It often happens that men pull in a certain political, social, or
familiar harness simply because they never have time to ask themselves
whether the position they stand in and the work they accomplish are
right; whether their occupations really suit their inner desires and
capacities, and give them the satisfaction which everyone has the right
to expect from his work. Active men are especially liable to find
themselves in such a position. Every day brings with it a fresh batch
of work, and a man throws himself into his bed late at night without
having completed what he expected to have done; then in the morning
he hurries to the unfinished task of the previous day. Life goes, and
there is no time left to think, no time to consider the direction that
one’s life is taking. So it was with me.
But now, during my journey in Finland, I had leisure. When I was
crossing in a Finnish two-wheeled _karria_ some plain which offered
no interest to the geologist, or when I was walking, hammer on
shoulder, from one gravel pit to another, I could think; and, amidst
the undoubtedly interesting geological work I was carrying on, one
idea, which appealed far more strongly to my inner self than geology,
persistently worked in my mind.
I saw what an immense amount of labour the Finnish peasant spends in
clearing the land and in breaking up the hard boulder clay, and I said
to myself, ‘I will write, let me say, the physical geography of this
part of Russia, and tell the peasant the best means of cultivating
this soil. Here an American stump-extractor would be invaluable; there
certain methods of manuring would be indicated by science.... But what
is the use of talking to this peasant about American machines, when he
has barely enough bread to live upon from one crop to the next; when
the rent which he has to pay for that boulder clay grows heavier and
heavier in proportion to his success in improving the soil? He gnaws at
his hard-as-a-stone rye-flour cake, which he bakes twice a year; he has
with it a morsel of fearfully salted cod and a drink of skimmed milk.
How dare I talk to him of American machines, when all that he can raise
must be sold to pay rent and taxes? He needs me to live with him, to
help him to become the owner or the free occupier of that land. Then he
will read books with profit, but not now.’
And my thoughts wandered from Finland to our Nikólskoye peasants, whom
I had lately seen. Now they are free, and they value freedom very much.
But they have no meadows. In one way or another the landlords have got
nearly all the meadows for themselves. When I was a child the Savókhins
used to send out six horses for night pasture; the Tolkachóffs had
seven. Now these families have only three horses each; other families,
which formerly had three horses, have only one or none. What can be
done with one miserable horse? No meadows, no horses, no manure! How
can I talk to them of grass-sowing? They are already ruined--poor as
Lazarus--and in a few years they will be made still poorer by a foolish
taxation. How happy they were when I told them that my father gave them
permission to mow the grass in the small open spaces in his Kóstino
forest! ‘Your Nikólskoye peasants are _ferocious_ for work,’ that is
the common saying about them in our neighbourhood; but the arable land,
which our stepmother has taken out of their allotments in virtue of the
‘law of minimum’--that diabolic clause introduced by the serf-owners
when they were allowed to revise the emancipation law--is now a forest
of thistles, and the ‘ferocious’ workers are not allowed to till it.
And the same sort of thing goes on throughout Russia. Even at that time
it was evident, and official commissioners gave warning of it, that
the first serious failure of crops in Middle Russia would result in a
terrible famine--and famine came, in 1876, in 1884, in 1891, in 1895,
and again in 1898.
Science is an excellent thing. I knew its joys and valued them,
perhaps more than many of my colleagues did. Even now, as I was
looking on the lakes and the hillocks of Finland, new and beautiful
generalizations arose before my eyes. I saw in a remote past, at the
very dawn of mankind, the ice accumulating from year to year in the
northern archipelagoes, over Scandinavia and Finland. An immense
growth of ice invaded the north of Europe and slowly spread as far
as its middle portions. Life dwindled in that part of the northern
hemisphere, and, wretchedly poor, uncertain, it fled further and
further south before the icy breath which came from that immense
frozen mass. Man--miserable, weak, ignorant--had every difficulty in
maintaining a precarious existence. Ages passed away, till the melting
of the ice began, and with it came the lake period, when countless
lakes were formed in the cavities, and a wretched subpolar vegetation
began timidly to invade the unfathomable marshes with which every lake
was surrounded. Another series of ages passed before an extremely
slow process of drying up set in, and vegetation began its slow
invasion from the south. And now we are fully in the period of a rapid
desiccation, accompanied by the formation of dry prairies and steppes,
and man has to find out the means to put a check to that desiccation
to which Central Asia already has fallen a victim, and which menaces
South-Eastern Europe.
Belief in an ice cap reaching Middle Europe was at that time rank
heresy; but before my eyes a grand picture was rising, and I wanted
to draw it, with the thousands of details I saw in it; to use it as a
key to the present distribution of floras and faunas; to open up new
horizons to geology and physical geography.
But what right had I to these higher joys, when all round me was
nothing but misery and struggle for a mouldy bit of bread; when
whatsoever I should spend to enable me to live in that world of higher
emotions must needs be taken from the very mouths of those who grew
the wheat and had not bread enough for their children? From somebody’s
mouth it must be taken, because the aggregate production of mankind
remains still so low.
Knowledge is an immense power. Man must know. But we already know much!
What if that knowledge--and only that--should become the possession of
all? Would not science itself progress in leaps and cause mankind to
make strides in production, invention, and social creation, of which we
are hardly in a condition now to measure the speed?
The masses want to know: they are willing to learn; they _can_ learn.
There, on the crest of that immense moraine which runs between the
lakes, as if giants had heaped it up in a hurry to connect the two
shores, there stands a Finnish peasant plunged in contemplation of the
beautiful lakes, studded with islands, which lie before him. Not one
of these peasants, poor and downtrodden though they may be, will pass
this spot without stopping to admire the scene. Or there, on the shore
of a lake, stands another peasant, and sings something so beautiful
that the best musician would envy him his melody for its feeling and
its meditative power. Both deeply feel, both meditate, both think; they
are ready to widen their knowledge: only give it to them; only give
them the means of getting leisure. This is the direction in which,
and these are the kind of people for whom, I must work. All those
sonorous phrases about making mankind progress, while at the same time
the progress-makers stand aloof from those whom they pretend to push
onwards, are mere sophisms made up by minds anxious to shake off a
fretting contradiction.
So I sent my negative reply to the Geographical Society.