If it were decided that only certain people should produce food, and if

all the rest were forbidden to do this, or if they were rendered

incapable of producing food, I suppose that the quality of food would be

lowered. If the people who enjoyed the monopoly of producing food were

Russian peasants, there would be no other food than black bread and

cabbage-soup, and so on, and kvas,--nothing except what they like, and

what is agreeable to them. The same thing would happen in the case of

that loftiest human pursuit, of arts and sciences, if one caste were to

arrogate to itself a monopoly of them: but with this sole difference,

that, in the matter of bodily food, there can be no great departure from

nature, and bread and cabbage-soup, although not very savory viands, are

fit for consumption; but in spiritual food, there may exist the very

greatest departures from nature, and some people may feed themselves for

a long time on poisonous spiritual nourishment, which is directly

unsuitable for, or injurious to, them; they may slowly kill themselves

with spiritual opium or liquors, and they may offer this same food to the

masses.

It is this very thing that is going on among us. And it has come about

because the position of men of science and art is a privileged one,

because art and science (in our day), in our world, are not at all a

rational occupation of all mankind without exception, exerting their best

powers for the service of art and science, but an occupation of a

restricted circle of people holding a monopoly of these industries, and

entitling themselves men of art and science, and who have, therefore,

perverted the very idea of art and science, and have lost all the meaning

of their vocation, and who are only concerned in amusing and rescuing

from crushing _ennui_ their tiny circle of idle mouths.

Ever since men have existed, they have always had science and art in the

simplest and broadest sense of the term. Science, in the sense of the

whole of knowledge acquired by mankind, exists and always has existed,

and life without it is not conceivable; and there is no possibility of

either attacking or defending science, taken in this sense.

But the point lies here,--that the scope of the knowledge of all mankind

as a whole is so multifarious, ranging from the knowledge of how to

extract iron to the knowledge of the movements of the planets, that man

loses himself in this multitude of existing knowledge,--knowledge capable

of _endless_ possibilities, if he have no guiding thread, by the aid of

which he can classify this knowledge, and arrange the branches according

to the degrees of their significance and importance.

Before a man undertakes to learn any thing whatever, he must make up his

mind that that branch of knowledge is of weight to him, and of more

weight and importance than the countless other objects of study with

which he is surrounded. Before undertaking the study of any thing, a man

decides for what purpose he is studying this subject, and not the others.

But to study every thing, as the men of scientific science in our day

preach, without any idea of what is to come out of such study, is

downright impossible, because the number of subjects of study is

_endless_; and hence, no matter how many branches we may acquire, their

acquisition can possess no significance or reason. And, therefore, in

ancient times, down to even a very recent date, until the appearance of

scientific science, man's highest wisdom consisted in finding that

guiding thread, according to which the knowledge of men should be

classified as being of primary or of secondary importance. And this

knowledge, which forms the guide to all other branches of knowledge, men

have always called science in the strictest acceptation of the word. And

such science there has always been, even down to our own day, in all

human communities which have emerged from their primal state of savagery.

Ever since mankind has existed, teachers have always arisen among

peoples, who have enunciated science in this restricted sense,--the

science of what it is most useful for man to know. This science has

always had for its object the knowledge of what is the true ground of the

well-being of each individual man, and of all men, and why. Such was the

science of Confucius, of Buddha, of Socrates, of Mahomet, and of others;

such is this science as they understood it, and as all men--with the

exception of our little circle of so-called cultured people--understand

it. This science has not only always occupied the highest place, but has

been the only and sole science, from which the standing of the rest has

been determined. And this was the case, not in the least because, as the

so-called scientific people of our day think, cunning priestly teachers

of this science attributed to it such significance, but because in

reality, as every one knows, both by personal experience and by

reflection, there can be no science except the science of that in which

the destiny and welfare of man consist. For the objects of science are

_incalculable_ in number,--I undermine the word "incalculable" in the

exact sense in which I understand it,--and without the knowledge of that

in which the destiny and welfare of all men consist, there is no

possibility of making a choice amid this interminable multitude of

subjects; and therefore, without this knowledge, all other arts and

branches of learning will become, as they have become among us, an idle

and hurtful diversion.

Mankind has existed and existed, and never has it existed without the

science of that in which the destiny and the welfare of men consist. It

is true that the science of the welfare of men appears different on

superficial observation, among the Buddhists, the Brahmins, the Hebrews,

the Confucians, the Tauists; but nevertheless, wherever we hear of men

who have emerged from a state of savagery, we find this science. And all

of a sudden it appears that the men of our day have decided that this

same science, which has hitherto served as the guiding thread of all

human knowledge, is the very thing which hinders every thing. Men erect

buildings; and one architect has made one estimate of cost, a second has

made another, and a third yet another. The estimates differ somewhat;

but they are correct, so that any one can see, that, if the whole is

carried out in accordance with the calculations, the building will be

erected. Along come people, and assert that the chief point lies in

having no estimates, and that it should be built thus--by the eye. And

this "thus," men call the most accurate of scientific science. Men

repudiate every science, the very substance of science,--the definition

of the destiny and the welfare of men,--and this repudiation they

designate as science.

Ever since men have existed, great minds have been born into their midst,

which, in the conflict with reason and conscience, have put to themselves

questions as to "what constitutes welfare,--the destiny and welfare, not

of myself alone, but of every man?" What does that power which has

created and which leads me, demand of me and of every man? And what is

it necessary for me to do, in order to comply with the requirements

imposed upon me by the demands of individual and universal welfare? They

have asked themselves: "I am a whole, and also a part of something

infinite, eternal; what, then, are my relations to other parts similar to

myself, to men and to the whole--to the world?"

And from the voices of conscience and of reason, and from a comparison of

what their contemporaries and men who had lived before them, and who had

propounded to themselves the same questions, had said, these great

teachers have deduced their doctrines, which were simple, clear,

intelligible to all men, and always such as were susceptible of

fulfilment. Such men have existed of the first, second, third, and

lowest ranks. The world is full of such men. Every living man propounds

the question to himself, how to reconcile the demands of welfare, and of

his personal existence, with conscience and reason; and from this

universal labor, slowly but uninterruptedly, new forms of life, which are

more in accord with the requirements of reason and of conscience, are

worked out.

All at once, a new caste of people makes its appearance, and they say,

"All this is nonsense; all this must be abandoned." This is the

deductive method of ratiocination (wherein lies the difference between

the deductive and the inductive method, no one can understand); these are

the dogmas of the technological and metaphysical period. Every thing

that these men discover by inward experience, and which they communicate

to one another, concerning their knowledge of the law of their existence

(of their functional activity, according to their own jargon), every

thing that the grandest minds of mankind have accomplished in this

direction, since the beginning of the world,--all this is nonsense, and

has no weight whatever. According to this new doctrine, it appears that

you are cells: and that you, as a cell, have a very definite functional

activity, which you not only fulfil, but which you infallibly feel within

you; and that you are a thinking, talking, understanding cell, and that

you, for this reason, can ask another similar talking cell whether it is

just the same, and in this way verify your own experience; that you can

take advantage of the fact that speaking cells, which have lived before

you, have written on the same subject, and that you have millions of

cells which confirm your observations by their agreement with the cells

which have written down their thoughts,--all this signifies nothing; all

this is an evil and an erroneous method.

The true scientific method is this: If you wish to know in what the

destiny and the welfare of all mankind and of all the world consists, you

must, first of all, cease to listen to the voices of your conscience and

of your reason, which present themselves in you and in others like you;

you must cease to believe all that the great teachers of mankind have

said with regard to your conscience and reason, and you must consider all

this as nonsense, and begin all over again. And, in order to understand

every thing from the beginning, you must look through microscopes at the

movements of amoebae, and cells in worms, or, with still greater

composure, believe in every thing that men with a diploma of

infallibility shall say to you about them. And as you gaze at the

movements of these cells, or read about what others have seen, you must

attribute to these cells your own human sensations and calculations as to

what they desire, whither they are directing themselves, how they compare

and discuss, and to what they have become accustomed; and from these

observations (in which there is not a word about an error of thought or

of expression) you must deduce a conclusion by analogy as to what you

are, what is your destiny, wherein lies the welfare of yourself and of

other cells like you. In order to understand yourself, you must study

not only the worms which you see, but microscopic creatures which you can

barely see, and transformations from one set of creatures into others,

which no one has ever beheld, and which you, most assuredly, will never

behold. And the same with art. Where there has been true science, art

has always been its exponent.

Ever since men have been in existence, they have been in the habit of

deducing, from all pursuits, the expressions of various branches of

learning concerning the destiny and the welfare of man, and the

expression of this knowledge has been art in the strict sense of the

word.

Ever since men have existed, there have been those who were peculiarly

sensitive and responsive to the doctrine regarding the destiny and

welfare of man; who have given expression to their own and the popular

conflict, to the delusions which lead them astray from their destinies,

their sufferings in this conflict, their hopes in the triumph of good,

them despair over the triumph of evil, and their raptures in the

consciousness of the approaching bliss of man, on viol and tabret, in

images and words. Always, down to the most recent times, art has served

science and life,--only then was it what has been so highly esteemed of

men. But art, in its capacity of an important human activity,

disappeared simultaneously with the substitution for the genuine science

of destiny and welfare, of the science of any thing you choose to fancy.

Art has existed among all peoples, and will exist until that which among

us is scornfully called religion has come to be considered the only

science.

In our European world, so long as there existed a Church, as the doctrine

of destiny and welfare, and so long as the Church was regarded as the

only true science, art served the Church, and remained true art: but as

soon as art abandoned the Church, and began to serve science, while

science served whatever came to hand, art lost its significance. And

notwithstanding the rights claimed on the score of ancient memories, and

of the clumsy assertion which only proves its loss of its calling, that

art serves art, it has become a trade, providing men with something

agreeable; and as such, it inevitably comes into the category of

choreographic, culinary, hair-dressing, and cosmetic arts, whose

practitioners designate themselves as artists, with the same right as the

poets, printers, and musicians of our day.

Glance backward into the past, and you will see that in the course of

thousands of years, out of milliards of people, only half a score of

Confucius', Buddhas, Solomons, Socrates, Solons, and Homers have been

produced. Evidently, they are rarely met with among men, in spite of the

fact that these men have not been selected from a single caste, but from

mankind at large. Evidently, these true teachers and artists and learned

men, the purveyors of spiritual nourishment, are rare. And it is not

without reason that mankind has valued and still values them so highly.

But it now appears, that all these great factors in the science and art

of the past are no longer of use to us. Nowadays, scientific and

artistic authorities can, in accordance with the law of division of

labor, be turned out by factory methods; and, in one decade, more great

men have been manufactured in art and science, than have ever been born

of such among all nations, since the foundation of the world. Nowadays

there is a guild of learned men and artists, and they prepare, by

perfected methods, all that spiritual food which man requires. And they

have prepared so much of it, that it is no longer necessary to refer to

the elder authorities, who have preceded them,--not only to the ancients,

but to those much nearer to us. All that was the activity of the

theological and metaphysical period,--all that must be wiped out: but the

true, the rational activity began, say, fifty years ago, and in the

course of those fifty years we have made so many great men, that there

are about ten great men to every branch of science. And there have come

to be so many sciences, that, fortunately, it is easy to make them. All

that is required is to add the Greek word "logy" to the name, and force

them to conform to a set rubric, and the science is all complete. They

have created so many sciences, that not only can no one man know them

all, but not a single individual can remember all the titles of all the

existing sciences; the titles alone form a thick lexicon, and new

sciences are manufactured every day. They have been manufactured on the

pattern of that Finnish teacher who taught the landed proprietor's

children Finnish instead of French. Every thing has been excellently

inculcated; but there is one objection,--that no one except ourselves can

understand any thing of it, and all this is reckoned as utterly useless

nonsense. However, there is an explanation even for this. People do not

appreciate the full value of scientific science, because they are under

the influence of the theological period, that profound period when all

the people, both among the Hebrews, and the Chinese, and the Indians, and

the Greeks, understood every thing that their great teachers said to

them.

But, from whatever cause this has come about, the fact remains, that

sciences and arts have always existed among mankind, and, when they

really did exist, they were useful and intelligible to all the people.

But we practise something which we call science and art, but it appears

that what we do is unnecessary and unintelligible to man. And hence,

however beautiful may be the things that we accomplish, we have no right

to call them arts and sciences.

CHAPTER VI.

"But you only furnish a different definition of arts and sciences, which

is stricter, and is incompatible with science," I shall be told in answer

to this; "nevertheless, scientific and artistic activity does still

exist. There are the Galileos, Brunos, Homers, Michael Angelos,

Beethovens, and all the lesser learned men and artists, who have

consecrated their entire lives to the service of science and art, and who

were, and will remain, the benefactors of mankind."

Generally this is what people say, striving to forget that new principle

of the division of labor, on the basis of which science and art now

occupy their privileged position, and on whose basis we are now enabled

to decide without grounds, but by a given standard: Is there, or is there

not, any foundation for that activity which calls itself science and art,

to so magnify itself?

When the Egyptian or the Grecian priests produced their mysteries, which

were unintelligible to any one, and stated concerning these mysteries

that all science and all art were contained in them, I could not verify

the reality of their science on the basis of the benefit procured by them

to the people, because science, according to their assertions, was

supernatural. But now we all possess a very simple and clear definition

of the activity of art and science, which excludes every thing

supernatural: science and art promise to carry out the mental activity of

mankind, for the welfare of society, or of all the human race.

The definition of scientific science and art is entirely correct; but,

unfortunately, the activity of the present arts and sciences does not

come under this head. Some of them are directly injurious, others are

useless, others still are worthless,--good only for the wealthy. They do

not fulfil that which, by their own definition, they have undertaken to

accomplish; and hence they have as little right to regard themselves as

men of art and science, as a corrupt priesthood, which does not fulfil

the obligations which it has assumed, has the right to regard itself as

the bearer of divine truth.

And it can be understood why the makers of the present arts and sciences

have not fulfilled, and cannot fulfil, their vocation. They do not

fulfil it, because out of their obligations they have erected a right.

Scientific and artistic activity, in its real sense, is only fruitful

when it knows no rights, but recognizes only obligations. Only because

it is its property to be always thus, does mankind so highly prize this

activity. If men really were called to the service of others through

artistic work, they would see in that work only obligation, and they

would fulfil it with toil, with privations, and with self-abnegation.

The thinker or the artist will never sit calmly on Olympian heights, as

we have become accustomed to represent them to ourselves. The thinker or

the artist should suffer in company with the people, in order that he may

find salvation or consolation. Besides this, he will suffer because he

is always and eternally in turmoil and agitation: he might decide and say

that that which would confer welfare on men, would free them from

suffering, would afford them consolation; but he has not said so, and has

not presented it as he should have done; he has not decided, and he has

not spoken; and to-morrow, possibly, it will be too late,--he will die.

And therefore suffering and self-sacrifice will always be the lot of the

thinker and the artist.

Not of this description will be the thinker and artist who is reared in

an establishment where, apparently, they manufacture the learned man or

the artist (but in point of fact, they manufacture destroyers of science

and of art), who receives a diploma and a certificate, who would be glad

not to think and not to express that which is imposed on his soul, but

who cannot avoid doing that to which two irresistible forces draw him,--an

inward prompting, and the demand of men.

There will be no sleek, plump, self-satisfied thinkers and artists.

Spiritual activity, and its expression, which are actually necessary to

others, are the most burdensome of all man's avocations; a cross, as the

Gospels phrase it. And the sole indubitable sign of the presence of a

vocation is self-devotion, the sacrifice of self for the manifestation of

the power that is imposed upon man for the benefit of others.

It is possible to study out how many beetles there are in the world, to

view the spots on the sun, to write romances and operas, without

suffering; but it is impossible, without self-sacrifice, to instruct

people in their true happiness, which consists solely in renunciation of

self and the service of others, and to give strong expression to this

doctrine, without self-sacrifice.

Christ did not die on the cross in vain; not in vain does the sacrifice

of suffering conquer all things.

But our art and science are provided with certificates and diplomas; and

the only anxiety of all men is, how to still better guarantee them, i.e.,

how to render the service of the people impracticable for them.

True art and true science possess two unmistakable marks: the first, an

inward mark, which is this, that the servitor of art and science will

fulfil his vocation, not for profit but with self-sacrifice; and the

second, an external sign,--his productions will be intelligible to all

the people whose welfare he has in view.

No matter what people have fixed upon as their vocation and their

welfare, science will be the doctrine of this vocation and welfare, and

art will be the expression of that doctrine. That which is called

science and art, among us, is the product of idle minds and feelings,

which have for their object to tickle similar idle minds and feelings.

Our arts and sciences are incomprehensible, and say nothing to the

people, for they have not the welfare of the common people in view.

Ever since the life of men has been known to us, we find, always and

everywhere, the reigning doctrine falsely designating itself as science,

not manifesting itself to the common people, but obscuring for them the

meaning of life. Thus it was among the Greeks the sophists, then among

the Christians the mystics, gnostics, scholastics, among the Hebrews the

Talmudists and Cabalists, and so on everywhere, down to our own times.

How fortunate it is for us that we live in so peculiar an age, when that

mental activity which calls itself science, not only does not err, but

finds itself, as we are assured, in a remarkably flourishing condition!

Does not this peculiar good fortune arise from the fact that man can not

and will not see his own hideousness? Why is there nothing left of those

sciences, and sophists, and Cabalists, and Talmudists, but words, while

we are so exceptionally happy? Surely the signs are identical. There is

the same self-satisfaction and blind confidence that we, precisely we,

and only we, are on the right path, and that the real thing is only

beginning with us. There is the same expectation that we shall discover

something remarkable; and that chief sign which leads us astray convicts

us of our error: all our wisdom remains with us, and the common people do

not understand, and do not accept, and do not need it.

Our position is a very difficult one, but why not look at it squarely?

It is time to recover our senses, and to scrutinize ourselves. Surely we

are nothing else than the scribes and Pharisees, who sit in Moses' seat,

and who have taken the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and will neither go

in ourselves, nor permit others to go in. Surely we, the high priests of

science and art, are ourselves worthless deceivers, possessing much less

right to our position than the most crafty and depraved priests. Surely

we have no justification for our privileged position. The priests had a

right to their position: they declared that they taught the people life

and salvation. But we have taken their place, and we do not instruct the

people in life,--we even admit that such instruction is unnecessary,--but

we educate our children in the same Talmudic-Greek and Latin grammar, in

order that they may be able to pursue the same life of parasites which we

lead ourselves. We say, "There used to be castes, but there are none

among us." But what does it mean, that some people and their children

toil, while other people and their children do not toil?

Bring hither an Indian ignorant of our language, and show him European

life, and our life, for several generations, and he will recognize the

same leading, well-defined castes--of laborers and non-laborers--as there

are in his own country. And as in his land, so in ours, the right of

refusing to labor is conferred by a peculiar consecration, which we call

science and art, or, in general terms, culture. It is this culture, and

all the distortions of sense connected with it, which have brought us to

that marvellous madness, in consequence of which we do not see that which

is so clear and indubitable.

CHAPTER VII.

Then, what is to be done? What are we to do?

This question, which includes within itself both an admission that our

life is evil and wrong, and in connection with this,--as though it were

an exercise for it,--that it is impossible, nevertheless, to change it,

this question I have heard, and I continue to hear, on all sides. I have

described my own sufferings, my own gropings, and my own solution of this

question. I am the same kind of a man as everybody else; and if I am in

any wise distinguished from the average man of our circle, it is chiefly

in this respect, that I, more than the average man, have served and

winked at the false doctrine of our world; I have received more

approbation from men professing the prevailing doctrine: and therefore,

more than others, have I become depraved, and wandered from the path. And

therefore I think that the solution of the problem, which I have found in

my own case, will be applicable to all sincere people who are propounding

the same question to themselves.

First of all, in answer to the question, "What is to be done?" I told

myself: "I must lie neither to other people nor to myself. I must not

fear the truth, whithersoever it may lead me."

We all know what it means to lie to other people, but we are not afraid

to lie to ourselves; yet the very worst downright lie, to other people,

is not to be compared in its consequences with the lie to ourselves, upon

which we base our whole life.

This is the lie of which we must not be guilty if we are to be in a

position to answer the question: "What is to be done?" And, in fact, how

am I to answer the question, "What is to be done?" when every thing that

I do, when my whole life, is founded on a lie, and when I carefully

parade this lie as the truth before others and before myself? Not to

lie, in this sense, means not to fear the truth, not to devise

subterfuges, and not to accept the subterfuges devised by others for the

purpose of hiding from myself the deductions of my reason and my

conscience; not to fear to part company with all those who surround me,

and to remain alone in company with reason and conscience; not to fear

that position to which the truth shall lead me, being firmly convinced

that that position to which truth and conscience shall conduct me,

however singular it may be, cannot be worse than the one which is founded

on a lie. Not to lie, in our position of privileged persons of mental

labor, means, not to be afraid to reckon one's self up wrongly. It is

possible that you are already so deeply indebted that you cannot take

stock of yourself; but to whatever extent this may be the case, however

long may be the account, however far you have strayed from the path, it

is still better than to continue therein. A lie to other people is not

alone unprofitable; every matter is settled more directly and more

speedily by the truth than by a lie. A lie to others only entangles

matters, and delays the settlement; but a lie to one's self, set forth as

the truth, ruins a man's whole life. If a man, having entered on the

wrong path, assumes that it is the true one, then every step that he

takes on that path removes him farther from his goal. If a man who has

long been travelling on this false path divines for himself, or is

informed by some one, that his course is a mistaken one, but grows

alarmed at the idea that he has wandered very far astray and tries to

convince himself that he may, possibly, still strike into the right road,

then he never will get into it. If a man quails before the truth, and,

on perceiving it, does not accept it, but does accept a lie for the

truth, then he never will learn what he ought to do. We, the not only

wealthy, but privileged and so-called cultivated persons, have advanced

so far on the wrong road, that a great deal of determination, or a very

great deal of suffering on the wrong road, is required, in order to bring

us to our senses and to the acknowledgment of the lie in which we are

living. I have perceived the lie of our lives, thanks to the sufferings

which the false path entailed upon me, and, having recognized the

falseness of this path on which I stood, I have had the boldness to go at

first in thought only--whither reason and conscience led me, without

reflecting where they would bring me out. And I have been rewarded for

this boldness.

All the complicated, broken, tangled, and incoherent phenomena of life

surrounding me, have suddenly become clear; and my position in the midst

of these phenomena, which was formerly strange and burdensome, has

become, all at once, natural, and easy to bear.

In this new position, my activity was defined with perfect accuracy; not

at all as it had previously presented itself to me, but as a new and much

more peaceful, loving, and joyous activity. The very thing which had

formerly terrified me, now began to attract me. Hence I think, that the

man who will honestly put to himself the question, "What is to be done?"

and, replying to this query, will not lie to himself, but will go whither

his reason leads, has already solved the problem.

There is only one thing that can hinder him in his search for an

issue,--an erroneously lofty idea of himself and of his position. This

was the case with me; and then another, arising from the first answer to

the question: "What is to be done?" consisted for me in this, that it was

necessary for me to repent, in the full sense of that word,--i.e., to

entirely alter my conception of my position and my activity; to confess

the hurtfulness and emptiness of my activity, instead of its utility and

gravity; to confess my own ignorance instead of culture; to confess my

immorality and harshness in the place of my kindness and morality;

instead of my elevation, to acknowledge my lowliness. I say, that in

addition to not lying to myself, I had to repent, because, although the

one flows from the other, a false conception of my lofty importance had

so grown up with me, that, until I sincerely repented and cut myself free

from that false estimate which I had formed of myself, I did not perceive

the greater part of the lie of which I had been guilty to myself. Only

when I had repented, that is to say, when I had ceased to look upon

myself as a regular man, and had begun to regard myself as a man exactly

like every one else,--only then did my path become clear before me.

Before that time I had not been able to answer the question: "What is to

be done?" because I had stated the question itself wrongly.

As long as I did not repent, I put the question thus: "What sphere of

activity should I choose, I, the man who has received the education and

the talents which have fallen to my shame? How, in this fashion, make

recompense with that education and those talents, for what I have taken,

and for what I still take, from the people?" This question was wrong,

because it contained a false representation, to the effect that I was not

a man just like them, but a peculiar man called to serve the people with

those talents and with that education which I had won by the efforts of

forty years.

I propounded the query to myself; but, in reality, I had answered it in

advance, in that I had in advance defined the sort of activity which was

agreeable to me, and by which I was called upon to serve the people. I

had, in fact, asked myself: "In what manner could I, so very fine a

writer, who had acquired so much learning and talents, make use of them

for the benefit of the people?"

But the question should have been put as it would have stood for a

learned rabbi who had gone through the course of the Talmud, and had

learned by heart the number of letters in all the holy books, and all the

fine points of his art. The question for me, as for the rabbi, should

stand thus: "What am I, who have spent, owing to the misfortune of my

surroundings, the year's best fitted for study in the acquisition of

grammar, geography, judicial science, poetry, novels and romances, the

French language, pianoforte playing, philosophical theories, and military

exercises, instead of inuring myself to labor; what am I, who have passed

the best years of my life in idle occupations which are corrupting to the

soul,--what am I to do in defiance of these unfortunate conditions of the

past, in order that I may requite those people who during the whole time

have fed and clothed, yes, and who even now continue to feed and clothe

me?" Had the question then stood as it stands before me now, after I

have repented,--"What am I, so corrupt a man, to do?" the answer would

have been easy: "To strive, first of all, to support myself honestly;

that is, to learn not to live upon others; and while I am learning, and

when I have learned this, to render aid on all possible occasions to the

people, with my hands, and my feet, and my brain, and my heart, and with

every thing to which the people should present a claim."

And therefore I say, that for the man of our circle, in addition to not

lying to himself or to others, repentance is also necessary, and that he

should scrape from himself that pride which has sprung up in us, in our

culture, in our refinements, in our talents; and that he should confess

that he is not a benefactor of the people and a distinguished man, who

does not refuse to share with the people his useful acquirements, but

that he should confess himself to be a thoroughly guilty, corrupt, and

good-for-nothing man, who desires to reform himself and not to behave

benevolently towards the people, but simply to cease wounding and

insulting them.

I often hear the questions of good young men who sympathize with the

renunciatory part of my writings, and who ask, "Well, and what then shall

I do? What am I to do, now that I have finished my course in the

university, or in some other institution, in order that I may be of use?"

Young men ask this, and in the depths of their soul it is already decided

that the education which they have received constitutes their privilege

and that they desire to serve the people precisely by means of thus

superiority. And hence, one thing which they will in no wise do, is to

bear themselves honestly and critically towards that which they call

their culture, and ask themselves, are those qualities which they call

their culture good or bad? If they will do this, they will infallibly be

led to see the necessity of renouncing their culture, and the necessity

of beginning to learn all over again; and this is the one indispensable

thing. They can in no wise solve the problem, "What to do?" because this

question does not stand before them as it should stand. The question

must stand thus: "In what manner am I, a helpless, useless man, who,

owing to the misfortune of my conditions, have wasted my best years of

study in conning the scientific Talmud which corrupts soul and body, to

correct this mistake, and learn to serve the people?" But it presents

itself to them thus: "How am I, a man who has acquired so much very fine

learning, to turn this very fine learning to the use of the people?" And

such a man will never answer the question, "What is to be done?" until he

repents. And repentance is not terrible, just as truth is not terrible,

and it is equally joyful and fruitful. It is only necessary to accept

the truth wholly, and to repent wholly, in order to understand that no

one possesses any rights, privileges, or peculiarities in the matter of

this life of ours, but that there are no ends or bounds to obligation,

and that a man's first and most indubitable duty is to take part in the

struggle with nature for his own life and for the lives of others.

And this confession of a man's obligation constitutes the gist of the

third answer to the question, "What is to be done?"

I tried not to lie to myself: I tried to cast out from myself the remains

of my false conceptions of the importance of my education and talents,

and to repent; but on the way to a decision of the question, "What to

do?" a fresh difficulty arose. There are so many different occupations,

that an indication was necessary as to the precise one which was to be

adopted. And the answer to this question was furnished me by sincere

repentance for the evil in which I had lived.

"What to do? Precisely what to do?" all ask, and that is what I also

asked so long as, under the influence of my exalted idea of any own

importance, I did not perceive that my first and unquestionable duty was

to feed myself, to clothe myself, to furnish my own fuel, to do my own

building, and, by so doing, to serve others, because, ever since the

would has existed, the first and indubitable duty of every man has

consisted and does consist in this.

In fact, no matter what a man may have assumed to be his

vocation,--whether it be to govern people, to defend his

fellow-countrymen, to divine service, to instruct others, to invent means

to heighten the pleasures of life, to discover the laws of the world, to

incorporate eternal truths in artistic representations,--the duty of a

reasonable man is to take part in the struggle with nature, for the

sustenance of his own life and of that of others. This obligation is the

first of all, because what people need most of all is their life; and

therefore, in order to defend and instruct the people, and render their

lives more agreeable, it is requisite to preserve that life itself, while

my refusal to share in the struggle, my monopoly of the labors of others,

is equivalent to annihilation of the lives of others. And, therefore, it

is not rational to serve the lives of men by annihilating the lives of

men; and it is impossible to say that I am serving men, when, by my life,

I am obviously injuring them.

A man's obligation to struggle with nature for the acquisition of the

means of livelihood will always be the first and most unquestionable of

all obligations, because this obligation is a law of life, departure from

which entails the inevitable punishment of either bodily or mental

annihilation of the life of man. If a man living alone excuses himself

from the obligation of struggling with nature, he is immediately

punished, in that his body perishes. But if a man excuses himself from

this obligation by making other people fulfil it for him, then also he is

immediately punished by the annihilation of his mental life; that is to

say, of the life which possesses rational thought.

In this one act, man receives--if the two things are to be separated--full

satisfaction of the bodily and spiritual demands of his nature. The

feeding, clothing, and taking care of himself and his family, constitute

the satisfaction of the bodily demands and requirements; and doing the

same for other people, constitutes the satisfaction of his spiritual

requirements. Every other employment of man is only legal when it is

directed to the satisfaction of this very first duty of man; for the

fulfilment of this duty constitutes the whole life of man.

I had been so turned about by my previous life, this first and

indubitable law of God or of nature is so concealed in our sphere of

society, that the fulfilment of this law seemed to me strange, terrible,

even shameful; as though the fulfilment of an eternal, unquestionable

law, and not the departure from it, can be terrible, strange, and

shameful.

At first it seemed to me that the fulfilment of this matter required some

preparation, arrangement or community of men, holding similar views,--the

consent of one's family, life in the country; it seemed to me disgraceful

to make a show of myself before people, to undertake a thing so improper

in our conditions of existence, as bodily toil, and I did not know how to

set about it. But it was only necessary for me to understand that this

is no exclusive occupation which requires to be invented and arranged

for, but that this employment was merely a return from the false position

in which I found myself, to a natural one; was only a rectification of

that lie in which I was living. I had only to recognize this fact, and

all these difficulties vanished. It was not in the least necessary to

make preparations and arrangements, and to await the consent of others,

for, no matter in what position I had found myself, there had always been

people who had fed, clothed and warmed me, in addition to themselves; and

everywhere, under all conditions, I could do the same for myself and for

them, if I had the time and the strength. Neither could I experience

false shame in an unwonted occupation, no matter how surprising it might

be to people, because, through not doing it, I had already experienced

not false but real shame.

And when I had reached this confession and the practical deduction from

it, I was fully rewarded for not having quailed before the deductions of

reason, and for following whither they led me. On arriving at this

practical deduction, I was amazed at the ease and simplicity with which

all the problems which had previously seemed to me so difficult and so

complicated, were solved.

To the question, "What is it necessary to do?" the most indubitable

answer presented itself: first of all, that which it was necessary for me

to do was, to attend to my own samovar, my own stove, my own water, my

own clothing; to every thing that I could do for myself. To the

question, "Will it not seem strange to people if you do this?" it

appeared that this strangeness lasted only a week, and after the lapse of

that week, it would have seemed strange had I returned to my former

conditions of life. With regard to the question, "Is it necessary to

organize this physical labor, to institute an association in the country,

on my land?" it appeared that nothing of the sort was necessary; that

labor, if it does not aim at the acquisition of all possible leisure, and

the enjoyment of the labor of others,--like the labor of people bent on

accumulating money,--but if it have for its object the satisfaction of

requirements, will itself be drawn from the city to the country, to the

land, where this labor is the most fruitful and cheerful. But it is not

requisite to institute any association, because the man who labors,

naturally and of himself, attaches himself to the existing association of

laboring men.

To the question, whether this labor would not monopolize all my time, and

deprive me of those intellectual pursuits which I love, to which I am

accustomed, and which, in my moments of self-conceit, I regard as not

useless to others? I received a most unexpected reply. The energy of my

intellectual activity increased, and increased in exact proportion with

bodily application, while freeing itself from every thing superfluous. It

appeared that by dedicating to physical toil eight hours, that half of

the day which I had formerly passed in the oppressive state of a struggle

with _ennui_, eight hours remained to me, of which only five of

intellectual activity, according to my terms, were necessary to me. For

it appeared, that if I, a very voluminous writer, who had done nothing

for nearly forty years except write, and who had written three hundred

printed sheets;--if I had worked during all those forty years at ordinary

labor with the working-people, then, not reckoning winter evenings and

leisure days, if I had read and studied for five hours every day, and had

written a couple of pages only on holidays (and I have been in the habit

of writing at the rate of one printed sheet a day), then I should have

written those three hundred sheets in fourteen years. The fact seemed

startling: yet it is the most simple arithmetical calculation, which can

be made by a seven-year-old boy, but which I had not been able to make up

to this time. There are twenty-four hours in the day; if we take away

eight hours, sixteen remain. If any man engaged in intellectual

occupations devote five hours every day to his occupation, he will

accomplish a fearful amount. And what is to be done with the remaining

eleven hours?

It proved that physical labor not only does not exclude the possibility

of mental activity, but that it improves its quality, and encourages it.

In answer to the question, whether this physical toil does not deprive me

of many innocent pleasures peculiar to man, such as the enjoyment of the

arts, the acquisition of learning, intercourse with people, and the

delights of life in general, it turned out exactly the reverse: the more

intense the labor, the more nearly it approached what is considered the

coarsest agricultural toil, the more enjoyment and knowledge did I gain,

and the more did I come into close and loving communion with men, and the

more happiness did I derive from life.

In answer to the question (which I have so often heard from persons not

thoroughly sincere), as to what result could flow from so insignificant a

drop in the sea of sympathy as my individual physical labor in the sea of

labor ingulfing me, I received also the most satisfactory and unexpected

of answers. It appeared that all I had to do was to make physical labor

the habitual condition of my life, and the majority of my false, but

precious, habits and my demands, when physically idle, fell away from me

at once of their own accord, without the slightest exertion on my part.

Not to mention the habit of turning day into night and _vice versa_, my

habits connected with my bed, with my clothing, with conventional

cleanliness,--which are downright impossible and oppressive with physical

labor,--and my demands as to the quality of my food, were entirely

changed. In place of the dainty, rich, refined, complicated,

highly-spiced food, to which I had formerly inclined, the most simple

viands became needful and most pleasing of all to me,--cabbage-soup,

porridge, black bread, and tea _v prikusku_. {238} So that, not to

mention the influence upon me of the example of the simple

working-people, who are content with little, with whom I came in contact

in the course of my bodily toil, my very requirements underwent a change

in consequence of my toilsome life; so that my drop of physical labor in

the sea of universal labor became larger and larger, in proportion as I

accustomed myself to, and appropriated, the habits of the laboring

classes; in proportion, also, to the success of my labor, my demands for

labor from others grew less and less, and my life naturally, without

exertion or privations, approached that simple existence of which I could

not even dream without fulfilling the law of labor.

It proved that my dearest demands from life, namely, my demands for

vanity, and diversion from _ennui_, arose directly from my idle life.

There was no place for vanity, in connection with physical labor; and no

diversions were needed, since my time was pleasantly occupied, and, after

my fatigue, simple rest at tea over a book, or in conversation with my

fellows, was incomparably more agreeable than theatres, cards, conceits,

or a large company,--all which things are needed in physical idleness,

and which cost a great deal.

In answer to the question, Would not this unaccustomed toil ruin that

health which is indispensable in order to render service to the people

possible? it appeared, in spite of the positive assertions of noted

physicians, that physical exertion, especially at my age, might have the

most injurious consequences (but that Swedish gymnastics, the massage

treatment, and so on, and other expedients intended to take the place of

the natural conditions of man's life, were better), that the more intense

the toil, the stronger, more alert, more cheerful, and more kindly did I

feel. Thus it undoubtedly appeared, that, just as all those cunning

devices of the human mind, newspapers, theatres, concerts, visits, balls,

cards, journals, romances, are nothing else than expedients for

maintaining the spiritual life of man outside his natural conditions of

labor for others,--just so all the hygienic and medical devices of the

human mind for the preparation of food, drink, lodging, ventilation,

heating, clothing, medicine, water, massage, gymnastics, electric, and

other means of healing,--all these clever devices are merely an expedient

to sustain the bodily life of man removed from its natural conditions of

labor. It turned out that all these devices of the human mind for the

agreeable arrangement of the physical existence of idle persons are

precisely analogous to those artful contrivances which people might

invent for the production in vessels hermetically sealed, by means of

mechanical arrangements, of evaporation, and plants, of the air best

fitted for breathing, when all that is needed is to open the window. All

the inventions of medicine and hygiene for persons of our sphere are much

the same as though a mechanic should hit upon the idea of heating a steam-

boiler which was not working, and should shut all the valves so that the

boiler should not burst. Only one thing is needed, instead of all these

extremely complicated devices for pleasure, for comfort, and for medical

and hygienic preparations, intended to save people from their spiritual

and bodily ailments, which swallow up so much labor,--to fulfil the law

of life; to do that which is proper not only to man, but to the animal;

to fire off the charge of energy taken win in the shape of food, by

muscular exertion; to speak in plain language, to earn one's bread. Those

who do not work should not eat, or they should earn as much as they have

eaten.

And when I clearly comprehended all this, it struck me as ridiculous.

Through a whole series of doubts and searchings, I had arrived, by a long

course of thought, at this remarkable truth: if a man has eyes, it is

that he may see with them; if he has ears, that he may hear; and feet,

that he may walk; and hands and back, that he may labor; and that if a

man will not employ those members for that purpose for which they are

intended, it will be the worse for him.

I came to this conclusion, that, with us privileged people, the same

thing has happened which happened with the horses of a friend of mine.

His steward, who was not a lover of horses, nor well versed in them, on

receiving his master's orders to place the best horses in the stable,

selected them from the stud, placed them in stalls, and fed and watered

them; but fearing for the valuable steeds, he could not bring himself to

trust them to any one, and he neither rode nor drove them, nor did he

even take them out. The horses stood there until they were good for

nothing. The same thing has happened with us, but with this difference:

that it was impossible to deceive the horses in any way, and they were

kept in bonds to prevent their getting out; but we are kept in an

unnatural position that is equally injurious to us, by deceits which have

entangled us, and which hold us like chains.

We have arranged for ourselves a life that is repugnant both to the moral

and the physical nature of man, and all the powers of our intelligence we

concentrate upon assuring man that this is the most natural life

possible. Every thing which we call culture,--our sciences, art, and the

perfection of the pleasant thing's of life,--all these are attempts to

deceive the moral requirements of man; every thing that is called hygiene

and medicine, is an attempt to deceive the natural physical demands of

human nature. But these deceits have their bounds, and we advance to

them. "If such be the real human life, then it is better not to live at

all," says the reigning and extremely fashionable philosophy of

Schopenhauer and Hartmann. If such is life, 'tis better for the coming

generation not to live," say corrupt medical science and its newly

devised means to that end.

In the Bible, it is laid down as the law of man: "In the sweat of thy

face shalt thou eat bread, and in sorrow thou shalt bring forth

children;" but "_nous avons change tout ca_," as Moliere's character

says, when expressing himself with regard to medicine, and asserting that

the liver was on the left side. We have changed all that. Men need not

work in order to eat, and women need not bear children.

A ragged peasant roams the Krapivensky district. During the war he was

an agent for the purchase of grain, under an official of the commissary

department. On being brought in contact with the official, and seeing

his luxurious life, the peasant lost his mind, and thought that he might

get along without work, like gentlemen, and receive proper support from

the Emperor. This peasant now calls himself "the Most Serene Warrior,

Prince Blokhin, purveyor of war supplies of all descriptions." He says

of himself that he has "passed through all the ranks," and that when he

shall have served out his term in the army, he is to receive from the

Emperor an unlimited bank account, clothes, uniforms, horses, equipages,

tea, pease and servants, and all sorts of luxuries. This man is

ridiculous in the eyes of many, but to me the significance of his madness

is terrible. To the question, whether he does not wish to work, he

always replies proudly: "I am much obliged. The peasants will attend to

all that." When you tell him that the peasants do not wish to work,

either, he answers: "It is not difficult for the peasant."

He generally talks in a high-flown style, and is fond of verbal

substantives. "Now there is an invention of machinery for the

alleviation of the peasants," he says; "there is no difficulty for them

in that." When he is asked what he lives for, he replies, "To pass the

time." I always look on this man as on a mirror. I behold in him myself

and all my class. To pass through all the ranks (_tchini_) in order to

live for the purpose of passing the time, and to receive an unlimited

bank account, while the peasants, for whom this is not difficult, because

of the invention of machinery, do the whole business,--this is the

complete formula of the idiotic creed of the people of our sphere in

society.

When we inquire precisely what we are to do, surely, we ask nothing, but

merely assert--only not in such good faith as the Most Serene Prince

Blokhin, who has been promoted through all ranks, and lost his mind--that

we do not wish to do any thing.

He who will reflect for a moment cannot ask thus, because, on the one

hand, every thing that he uses has been made, and is made, by the hands

of men; and, on the other side, as soon as a healthy man has awakened and

eaten, the necessity of working with feet and hands and brain makes

itself felt. In order to find work and to work, he need only not hold

back: only a person who thinks work disgraceful--like the lady who

requests her guest not to take the trouble to open the door, but to wait

until she can call a man for this purpose--can put to himself the

question, what he is to do.

The point does not lie in inventing work,--you can never get through all

the work that is to be done for yourself and for others,--but the point

lies in weaning one's self from that criminal view of life in accordance

with which I eat and sleep for my own pleasure; and in appropriating to

myself that just and simple view with which the laboring man grows up and

lives,--that man is, first of all, a machine, which loads itself with

food in order to sustain itself, and that it is therefore disgraceful,

wrong, and impossible to eat and not to work; that to eat and not to work

is the most impious, unnatural, and, therefore, dangerous position, in

the nature of the sin of Sodom. Only let this acknowledgement be made,

and there will be work; and work will always be joyous and satisfying to

both spiritual and bodily requirements.

The matter presented itself to me thus: The day is divided for every man,

by food itself, into four parts, or four stints, as the peasants call it:

(1) before breakfast; (2) from breakfast until dinner; (3) from dinner

until four o'clock; (4) from four o'clock until evening.

A man's employment, whatever it may be that he feels a need for in his

own person, is also divided into four categories: (1) the muscular

employment of power, labor of the hands, feet, shoulders, back,--hard

labor, from which you sweat; (2) the employment of the fingers and

wrists, the employment of artisan skill; (3) the employment of the mind

and imagination; (4) the employment of intercourse with others.

The benefits which man enjoys are also divided into four categories.

Every man enjoys, in the first place, the product of hard labor,--grain,

cattle, buildings, wells, ponds, and so forth; in the second place, the

results of artisan toil,--clothes, boots, utensils, and so forth; in the

third place, the products of mental activity,--science, art; and, in the

forth place, established intercourse between people.

And it struck me, that the best thing of all would be to arrange the

occupations of the day in such a manner as to exercise all four of man's

capacities, and myself produce all these four sorts of benefits which men

make use of, so that one portion of the day, the first, should be

dedicated to hard labor; the second, to intellectual labor; the third, to

artisan labor; and the forth, to intercourse with people. It struck me,

that only then would that false division of labor, which exists in our

society, be abrogated, and that just division of labor established, which

does not destroy man's happiness.

I, for example, have busied myself all my life with intellectual labor. I

said to myself, that I had so divided labor, that writing, that is to

say, intellectual labor, is my special employment, and the other matters

which were necessary to me I had left free (or relegated, rather) to

others. But this, which would appear to have been the most advantageous

arrangement for intellectual toil, was precisely the most disadvantageous

to mental labor, not to mention its injustice.

All my life long, I have regulated my whole life, food, sleep, diversion,

in view of these hours of special labor, and I have done nothing except

this work. The result of this has been, in the first place, that I have

contracted my sphere of observations and knowledge, and have frequently

had no means for the study even of problems which often presented

themselves in describing the life of the people (for the life of the

common people is the every-day problem of intellectual activity). I was

conscious of my ignorance, and was obliged to obtain instruction, to ask

about things which are known by every man not engaged in special labor.

In the second place, the result was, that I had been in the habit of

sitting down to write when I had no inward impulse to write, and when no

one demanded from me writing, as writing, that is to say, my thoughts,

but when my name was merely wanted for journalistic speculation. I tried

to squeeze out of myself what I could. Sometimes I could extract

nothing; sometimes it was very wretched stuff, and I was dissatisfied and

grieved. But now that I have learned the indispensability of physical

labor, both hard and artisan labor, the result is entirely different. My

time has been occupied, however modestly, at least usefully and

cheerfully, and in a manner instructive to me. And therefore I have torn

myself from that indubitably useful and cheerful occupation for my

special duties only when I felt an inward impulse, and when I saw a

demand made upon me directly for my literary work.

And these demands called into play only good nature, and therefore the

usefulness and the joy of my special labor. Thus it turned out, that

employment in those physical labors which are indispensable to me, as

they are to every man, not only did not interfere with my special

activity, but was an indispensable condition of the usefulness, worth,

and cheerfulness of that activity.

The bird is so constructed, that it is indispensable that it should fly,

walk, peek, combine; and when it does all this, it is satisfied and

happy,--then it is a bird. Just so man, when he walks, turns, raises,

drags, works with his fingers, with his eyes, with his ears, with his

tongue, with his brain,--only then is he satisfied, only then is he a

man.

A man who acknowledges his appointment to labor will naturally strive

towards that rotation of labor which is peculiar to him, for the

satisfaction of his inward requirements; and he can alter this labor in

no other way than when he feels within himself an irresistible summons to

some exclusive form of labor, and when the demands of other men for that

labor are expressed.

The character of labor is such, that the satisfaction of all a man's

requirements demands that same succession of the sorts of work which

renders work not a burden but a joy. Only a false creed, [Greek text

which cannot be reproduced], to the effect that labor is a curse, could

have led men to rid themselves of certain kinds of work; i.e., to the

appropriation of the work of others, demanding the forced occupation with

special labor of other people, which they call division of labor.

We have only grown used to our false comprehension of the regulation of

labor, because it seems to us that the shoemaker, the machinist, the

writer, or the musician will be better off if he gets rid of the labor

peculiar to man. Where there is no force exercised over the labor of

others, or any false belief in the joy of idleness, not a single man will

get rid of physical labor, necessary for the satisfaction of his

requirements, for the sake of special work; because special work is not a

privilege, but a sacrifice which man offers to inward pressure and to his

brethren.

The shoemaker in the country, who abandons his wonted labor in the field,

which is so grateful to him, and betakes himself to his trade, in order

to repair or make boots for his neighbors, always deprives himself of the

pleasant toil of the field, simply because he likes to make boots,

because he knows that no one else can do it so well as he, and that

people will be grateful to him for it; but the desire cannot occur to

him, to deprive himself, for the whole period of his life, of the

cheering rotation of labor.

It is the same with the _starosta_ [village elder], the machinist, the

writer, the learned man. To us, with our corrupt conception of things,

it seems, that if a steward has been relegated to the position of a

peasant by his master, or if a minister has been sent to the colonies, he

has been chastised, he has been ill-treated. But in reality a benefit

has been conferred on him; that is to say, his special, hard labor has

been changed into a cheerful rotation of labor. In a naturally

constituted society, this is quite otherwise. I know of one community

where the people supported themselves. One of the members of this

society was better educated than the rest; and they called upon him to

read, so that he was obliged to prepare himself during the day, in order

that he might read in the evening. This he did gladly, feeling that he

was useful to others, and that he was performing a good deed. But he

grew weary of exclusively intellectual work, and his health suffered from

it. The members of the community took pity on him, and requested him to

go to work in the fields.

For men who regard labor as the substance and the joy of life, the basis,

the foundation of life will always be the struggle with nature,--labor

both agricultural and mechanical, and intellectual, and the establishment

of communion between men. Departure from one or from many of these

varieties of labor, and the adoption of special labor, will then only

occur when the man possessed of a special branch, and loving this work,

and knowing that he can perform it better than others, sacrifices his own

profit for the satisfaction of the direct demands made upon him. Only on

condition of such a view of labor, and of the natural division of labor

arising from it, is that curse which is laid upon our idea of labor

abrogated, and does every sort of work becomes always a joy; because a

man will either perform that labor which is undoubtedly useful and

joyous, and not dull, or he will possess the consciousness of

self-abnegation in the fulfilment of more difficult and restricted toil,

which he exercises for the good of others.

But the division of labor is more profitable. More profitable for whom?

It is more profitable in making the greatest possible quantity of calico,

and boots in the shortest possible time. But who will make these boots

and this calico? There are people who, for whole generations, make only

the heads of pins. Then how can this be more profitable for men? If the

point lies in manufacturing as much calico and as many pins as possible,

then this is so. But the point concerns men and their welfare. And the

welfare of men lies in life. And life is work. How, then, can the

necessity for burdensome, oppressive toil be more profitable for people?

For all men, that one thing is more profitable which I desire for

myself,--the utmost well-being, and the gratification of all those

requirements, both bodily and spiritual, of the conscience and of the

reason, which are imposed upon me. And in my own case I have found, that

for my own welfare, and for the satisfaction of these needs of mine, all

that I require is to cure myself of that folly in which I had been

living, in company with the Krapivensky madman, and which consisted in

presupposing that some people need not work, and that certain other

people should direct all this, and that I should therefore do only that

which is natural to man, i.e., labor for the satisfaction of their

requirements; and, having discovered this, I convinced myself that labor

for the satisfaction of one's own needs falls of itself into various

kinds of labor, each one of which possesses its own charm, and which not

only do not constitute a burden, but which serve as a respite to one

another. I have made a rough division of this labor (not insisting on

the justice of this arrangement), in accordance with my own needs in

life, into four parts, corresponding to the four stints of labor of which

the day is composed; and I seek in this manner to satisfy my

requirements.

These, then, are the answers which I have found for myself to the

question, "What is to be done?"

_First_, Not to lie to myself, however far removed my path in life may be

from the true path which my reason discloses to me.

_Second_, To renounce my consciousness of my own righteousness, my

superiority especially over other people; and to acknowledge my guilt.

_Third_, To comply with that eternal and indubitable law of humanity,--the

labor of my whole being, feeling no shame at any sort of work; to contend

with nature for the maintenance of my own life and the lives of others.

ON LABOR AND LUXURY.

I concluded, after having said every thing that concerned myself; but I

cannot refrain, from a desire to say something more which concerns

everybody, from verifying the deductions which I have drawn, by

comparisons. I wish to say why it seems to me that a very large number

of our social class ought to come to the same thing to which I have come;

and also to state what will be the result if a number of people should

come to the same conclusion.

I think that many will come to the point which I have attained: because

if the people of our sphere, of our caste, will only take a serious look

at themselves, then young persons, who are in search of personnel

happiness, will stand aghast at the ever-increasing wretchedness of their

life, which is plainly leading them to destruction; conscientious people

will be shocked at the cruelty and the illegality of their life; and

timid people will be terrified by the danger of their mode of life.

_The Wretchedness of our Life_:--However much we rich people may reform,

however much we may bolster up this delusive life of ours with the aid of

our science and art, this life will become, with every year, both weaker

and more diseased; with every year the number of suicides, and the

refusals to bear children, will increase; with every year we shall feel

the growing sadness of our life; with every generation, the new

generations of people of this sphere of society will become more puny.

It is obvious that in this path of the augmentation of the comforts and

the pleasures of life, in the path of every sort of cure, and of

artificial preparations for the improvements of the sight, the hearing,

the appetite, false teeth, false hair, respiration, massage, and so on,

there can be no salvation. That people who do not make use of these

perfected preparations are stronger and healthier, has become such a

truism, that advertisements are printed in the newspapers of

stomach-powders for the wealthy, under the heading, "Blessings for the

poor," {252} in which it is stated that only the poor are possessed of

proper digestive powers, and that the rich require assistance, and, among

other various sorts of assistance, these powders. It is impossible to

set the matter right by any diversions, comforts, and powders, whatever;

only a change of life can rectify it.

_The Inconsistency of our Life with our Conscience_:--however we may seek

to justify our betrayal of humanity to ourselves, all our justifications

will crumble into dust in the presence of the evidence. All around us,

people are dying of excessive labor and of privation; we ruin the labor

of others, the food and clothing which are indispensable to them, merely

with the object of procuring diversion and variety for our wearisome

lives. And, therefore, the conscience of a man of our circle, if even a

spark of it be left in him, cannot be lulled to sleep, and it poisons all

these comforts and those pleasures of life which our brethren, suffering

and perishing in their toil, procure for us. But not only does every

conscientious man feel this himself,--he would be glad to forget it, but

this he cannot do.

The new, ephemeral justifications of science for science, of art for art,

do not exclude the light of a simple, healthy judgment. The conscience

of man cannot be quieted by fresh devices; and it can only be calmed by a

change of life, for which and in which no justification will be required.

Two causes prove to the people of the wealthy classes the necessity for a

change of life: the requirements of their individual welfare, and of the

welfare of those most nearly connected with them, which cannot be

satisfied in the path in which they now stand; and the necessity of

satisfying the voice of conscience, the impossibility of accomplishing

which is obvious in their present course. These causes, taken together,

should lead people of the wealthy classes to alter their mode of life, to

such a change as shall satisfy their well-being and their conscience.

And there is only one such change possible: they must cease to deceive,

they must repent, they must acknowledge that labor is not a curse, but

the glad business of life. "But what will be the result if I do toil for

ten, or eight, or five hours at physical work, which thousands of

peasants will gladly perform for the money which I possess?" people say

to this.

The first, simplest, and indubitable result will be, that you will become

a more cheerful, a healthier, a more alert, and a better man, and that

you will learn to know the real life, from which you have hidden

yourself, or which has been hidden from you.

The second result will be, that, if you possess a conscience, it will not

only cease to suffer as it now suffers when it gazes upon the toil of

others, the significance of which we, through ignorance, either always

exaggerate or depreciate, but you will constantly experience a glad

consciousness that, with every day, you are doing more and more to

satisfy the demands of your conscience, and you will escape from that

fearful position of such an accumulation of evil heaped upon your life

that there exists no possibility of doing good to people; you will

experience the joy of living in freedom, with the possibility of good;

you will break a window,--an opening into the domain of the moral world

which has been closed to you.

"But this is absurd," people usually say to you, for people of our

sphere, with profound problems standing before us,--problems

philosophical, scientific, artistic, ecclesiastical and social. It would

be absurd for us ministers, senators, academicians professors, artists, a

quarter of an hour of whose time is so prized by people, to waste our

time on any thing of that sort, would it not?--on the cleaning of our

boots, the washing of our shirts, in hoeing, in planting potatoes, or in

feeding our chickens and our cows, and so on; in those things which are

gladly done for us, not only by our porter or our cook, but by thousands

of people who value our time?

But why should we dress ourselves, wash and comb our hair? why should we

hand chairs to ladies, to guests? why should we open and shut doors, hand

ladies, into carriages, and do a hundred other things which serfs

formerly did for us? Because we think that it is necessary so to do;

that human dignity demands it; that it is the duty, the obligation, of

man.

And the same is the case with physical labor. The dignity of man, his

sacred duty and obligation, consists in using the hands and feet which

have been given to him, for that for which they were given to him, and

that which consumes food on the labor which produces that food; and that

they should be used, not on that which shall cause them to pine away, not

as objects to wash and clean, and merely for the purpose of stuffing into

one's mouth food, drink, and cigarettes. This is the significance that

physical labor possesses for man in every community; but in our

community, where the avoidance of this law of labor has occasioned the

unhappiness of a whole class of people, employment in physical labor

acquires still another significance,--the significance of a sermon, and

of an occupation which removes a terrible misfortune that is threatening

mankind.

To say that physical labor is an insignificant occupation for a man of

education, is equivalent to saying, in connection with the erection of a

temple: "What does it matter whether one stone is laid accurately in its

place?" Surely, it is precisely under conditions of modesty, simplicity,

and imperceptibleness, that every magnificent thing is accomplished; it

is impossible to plough, to build, to pasture cattle, or even to think,

amid glare, thunder, and illumination. Grand and genuine deeds are

always simple and modest. And such is the grandest of all deeds which we

have to deal with,--the reconciliation of those fearful contradictions

amid which we are living. And the deeds which will reconcile these

contradictions are those modest, imperceptible, apparently ridiculous

ones, the serving one's self, physical labor for one's self, and, if

possible, for others also, which we rich people must do, if we understand

the wretchedness, the unscrupulousness, and the danger of the position

into which we have drifted.

What will be the result if I, or some other man, or a handful of men, do

not despise physical labor, but regard it as indispensable to our

happiness and to the appeasement of our conscience? This will be the

result, that there will be one man, two men, or a handful of men, who,

coming into conflict with no one, without governmental or revolutionary

violence, will decide for ourselves the terrible question which stands

before all the world, and which sets people at variance, and that we

shall settle it in such wise that life will be better to them, that their

conscience will be more at peace, and that they will have nothing to

fear; the result will be, that other people will see that the happiness

which they are seeking everywhere, lies there around them; that the

apparently unreconcilable contradictions of conscience and of the

constitution of this world will be reconciled in the easiest and most

joyful manner; and that, instead of fearing the people who surround us,

it will become necessary for us to draw near to them and to love them.

The apparently insoluble economical and social problem is merely the

problem of Kriloff's casket. {256} The casket will simply open. And it

will not open, so long as people do not do simply that first and simple

thing--open it.

A man sets up what he imagines to be his own peculiar library, his own

private picture-gallery, his own apartments and clothing, he accumulates

his own money in order therewith to purchase every thing that he needs;

and the end of it all is, that engaged with this fancied property of his,

as though it were real, he utterly loses his sense of that which actually

constitutes his property, on which he can really labor, which can really

serve him, and which will always remain in his power, and of that which

is not and cannot be his own property, whatever he may call it, and which

cannot serve as the object of his occupation.

Words always possess a clear significance until we deliberately attribute

to them a false sense.

What does property signify?

Property signifies that which has been given to me, which belongs to me

exclusively; that with which I can always do any thing I like; that which

no one can take away from me; that which will remain mine to the end of

my life, and precisely that which I am bound to use, increase, and

improve. Now, there exists but one such piece of property for any

man,--himself.

Hence it results that half a score of men may till the soil, hew wood,

and make shoes, not from necessity, but in consequence of an

acknowledgment of the fact that man should work, and that the more he

works the better it will be for him. It results, that half a score of

men,--or even one man, may demonstrate to people, both by his confession

and by his actions, that the terrible evil from which they are suffering

is not a law of fate, the will of God, or any historical necessity; but

that it is merely a superstition, which is not in the least powerful or

terrible, but weak and insignificant, in which we must simply cease to

believe, as in idols, in order to rid ourselves of it, and in order to

rend it like a paltry spider's web. Men who will labor to fulfil the

glad law of their existence, that is to say, those who work in order to

fulfil the law of toil, will rid themselves of that frightful

superstition of property for themselves.

If the life of a man is filled with toil, and if he knows the delights of

rest, he requires no chambers, furniture, and rich and varied clothing;

he requires less costly food; he needs no means of locomotion, or of

diversion. But the principal thing is, that the man who regards labor as

the business and the joy of his life will not seek that relief from his

labor which the labors of others might afford him. The man who regards

life as a matter of labor will propose to himself as his object, in

proportion as he acquires understanding, skill, and endurance, greater

and greater toil, which shall constantly fill his life to a greater and

greater degree. For such a man, who sees the meaning of his life in work

itself, and not in its results, for the acquisition of property, there

can be no question as to the implements of labor. Although such a man

will always select the most suitable implements, that man will receive

the same satisfaction from work and rest, when he employs the most

unsuitable implements. If there be a steam-plough, he will use it; if

there is none, he will till the soil with a horse-plough, and, if there

is none, with a primitive curved bit of wood shod with iron, or he will

use a rake; and, under all conditions, he will equally attain his object.

He will pass his life in work that is useful to men, and he will

therefore win complete satisfaction.

And the position of such a man, both in his external and internal

conditions, will be more happy than that of the man who devotes his life

to the acquisition of property. Such a man will never suffer need in his

outward circumstances, because people, perceiving his desire to work,

will always try to provide him with the most productive work, as they

proportion a mill to the water-power. And they will render his material

existence free from care, which they will not do for people who are

striving to acquire property. And freedom from anxiety in his material

conditions is all that a man needs. Such a man will always be happier in

his internal conditions, than the one who seeks wealth, because the first

will never gain that which he is striving for, while the latter always

will, in proportion to his powers. The feeble, the aged, the dying,

according to the proverb, "With the written absolution in his hands,"

will receive full satisfaction, and the love and sympathy of men.

What, then, will be the outcome of a few eccentric individuals, or

madmen, tilling the soil, making shoes, and so on, instead of smoking

cigarettes, playing whist, and roaming about everywhere to relieve their

tedium, during the space of the ten leisure hours a day which every

intellectual worker enjoys? This will be the outcome: that these madmen

will show in action, that that imaginary property for which men suffer,

and for which they torment themselves and others, is not necessary for

happiness; that it is oppressive, and that it is mere superstition; that

property, true property, consists only in one's own head and hands; and

that, in order to actually exploit this real property with profit and

pleasure, it is necessary to reject the false conception of property

outside one's own body, upon which we expend the best efforts of our

lives. The outcome us, that these men will show, that only when a man

ceases to believe in imaginary property, only when he brings into play

his real property, his capacities, his body, so that they will yield him

fruit a hundred-fold, and happiness of which we have no idea,--only then

will he be so strong, useful, and good a man, that, wherever you may

fling him, he will always land on his feet; that he will everywhere and

always be a brother to everybody; that he will be intelligible to

everybody, and necessary, and good. And men looking on one, on ten such

madmen, will understand what they must all do in order to loose that

terrible knot in which the superstition regarding property has entangled

them, in order to free themselves from the unfortunate position in which

they are all now groaning with one voice, not knowing whence to find an

issue from it.

But what can one man do amid a throng which does not agree with him?

There is no argument which could more clearly demonstrate the terror of

those who make use of it than this. The _burlaki_ {260} drag their bark

against the current. There cannot be found a _burlak_ so stupid that he

will refuse to pull away at his towing-rope because he alone is not able

to drag the bark against the current. He who, in addition to his rights

to an animal life, to eat and sleep, recognizes any sort of human

obligation, knows very well in what that human obligation lies, just as

the boatman knows it when the tow-rope is attached to him. The boatman

knows very well that all he has to do is to pull at the rope, and proceed

in the given direction. He will seek what he is to do, and how he is to

do it, only when the tow-rope is removed from him. And as it is with

these boatmen and with all people who perform ordinary work, so it is

with the affairs of all humanity. All that each man needs is not to

remove the tow-rope, but to pull away on it in the direction which his

master orders. And, for this purpose, one sort of reason is bestowed on

all men, in order that the direction may be always the same. And this

direction has obviously been so plainly indicated, that both in the life

of all the people about us, and in the conscience of each individual man,

only he who does not wish to work can say that he does not see it. Then,

what is the outcome of this?

This: that one, perhaps two men, will pull; a third will look on, and

will join them; and in this manner the best people will unite until the

affair begins to start, and make progress, as though itself inspiring and

bidding thereto even those who do not understand what is being done, and

why it is being done. First, to the contingent of men who are

consciously laboring in order to comply with the law of God, there will

be added the people who only half understand and who only half confess

the faith; then a still greater number of people who admit the same

doctrine will join them, merely on the faith of the originators; and

finally the majority of mankind will recognize this, and then it will

come to pass, that men will cease to ruin themselves, and will find

happiness.

This will happen,--and it will be very speedily,--when people of our set,

and after them a vast majority, shall cease to think it disgraceful to

pay visits in untanned boots, and not disgraceful to walk in overshoes

past people who have no shoes at all; that it is disgraceful not to

understand French, and not disgraceful to eat bread and not to know how

to set it; that it is disgraceful not to have a starched shirt and clean

clothes, and not disgraceful to go about in clean garments thereby

showing one's idleness; that it is disgraceful to have dirty hands, and

not disgraceful not to have hands with callouses.

All this will come to pass when the sense of the community shall demand

it. But the sense of the community will demand this when those delusions

in the imagination of men, which have concealed the truth from them,

shall have been abolished. Within my own recollection, great changes

have taken place in this respect. And these changes have taken place

only because the general opinion has undergone an alteration. Within my

memory, it has come to pass, that whereas it used to be disgraceful for

wealthy people not to drive out with four horses and two footmen, and not

to keep a valet or a maid to dress them, wash them, put on their shoes,

and so forth; it has now suddenly become discreditable for one not to put

on one's own clothes and shoes for one's self, and to drive with footmen.

Public opinion has effected all these changes. Are not the changes which

public opinion is now preparing clear?

All that was necessary five and twenty years ago was to abolish the

delusion which justified the right of serfdom, and public opinion as to

what was praiseworthy and what was discreditable changed, and life

changed also. All that is now requisite is to annihilate the delusion

which justifies the power of money over men, and public opinion will

undergo a change as to what is creditable and what is disgraceful, and

life will be changed also; and the annihilation of the delusion, of the

justification of the moneyed power, and the change in public opinion in

this respect, will be promptly accomplished. This delusion is already

flickering, and the truth will very shortly be disclosed. All that is

required is to gaze steadfastly, in order to perceive clearly that change

in public opinion which has already taken place, and which is simply not

recognized, not fitted with a word. The educated man of our day has but

to reflect ever so little on what will be the outcome of those views of

the world which he professes, in order to convince himself that the

estimate of good and bad, by which, by virtue of his inertia, he is

guided in life, directly contradict his views of the world.

All that the man of our century has to do is to break away for a moment

from the life which runs on by force of inertia, to survey it from the

one side, and subject it to that same standard which arises from his

whole view of the world, in order to be horrified at the definition of

his whole life, which follows from his views of the world. Let us take,

for instance, a young man (the energy of life is greater in the young,

and self-consciousness is more obscured). Let us take, for instance, a

young man belonging to the wealthy classes, whatever his tendencies may

chance to be.

Every good young man considers it disgraceful not to help an old man, a

child, or a woman; he thinks, in a general way, that it is a shame to

subject the life or health of another person to danger, or to shun it

himself. Every one considers that shameful and brutal which Schuyler

relates of the Kirghiz in times of tempest,--to send out the women and

the aged females to hold fast the corners of the _kibitka_ [tent] during

the storm, while they themselves continue to sit within the tent, over

their _kumis_ [fermented mare's-milk]. Every one thinks it shameful to

make a week man work for one; that it is still more disgraceful in time

of danger--on a burning ship, for example,--being strong, to be the first

to seat one's self in the lifeboat,--to thrust aside the weak and leave

them in danger, and so on.

All men regard this as disgraceful, and would not do it upon any account,

in certain exceptional circumstances; but in every-day life, the very

same actions, and others still worse, are concealed from them by

delusions, and they perpetrate them incessantly. The establishment of

this new view of life is the business of public opinion. Public opinion,

supporting such a view, will speedily be formed.

Women form public opinion, and women are especially powerful in our day.

TO WOMEN.

As stated in the Bible, a law was given to the man and the woman,--to the

man, the law of labor; to the woman, the law of bearing children.

Although we, with our science, _avons change tout ca_, the law for the

man, as for woman, remains as unalterable as the liver in its place, and

departure from it is equally punished with inevitable death. The only

difference lies in this, that departure from the law, in the case of the

man, is punished so immediately in the future, that it may be designated

as present punishment; but departure from the law, in the case of the

woman, receives its chastisement in a more distant future.

The general departure of all men from the law exterminates people

immediately; the departure from it of all women annihilates it in the

succeeding generation. But the evasion by some men and some women does

not exterminate the human race, and only deprives those who evade it of

the rational nature of man. The departure of men from this law began long

ago, among those classes who were in a position to subject others, and,

constantly spreading, it has continued down to our own times; and in our

own day it has reached folly, the ideal consisting in evasion of the

law,--the ideal expressed by Prince Blokhin, and shared in by Renan and

by the whole cultivated world: "Machines will work, and people will be

bundles of nerves devoted to enjoyment."

There was hardly any departure from the law in the part of women, it was

expressed only in prostitution, and in the refusal to bear children--in

private cases. The women belonging to the wealthy classes fulfilled

their law, while the men did not comply with theirs; and therefore the

women became stronger, and continued to rule, and must rule, over men who

have evaded the law, and who have, therefore, lost their senses. It is

generally stated that woman (the woman of Paris in particular is

childless) has become so bewitching, through making use of all the means

of civilization, that she has gained the upper hand over man by this

fascination of hers. This is not only unjust, but precisely the reverse

of the truth. It is not the childless woman who has conquered man, but

the mother, that woman who has fulfilled her law, while the man has not

fulfilled his. That woman who deliberately remains childless, and who

entrances man with her shoulders and her locks, is not the woman who

rules over men, but the one who has been corrupted by man, who has

descended to his level,--to the level of the vicious man,--who has evaded

the law equally with himself, and who has lost, in company with him,

every rational idea of life.

From this error springs that remarkable piece of stupidity which is

called the rights of women. The formula of these rights of women is as

follows: "Here! you man," says the woman, "you have departed from your

law of real labor, and you want us to bear the burden of our real labor.

No, if this is to be so, we understand, as well as you do, how to perform

those semblances of labor which you exercise in banks, ministries,

universities, and academies; we desire, like yourselves, under the

pretext of the division of labor, to make use of the labor of others, and

to live for the gratification of our caprices alone." They say this, and

prove by their action that they understand no worse, if not better, than

men, how to exercise this semblance of labor.

This so-called woman question has come up, and could only come up, among

men who have departed from the law of actual labor. All that is required

is, to return to that, and this question cannot exist. Woman, having her

own inevitable task, will never demand the right to share the toil of men

in the mines and in the fields. She could only demand to share in the

fictitious labors of the men of the wealthy classes.

The woman of our circle has been, and still is, stronger than the man,

not by virtue of her fascinations, not through her cleverness in

performing the same pharisaical semblance of work as man, but because she

has not stepped out from under the law that she should undergo that real

labor, with danger to her life, with exertion to the last degree, from

which the man of the wealthy classes has excused herself.

But, within my memory, a departure from this law on the part of woman,

that is to say, her fall, has begun; and, within my memory, it has become

more and more the case. Woman, having lost the law, has acquired the

belief that her strength lies in the witchery of her charms, or in her

skill in pharisaical pretences at intellectual work. And both things are

bad for the children. And, within my memory, women of the wealthy

classes have come to refuse to bear children. And so mothers who hold

the power in their hands let it escape them, in order to make way for the

dissolute women, and to put themselves on a level with them. The evil is

already wide-spread, and is extending farther and farther every day; and

soon it will lay hold on all the women of the wealthy classes, and then

they will compare themselves with men: and in company with them, they

will lose the rational meaning of life. But there is still time.

If women would but comprehend their destiny, their power, and use it for

the salvation of their husbands, brothers, and children,--for the

salvation of all men!

Women of the wealthy classes who are mothers, the salvation of the men of

our world from the evils from which they are suffering, lies in your

hands.

Not those women who are occupied with their dainty figures, with their

bustles, their hair-dressing, and their attraction for men, and who bear

children against their will, with despair, and hand them over to nurses;

nor those who attend various courses of lectures, and discourse of

psychometric centres and differentiation, and who also endeavor to escape

bearing children, in order that it may not interfere with their folly

which they call culture: but those women and mothers, who, possessing the

power to refuse to bear children, consciously and in a straightforward

way submit to this eternal, unchangeable law, knowing that the burden and

the difficulty of such submission is their appointed lot in life,--these

are the women and mothers of our wealthy classes, in whose hands, more

than in those of any one else, lies the salvation of the men of our

sphere in society from the miseries that oppress them.

Ye women and mothers who deliberately submit yourselves to the law of

God, you alone in our wretched, deformed circle, which has lost the

semblance of humanity, you alone know the whole of the real meaning of

life, according to the law of God; and you alone, by your example, can

demonstrate to people that happiness in life, in submission to the will

of God, of which they are depriving themselves. You alone know those

raptures and those joys which invade the whole being, that bliss which is

appointed for the man who does not depart from the law of God. You know

the happiness of love for your husbands,--a happiness which does not come

to an end, which does not break off short, like all other forms of

happiness, and which constitutes the beginning of a new happiness,--of

love for your child. You alone, when you are simple and obedient to the

will of God, know not that farcical pretence of labor which the men of

our circle call work, and know that the labor imposed by God on men, and

know its true rewards, the bliss which it confers. You know this, when,

after the raptures of love, you await with emotion, fear, and terror that

torturing state of pregnancy which renders you ailing for nine months,

which brings you to the verge of death, and to intolerable suffering and

pain. You know the conditions of true labor, when, with joy, you await

the approach and the increase of the most terrible torture, after which

to you alone comes the bliss which you well know. You know this, when,

immediately after this torture, without respite, without a break, you

undertake another series of toils and sufferings,--nursing,--in which

process you at one and the same time deny yourselves, and subdue to your

feelings the very strongest human need, that of sleep, which, as the

proverb says, is dearer than father or mother; and for months and years

you never get a single sound, unbroken might's rest, and sometimes, nay,

often, you do not sleep at all for a period of several nights in

succession, but with failing arms you walk alone, punishing the sick

child who is breaking your heart. And when you do all this, applauded by

no one, and expecting no praises for it from any one, nor any

reward,--when you do this, not as an heroic deed, but like the laborer in

the Gospel when he came from the field, considering that you have done

only that which was your duty, then you know what the false, pretentious

labor of men performed for glory really is, and that true labor is

fulfilling the will of God, whose command you feel in your heart. You

know that if you are a true mother it makes no difference that no one has

seen your toil, that no one has praised you for it, but that it has only

been looked upon as what must needs be so, and that even those for whom

your have labored not only do not thank you, but often torture and

reproach you. And with the next child you do the same: again you suffer,

again you undergo the fearful, invisible labor; and again you expect no

reward from any one, and yet you feel the sane satisfaction.

If you are like this, you will not say after two children, or after

twenty, that you have done enough, just as the laboring man fifty years

of age will not say that he has worked enough, while he still continues

to eat and to sleep, and while his muscles still demand work; if you are

like this, your will not cast the task of nursing and care-taking upon

some other mother, just as a laboring man will not give another man the

work which he has begun, and almost completed, to finish: because into

this work you will throw your life. And therefore the more there is of

this work, the fuller and the happier is your life.

And when you are like this, for the good fortune of men, you will apply

that law of fulfilling God's will, by which you guide your life, to the

lives of your husband, of your children, and of those most nearly

connected with you. If your are like this, and know from your own

experience, that only self-sacrificing, unseen, unrewarded labor,

accompanied with danger to life and to the extreme bounds of endurance,

for the lives of others, is the appointed lot of man, which affords him

satisfaction, then you will announce these demands to others; you will

urge your husband to the same toil; and you will measure and value the

dignity of men acceding to this toil; and for this toil you will also

prepare your children.

Only that mother who looks upon children as a disagreeable accident, and

upon love, the comforts of life, costume, and society, as the object of

life, will rear her children in such a manner that they shall have as

much enjoyment as possible out of life, and that they shall make the

greatest possible use of it; only she will feed them luxuriously, deck

them out, amuse them artificially; only she will teach them, not that

which will fit them for self-sacrificing masculine or feminine labor with

danger of their lives, and to the last limits of endurance, but that

which will deliver them from this labor. Only such a woman, who has lost

the meaning of her life, will sympathize with that delusive and false

male labor, by means of which her husband, having rid himself of the

obligations of a man, is enabled to enjoy, in her company, the work of

others. Only such a woman will choose a similar man for the husband of

her daughter, and will estimate men, not by what they are personally, but

by that which is connected with them,--position, money, or their ability

to take advantage of the labor of others.

But the true mother, who actually knows the will of God, will fit her

children to fulfil it also. For such a mother, to see her child overfed,

enervated, decked out, will mean suffering; for all this, as she well

knows, will render difficult for him the fulfilment of the law of God in

which she has instructed him. Such a mother will teach, not that which

will enable her son and her daughter to rid themselves of labor, but that

which will help them to endure the toils of life. She will have no need

to inquire what she shall teach her children, for what she shall prepare

them. Such a woman will not only not encourage her husband to false and

delusive labor, which has but one object, that of using the labors of

others; but she will bear herself with disgust and horror towards such an

employment, which serves as a double temptation to her children. Such a

woman will not choose a husband for her daughter on account of the

whiteness of his hands and the refinement of manner; but, well aware that

labor and deceit will exist always and everywhere, she will, beginning

with her husband, respect and value in men, and will require from them,

real labor, with expenditure and risk of life, and she will despise that

deceptive labor which has for its object the ridding one's self of all

true toil.

Such a mother, who brings forth children and nurses them, and will

herself, rather than any other, feed her offspring and prepare their

food, and sew, and wash, and teach her children, and sleep and talk with

them, because in this she grounds the business of her life,--only such a

mother will not seek for her children external guaranties in the form of

her husband's money, and the children's diplomas; but she will rear them

to that same capacity for the self-sacrificing fulfilment of the will of

God which she is conscious of herself possessing,--a capacity for

enduring toil with expenditure and risk of life,--because she knows that

in this lies the sole guaranty, and the only well-being in life. Such a

mother will not ask other people what she ought to do; she will know

every thing, and will fear nothing.

If there can exist any doubt for the man and for the childless woman, as

to the path in which the fulfilment of the will of God lies, this path is

firmly and clearly defined for the woman who is a mother; and if she has

complied with it in submissiveness and in simplicity of spirit, she,

standing on that loftiest height of bliss which the human being is

permitted to attain, will become a guiding-star for all men who are

seeking good. Only the mother can calmly say before her death, to Him

who sent her into this world, and to Him whom she has served by bearing

and rearing children more dear than herself,--only she can say calmly,

having served Him who has imposed this service upon her: "Now lettest

thou thy servant depart in peace." And this is the highest perfection,

towards which, as towards the highest bliss, men are striving.

Such are the women, who, having fulfilled their destiny, reign over

powerful men; such are the women who prepare the new generations of

people, and fix public opinion: and, therefore, in the hands of these

women lies the highest power of saving men from the prevailing and

threatening evils of our times.

Yes, ye women and mothers, in your hands, more than in those of all

others, lies the salvation of the world!

Footnotes:

{21a} The fine, tall members of a regiment, selected and placed together

to form a showy squad.

{21b} [] Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition printed in

Russia, in the set of Count Tolstoi's works.

{24a} Reaumur.

{24b} A drink made of water, honey, and laurel or salvia leaves, which

is drunk as tea, especially by the poorer classes.

{28} [] Omitted by the censor from the authorized edition published in

Russia in the set of count Tolstoi's works. The omission is indicated

thus . . .

{39} _Kalatch_, a kind of roll: _baranki_, cracknels of fine flour.

{59} An _arshin_ is twenty-eight inches.

{60} A _myeshchanin_, or citizen, who pays only poll-tax and not a guild

tax.

{62} Omitted in authorized edition.

{66} Omitted by the censor in the authorized edition.

{94} Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition.

{96} Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition.

{99} Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition.

{108} Omitted by the Censor from the authorized edition.

{111} Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition.

{113} Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition

{116} Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition.

{122a} Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition.

{122b} A very complicated sort of whist.

{124} The whole of this chapter is omitted by the Censor in the

authorized edition, and is there represented by the following sentence:

"And I felt that in money, in money itself, in the possession of it,

there was something immoral; and I asked myself, What is money?"

{135} Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition.

{138} Omitted by the Censor in the authorized edition.

{139} The above passage is omitted in the authorized edition, and the

following is added: "I came to the simple and natural conclusion, that,

if I pity the tortured horse upon which I am riding, the first thing for

me to do is to alight, and to walk on my own feet."

{140} Omitted in the authorized edition.

{142} Omitted in the authorized edition.

{152a} "Into a worse state," in the authorized edition.

{152b} Omitted in the authorized edition.

{154} Omitted in the authorized edition.

{155} Reaumur.

{158} In the Moscow edition (authorized by the Censor), the concluding

paragraph is replaced by the following:--"They say: The action of a

single man is but a drop in the sea. A drop in the sea!

"There is an Indian legend relating how a man dropped a pearl into the

sea, and in order to recover it he took a bucket, and began to bail out,

and to pour the water on the shore. Thus he toiled without intermission,

and on the seventh day the spirit of the sea grew alarmed lest the man

should dip the sea dry, and so he brought him his pearl. If our social

evil of persecuting man were the sea, then that pearl which we have lost

is equivalent to devoting our lives to bailing out the sea of that evil.

The prince of this world will take fright, he will succumb more promptly

than did the spirit of the sea; but this social evil is not the sea, but

a foul cesspool, which we assiduously fill with our own uncleanness. All

that is required is for us to come to our senses, and to comprehend what

we are doing; to fall out of love with our own uncleanness,--in order

that that imaginary sea should dry away, and that we should come into

possession of that priceless pearl,--fraternal, humane life."

{161a} An arshin is twenty-eight inches.

{161b} The fast extends from the 5th to the 30th of June, O.S. (June 27

to July 12, N.S.)

{165} A pood is thirty-six pounds.

{167} Robinson Crusoe.

{168} Here something has been omitted by the Censor, which I am unable

to supply.--TRANS.

{169} An omission by the censor, which I am unable to supply. TRANS.

{178} We designate as organisms the elephant and the bacterian, only

because we assume by analogy in those creatures the same conjunction of

feeling and consciousness that we know to exist in ourselves. But in

human societies and in humanity, this actual sign is absent; and

therefore, however many other signs we may discover in humanity and in

organism, without this substantial token the recognition of humanity as

an organism is incorrect.

{238} _v prikusku_, when a lump of sugar is held in the teeth instead or

being put into the tea.

{252} In English in the text.

{256} An excellent translation of Kriloff's Fables, by Mr. W. R. S.

Ralston, is published in London.

{260} _Burlak_, pl. _burlaki_, is a boatman on the River Volga.