Leo Tolstoy - Leo Tolstoy - The Complete Novels (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 4)

“But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms.”

“Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all probability.”

“That’s just what I was meaning,” answered Levin. “Why shouldn’t we seek them for ourselves?”

“Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for constructing railways. They are ready, invented.”

“But if they don’t do for us, if they’re stupid?” said Levin.

And again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of

Sviazhsky.

“Oh, yes; we’ll bury the world under our caps! We’ve found the secret Europe was seeking for! I’ve heard all that; but, excuse me, do you know all that’s been done in Europe on the question of the organization of labor?”

“No, very little.”

“That question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. The Schulze-Delitsch movement…. And then all this enormous literature of the labor question, the most liberal Lassalle movement…the Mulhausen experiment? That’s a fact by now, as you’re probably aware.”

“I have some idea of it, but very vague.”

“No, you only say that; no doubt you know all about it as well as I do. I’m not a professor of sociology, of course, but it interested me, and really, if it interests you, you ought to study it.”

“But what conclusion have they come to?”

“Excuse me…”

The two neighbors had risen, and Sviazhsky, once more checking Levin in his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyond the outer chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.

Table of Contents

Levin was insufferably bored that evening with the ladies; he was stirred as he had never been before by the idea that the dissatisfaction he was feeling with his system of managing his land was not an exceptional case, but the general condition of things in Russia; that the organization of some relation of the laborers to the soil in which they would work, as with the peasant he had met halfway to the Sviazhskys’, was not a dream, but a problem which must be solved. And it seemed to him that the problem could be solved, and that he ought to try and solve it.

After saying good-night to the ladies, and promising to stay the whole of the next day, so as to make an expedition on horseback with them to see an interesting ruin in the crown forest, Levin went, before going to bed, into his host’s study to get the books on the labor question that Sviazhsky had offered him. Sviazhsky’s study was a huge room, surrounded by bookcases and with two tables in it—one a massive writing table, standing in the middle of the room, and the other a round table, covered with recent numbers of reviews and journals in different languages, ranged like the rays of a star round the lamp. On the writing table was a stand of drawers marked with gold lettering, and full of papers of various sorts.

Sviazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking-chair.

“What are you looking at there?” he said to Levin, who was standing at the round table looking through the reviews.

“Oh, yes, there’s a very interesting article here,” said Sviazhsky of the review Levin was holding in his hand. “It appears,” he went on, with eager interest, “that Friedrich was not, after all, the person chiefly responsible for the partition of Poland. It is proved…”

And with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new, very important, and interesting revelations. Although Levin was engrossed at the moment by his ideas about the problem of the land, he wondered, as he heard Sviazhsky: “What is there inside of him? And why, why is he interested in the partition of Poland?” When Sviazhsky had finished, Levin could not help asking: “Well, and what then?” But there was nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that it had been proved to be so and so. But Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain why it was interesting to him.

“Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor,” said Levin, sighing. “He’s a clever fellow, and said a lot that was true.”

“Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at heart, like all of them!” said Sviazhsky.

“Whose marshal you are.”

“Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction,” said

Sviazhsky, laughing.

“I’ll tell you what interests me very much,” said Levin. “He’s right that our system, that’s to say of rational farming, doesn’t answer, that the only thing that answers is the money-lender system, like that meek-looking gentleman’s, or else the very simplest…. Whose fault is it?”

“Our own, of course. Besides, it’s not true that it doesn’t answer. It answers with Vassiltchikov.”

“A factory…”

“But I really don’t know what it is you are surprised at. The people are at such a low stage of rational and moral development, that it’s obvious they’re bound to oppose everything that’s strange to them. In Europe, a rational system answers because the people are educated; it follows that we must educate the people—that’s all.”

“But how are we to educate the people?”

“To educate the people three things are needed: schools, and schools, and schools.

“But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage of material development: what help are schools for that?”

“Do you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to the sick man—You should try purgative medicine. Taken: worse. Try leeches. Tried them: worse. Well, then, there’s nothing left but to pray to God. Tried it: worse. That’s just how it is with us. I say political economy; you say—worse. I say socialism: worse. Education: worse.”

“But how do schools help matters?”

“They give the peasant fresh wants.”

“Well, that’s a thing I’ve never understood,” Levin replied with heat. “In what way are schools going to help the people to improve their material position? You say schools, education, will give them fresh wants. So much the worse, since they won’t be capable of satisfying them. And in what way a knowledge of addition and subtraction and the catechism is going to improve their material condition, I never could make out. The day before yesterday, I met a peasant woman in the evening with a little baby, and asked her where she was going. She said she was going to the wise woman; her boy had screaming fits, so she was taking him to be doctored. I asked, ‘Why, how does the wise woman cure screaming fits?’ ‘She puts the child on the hen-roost and repeats some charm….’ “

“Well, you’re saying it yourself! What’s wanted to prevent her taking her child to the hen-roost to cure it of screaming fits is just…” Sviazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.

“Oh, no!” said Levin with annoyance; “that method of doctoring I merely meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools. The people are poor and ignorant—that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees the baby is ill because it screams. But in what way this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by schools is as incomprehensible as how the hen-roost affects the screaming. What has to be cured is what makes him poor.”

“Well, in that, at least, you’re in agreement with Spencer, whom you dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the consequence of greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent washing, as he says, but not of being able to read and write…”

“Well, then, I’m very glad—or the contrary, very sorry, that I’m in agreement with Spencer; only I’ve known it a long while. Schools can do no good; what will do good is an economic organization in which the people will become richer, will have more leisure—and then there will be schools.”