstrate them, it turned out that the knife would not cut,
and that it must be whetted. And it is only now, after the lapse of
three years, that I have felt that my knife is sufficiently sharp, so
that I can cut what I choose. I have learned very little that is new. My
thoughts are all exactly the same, but they were duller then, and they
all scattered and would not unite on any thing; there was no edge to
them; they would not concentrate on one point, on the simplest and
clearest decision, as they have now concentrated themselves.