"Why not?" I asked and shrugged my shoulders. "You don't care about my
opinion, but I assure you, the question greatly interests me."
"Yes?"
"In my opinion there is absolutely no need for a medical station at
Malozyomov."
My irritation affected her: she gave a glance at me, half closed her
eyes and said:
"What is wanted then? Landscapes?"
"Not landscapes either. Nothing is wanted there."
She finished taking off her gloves and took up a newspaper which had
just come by post; a moment later, she said quietly, apparently
controlling herself:
"Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if a medical man had been
available she would have lived. However, I suppose landscape-painters
are entitled to their opinions."
"I have a very definite opinion, I assure you," said I, and she took
refuge behind the newspaper, as though she did not wish to listen. "In
my opinion medical stations, schools, libraries, pharmacies, under
existing conditions, only lead to slavery. The masses are caught in a
vast chain: you do not cut it but only add new links to it. That is my
opinion."
She looked at me and smiled mockingly, and I went on, striving to catch
the thread of my ideas.
"It does not matter that Anna should die in childbirth, but it does
matter that all these Annas, Mavras, Pelagueyas, from dawn to sunset
should be grinding away, ill from overwork, all their lives worried
about their starving sickly children; all their lives they are afraid of
death and disease, and have to be looking after themselves; they fade in
youth, grow old very early, and die in filth and dirt; their children as
they grow up go the same way and hundreds of years slip by and millions
of people live worse than animals--in constant dread of never having a
crust to eat; but the horror of their position is that they have no time
to think of their souls, no time to remember that they are made in the
likeness of God; hunger, cold, animal fear, incessant work, like drifts
of snow block all the ways to spiritual activity, to the very thing that
distinguishes man from the animals, and is the only thing indeed that
makes life worth living. You come to their assistance with hospitals and
schools, but you do not free them from their fetters; on the contrary,
you enslave them even more, since by introducing new prejudices into
their lives, you increase the number of their demands, not to mention
the fact that they have to pay the Zemstvo for their drugs and
pamphlets, and therefore, have to work harder than ever."
"I will not argue with you," said Lyda. "I have heard all that." She put
down her paper. "I will only tell you one thing, it is no good sitting
with folded hands. It is true, we do not save mankind, and perhaps we do
make mistakes, but we do what we can and we are right. The highest and
most sacred truth for an educated being--is to help his neighbours, and
we do what we can to help. You do not like it, but it is impossible to
please everybody."
"True, Lyda, true," said her mother.
In Lyda's presence her courage always failed her, and as she talked she
would look timidly at her, for she was afraid of saying something
foolish or out of place: and she never contradicted, but would always
agree: "True, Lyda, true."
"Teaching peasants to read and write, giving them little moral pamphlets
and medical assistance, cannot decrease either ignorance or mortality,
just as the light from your windows cannot illuminate this huge garden,"
I said. "You give nothing by your interference in the lives of these
people. You only create new demands, and a new compulsion to work."
"Ah! My God, but we must do something!" said Lyda exasperatedly, and I
could tell by her voice that she thought my opinions negligible and
despised me.
"It is necessary," I said, "to free people from hard physical work. It
is necessary to relieve them of their yoke, to give them breathing
space, to save them from spending their whole lives in the kitchen or
the byre, in the fields; they should have time to take thought of their
souls, of God and to develop their spiritual capacities. Every human
being's salvation lies in spiritual activity--in his continual search
for truth and the meaning of life. Give them some relief from rough,
animal labour, let them feel free, then you will see how ridiculous at
bottom your pamphlets and pharmacies are. Once a human being is aware of
his vocation, then he can only be satisfied with religion, service, art,
and not with trifles like that."
"Free them from work?" Lyda gave a smile. "Is that possible?"
"Yes.... Take upon yourself a part of their work. If we all, in town and
country, without exception, agreed to share the work which is being
spent by mankind in the satisfaction of physical demands, then none of
us would have to work more than two or three hours a day. If all of us,
rich and poor, worked three hours a day the rest of our time would be
free. And then to be still less dependent on our bodies, we should
invent machines to do the work and we should try to reduce our demands
to the minimum. We should toughen ourselves and our children should not
be afraid of hunger and cold, and we should not be anxious about their
health, as Anna, Maria, Pelagueya were anxious. Then supposing we did
not bother about doctors and pharmacies, and did away with tobacco
factories and distilleries--what a lot of free time we should have! We
should give our leisure to service and the arts. Just as peasants all
work together to repair the roads, so the whole community would work
together to seek truth and the meaning of life, and, I am sure of
it--truth would be found very soon, man would get rid of his continual,
poignant, depressing fear of death and even of death itself."
"But you contradict yourself," said Lyda. "You talk about service and
deny education."
"I deny the education of a man who can only use it to read the signs on
the public houses and possibly a pamphlet which he is incapable of
understanding--the kind of education we have had from the time of
Riurik: and village life has remained exactly as it was then. Not
education is wanted but freedom for the full development of spiritual
capacities. Not schools are wanted but universities."
"You deny medicine too."
"Yes. It should only be used for the investigation of diseases, as
natural phenomenon, not for their cure. It is no good curing diseases if
you don't cure their causes. Remove the chief cause--physical labour,
and there will be no diseases. I don't acknowledge the science which
cures," I went on excitedly. "Science and art, when they are true, are
directed not to temporary or private purposes, but to the eternal and
the general--they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God,
the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,
like pharmacies and libraries, then they only complicate and encumber
life. We have any number of doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, and highly
educated people, but we have no biologists, mathematicians,
philosophers, poets. All our intellectual and spiritual energy is wasted
on temporary passing needs.... Scientists, writers, painters work and
work, and thanks to them the comforts of life grow greater every day,
the demands of the body multiply, but we are still a long way from the
truth and man still remains the most rapacious and unseemly of animals,
and everything tends to make the majority of mankind degenerate and more
and more lacking in vitality. Under such conditions the life of an
artist has no meaning and the more talented he is, the more strange and
incomprehensible his position is, since it only amounts to his working
for the amusement of the predatory, disgusting animal, man, and
supporting the existing state of things. And I don't want to work and
will not.... Nothing is wanted, so let the world go to hell."
"Missyuss, go away," said Lyda to her sister, evidently thinking my
words dangerous to so young a girl.
Genya looked sadly at her sister and mother and went out.
"People generally talk like that," said Lyda, "when they want to excuse
their indifference. It is easier to deny hospitals and schools than to
come and teach."
"True, Lyda, true," her mother agreed.
"You say you will not work," Lyda went on. "Apparently you set a high
price on your work, but do stop arguing. We shall never agree, since I
value the most imperfect library or pharmacy, of which you spoke so
scornfully just now, more than all the landscapes in the world." And at
once she turned to her mother and began to talk in quite a different
tone: "The Prince has got very thin, and is much changed since the last
time he was here. The doctors are sending him to Vichy."
She talked to her mother about the Prince to avoid talking to me. Her
face was burning, and, in order to conceal her agitation, she bent over
the table as if she were short-sighted and made a show of reading the
newspaper. My presence was distasteful to her. I took my leave and went
home.