On the Significance of Science and Art / Leo Tolstoy

CHAPTER I.

. . . {1} The justification of all persons who have freed themselves

from toil is now founded on experimental, positive science. The

scientific theory is as follows:-

"For the study of the laws of life of human societies, there exists

but one indubitable method,--the positive, experimental, critical

method

"Only sociology, founded on biology, founded on all the positive

sciences, can give us the laws of humanity. Humanity, or human

communities, are the organisms already prepared, or still in process

of formation, and which are subservient to all the laws of the

evolution of organisms.

"One of the chief of these laws is the variation of destination

among the portions of the organs. Some people command, others obey.

If some have in superabundance, and others in want, this arises not

from the will of God, not because the empire is a form of

manifestation of personality, but because in societies, as in

organisms, division of labor becomes indispensable for life as a

whole. Some people perform the muscular labor in societies; others,

the mental labor."

Upon this doctrine is founded the prevailing justification of our

time.

Not long ago, their reigned in the learned, cultivated world, a

moral philosophy, according to which it appeared that every thing

which exists is reasonable; that there is no such thing as evil or

good; and that it is unnecessary for man to war against evil, but

that it is only necessary for him to display intelligence,--one man

in the military service, another in the judicial, another on the

violin. There have been many and varied expressions of human

wisdom, and these phenomena were known to the men of the nineteenth

century. The wisdom of Rousseau and of Lessing, and Spinoza and

Bruno, and all the wisdom of antiquity; but no one man's wisdom

overrode the crowd. It was impossible to say even this,--that

Hegel's success was the result of the symmetry of this theory.

There were other equally symmetrical theories,--those of Descartes,

Leibnitz, Fichte, Schopenhauer. There was but one reason why this

doctrine won for itself, for a season, the belief of the whole

world; and this reason was, that the deductions of that philosophy

winked at people's weaknesses. These deductions were summed up in

this,--that every thing was reasonable, every thing good; and that

no one was to blame.

When I began my career, Hegelianism was the foundation of every

thing. It was floating in the air; it was expressed in newspaper

and periodical articles, in historical and judicial lectures, in

novels, in treatises, in art, in sermons, in conversation. The man

who was not acquainted with Hegal had no right to speak. Any one

who desired to understand the truth studied Hegel. Every thing

rested on him. And all at once the forties passed, and there was

nothing left of him. There was not even a hint of him, any more

than if he had never existed. And the most amazing thing of all

was, that Hegelianism did not fall because some one overthrew it or

destroyed it. No! It was the same then as now, but all at once it

appeared that it was of no use whatever to the learned and

cultivated world.

There was a time when the Hegelian wise men triumphantly instructed

the masses; and the crowd, understanding nothing, blindly believed

in every thing, finding confirmation in the fact that it was on

hand; and they believed that what seemed to them muddy and

contradictory there on the heights of philosophy was all as clear as

the day. But that time has gone by. That theory is worn out: a

new theory has presented itself in its stead. The old one has

become useless; and the crowd has looked into the secret sanctuaries

of the high priests, and has seen that there is nothing there, and

that there has been nothing there, save very obscure and senseless

words. This has taken place within my memory.

"But this arises," people of the present science will say, "from the

fact that all that was the raving of the theological and

metaphysical period; but now there exists positive, critical

science, which does not deceive, since it is all founded on

induction and experiment. Now our erections are not shaky, as they

formerly were, and only in our path lies the solution of all the

problems of humanity."

But the old teachers said precisely the same, and they were no

fools; and we know that there were people of great intelligence

among them. And precisely thus, within my memory, and with no less

confidence, with no less recognition on the part of the crowd of so-

called cultivated people, spoke the Hegelians. And neither were our

Herzens, our Stankevitches, or our Byelinskys fools. But whence

arose that marvellous manifestation, that sensible people should

preach with the greatest assurance, and that the crowd should accept

with devotion, such unfounded and unsupportable teachings? There is

but one reason,--that the teachings thus inculcated justified people

in their evil life.

A very poor English writer, whose works are all forgotten, and

recognized as the most insignificant of the insignificant, writes a

treatise on population, in which he devises a fictitious law

concerning the increase of population disproportionate to the means

of subsistence. This fictitious law, this writer encompasses with

mathematical formulae founded on nothing whatever; and then he

launches it on the world. From the frivolity and the stupidity of

this hypothesis, one would suppose that it would not attract the

attention of any one, and that it would sink into oblivion, like all

the works of the same author which followed it; but it turned out

quite otherwise. The hack-writer who penned this treatise instantly

becomes a scientific authority, and maintains himself upon that

height for nearly half a century. Malthus! The Malthusian theory,-

-the law of the increase of the population in geometrical, and of

the means of subsistence in arithmetical proportion, and the wise

and natural means of restricting the population,--all these have

become scientific, indubitable truths, which have not been

confirmed, but which have been employed as axioms, for the erection

of false theories. In this manner have learned and cultivated

people proceeded; and among the herd of idle persons, there sprung

up a pious trust in the great laws expounded by Malthus. How did

this come to pass? It would seem as though they were scientific

deductions, which had nothing in common with the instincts of the

masses. But this can only appear so for the man who believes that

science, like the Church, is something self-contained, liable to no

errors, and not simply the imaginings of weak and erring folk, who

merely substitute the imposing word "science," in place of the

thoughts and words of the people, for the sake of impressiveness.

All that was necessary was to make practical deductions from the

theory of Malthus, in order to perceive that this theory was of the

most human sort, with the best defined of objects. The deductions

directly arising from this theory were the following: The wretched

condition of the laboring classes was such in accordance with an

unalterable law, which does not depend upon men; and, if any one is

to blame in this matter, it is the hungry laboring classes

themselves. Why are they such fools as to give birth to children,

when they know that there will be nothing for the children to eat?

And so this deduction, which is valuable for the herd of idle

people, has had this result: that all learned men overlooked the

incorrectness, the utter arbitrariness of these deductions, and

their insusceptibility to proof; and the throng of cultivated, i.e.,

of idle people, knowing instinctively to what these deductions lead,

saluted this theory with enthusiasm, conferred upon it the stamp of

truth, i.e., of science, and dragged it about with them for half a

century.

Is not this same thing the cause of the confidence of men in

positive critical-experimental science, and of the devout attitude

of the crowd towards that which it preaches? At first it seems

strange, that the theory of evolution can in any manner justify

people in their evil ways; and it seems as though the scientific

theory of evolution has to deal only with facts, and that it does

nothing else but observe facts.

But this only appears to be the case.

Exactly the same thing appeared to be the case with the Hegelian

doctrine, in a greater degree, and also in the special instance of

the Malthusian doctrine. Hegelianism was, apparently, occupied only

with its logical constructions, and bore no relation to the life of

mankind. Precisely this seemed to be the case with the Malthusian

theory. It appeared to be busy itself only with statistical data.

But this was only in appearance.

Contemporary science is also occupied with facts alone: it

investigates facts. But what facts? Why precisely these facts, and

no others?

The men of contemporary science are very fond of saying,

triumphantly and confidently, "We investigate only facts," imagining

that these words contain some meaning. It is impossible to

investigate facts alone, because the facts which are subject to our

investigation are INNUMERABLE (in the definite sense of that word),-

-innumerable. Before we proceed to investigate facts, we must have

a theory on the foundation of which these or those facts can be

inquired into, i.e., selected from the incalculable quantity.

And this theory exists, and is even very definitely expressed,

although many of the workers in contemporary science do not know it,

or often pretend that they do not know it. Exactly thus has it

always been with all prevailing and guiding doctrines. The

foundations of every doctrine are always stated in a theory, and the

so-called learned men merely invent further deductions from the

foundations once stated. Thus contemporary science is selecting its

facts on the foundation of a very definite theory, which it

sometimes knows, sometimes refuses to know, and sometimes really

does not know; but the theory exists.

The theory is as follows: All mankind is an undying organism; men

are the particles of that organism, and each one of them has his own

special task for the service of others. In the same manner, the

cells united in an organism share among them the labor of fight for

existence of the whole organism; they magnify the power of one

capacity, and weaken another, and unite in one organ, in order the

better to supply the requirements of the whole organism. And

exactly in the same manner as with gregarious animals,--ants or

bees,--the separate individuals divide the labor among them. The

queen lays the egg, the drone fructifies it; the bee works his whole

life long. And precisely this thing takes place in mankind and in

human societies. And therefore, in order to find the law of life

for man, it is necessary to study the laws of the life and the

development of organisms.

In the life and development of organisms, we find the following

laws: the law of differentiation and integration, the law that

every phenomenon is accompanied not by direct consequences alone,

another law regarding the instability of type, and so on. All this

seems very innocent; but it is only necessary to draw the deductions

from all these laws, in order to immediately perceive that these

laws incline in the same direction as the law of Malthus. These

laws all point to one thing; namely, to the recognition of that

division of labor which exists in human communities, as organic,

that is to say, as indispensable. And therefore, the unjust

position in which we, the people who have freed ourselves from

labor, find ourselves, must be regarded not from the point of view

of common-sense and justice, but merely as an undoubted fact,

confirming the universal law.

Moral philosophy also justified every sort of cruelty and harshness;

but this resulted in a philosophical manner, and therefore wrongly.

But with science, all this results scientifically, and therefore in

a manner not to be doubted.

How can we fail to accept so very beautiful a theory? It is merely

necessary to look upon human society as an object of contemplation;

and I can console myself with the thought that my activity, whatever

may be its nature, is a functional activity of the organism of

humanity, and that therefore there cannot arise any question as to

whether it is just that I, in employing the labor of others, am

doing only that which is agreeable to me, as there can arise no

question as to the division of labor between the brain cells and the

muscular cells. How is it possible not to admit so very beautiful a

theory, in order that one may be able, ever after, to pocket one's

conscience, and have a perfectly unbridled animal existence, feeling

beneath one's self that support of science which is not to be shaken

nowadays!

And it is on this new doctrine that the justification for men's

idleness and cruelty is now founded.

CHAPTER II.

This doctrine had its rise not so very long--fifty years--ago. Its

principal founder was the French savant Comte. There occurred to

Comte,--a systematist, and a religious man to boot,--under the

influence of the then novel physiological investigations of Biche,

the old idea already set forth by Menenius Agrippa,--the idea that

human society, all humanity even, might be regarded as one whole, as

an organism; and men as living parts of the separate organs, having

each his own definite appointment to serve the entire organism.

This idea so pleased Comte, that upon it he began to erect a

philosophical theory; and this theory so carried him away, that he

utterly forgot that the point of departure for his theory was

nothing more than a very pretty comparison, which was suitable for a

fable, but which could by no means serve as the foundation for

science. He, as frequently happens, mistook his pet hypothesis for

an axiom, and imagined that his whole theory was erected on the very

firmest of foundations. According to his theory, it seemed that

since humanity is an organism, the knowledge of what man is, and of

what should be his relations to the world, was possible only through

a knowledge of the features of this organism. For the knowledge of

these qualities, man is enabled to take observations on other and

lower organisms, and to draw conclusions from their life.

Therefore, in the fist place, the true and only method, according to

Comte, is the inductive, and all science is only such when it has

experiment as its basis; in the second place, the goal and crown of

sciences is formed by that new science dealing with the imaginary

organism of humanity, or the super-organic being,--humanity,--and

this newly devised science is sociology.

And from this view of science it appears, that all previous

knowledge was deceitful, and that the whole story of humanity, in

the sense of self-knowledge, has been divided into three, actually

into two, periods: the theological and metaphysical period,

extending from the beginning of the world to Comte, and the present

period,--that of the only true science, positive science,--beginning

with Comte.

All this was very well. There was but one error, and that was

this,--that the whole edifice was erected on the sand, on the

arbitrary and false assertion that humanity is an organism. This

assertion was arbitrary, because we have just as much right to admit

the existence of a human organism, not subject to observation, as we

have to admit the existence of any other invisible, fantastic being.

This assertion was erroneous, because for the understanding of

humanity, i.e., of men, the definition of an organism was

incorrectly constructed, while in humanity itself all actual signs

of organism,--the centre of feeling or consciousness, are lacking.

{2}

But, in spite of the arbitrariness and incorrectness of the

fundamental assumption of positive philosophy, it was accepted by

the so-called cultivated world with the greatest sympathy. In this

connection, one thing is worthy of note: that out of the works of

Comte, consisting of two parts, of positive philosophy and of

positive politics, only the first was adopted by the learned world,-

-that part which justifieth, on new promises, the existent evil of

human societies; but the second part, treating of the moral

obligations of altruism, arising from the recognition of mankind as

an organism, was regarded as not only of no importance, but as

trivial and unscientific. It was a repetition of the same thing

that had happened in the case of Kant's works. The "Critique of

Pure Reason" was adopted by the scientific crowd; but the "Critique

of Applied Reason," that part which contains the gist of moral

doctrine, was repudiated. In Kant's doctrine, that was accepted as

scientific which subserved the existent evil. But the positive

philosophy, which was accepted by the crowd, was founded on an

arbitrary and erroneous basis, was in itself too unfounded, and

therefore unsteady, and could not support itself alone. And so,

amid all the multitude of the idle plays of thought of the men

professing the so-called science, there presents itself an assertion

equally devoid of novelty, and equally arbitrary and erroneous, to

the effect that living beings, i.e., organisms, have had their rise

in each other,--not only one organism from another, but one from

many; i.e., that in a very long interval of time (in a million of

years, for instance), not only could a duck and a fish proceed from

one ancestor, but that one animal might result from a whole hive of

bees. And this arbitrary and erroneous assumption was accepted by

the learned world with still greater and more universal sympathy.

This assumption was arbitrary, because no one has ever seen how one

organism is made from another, and therefore the hypothesis as to

the origin of species will always remain an hypothesis, and not an

experimental fact. And this hypothesis was also erroneous, because

the decision of the question as to the origin of species--that they

have originated, in consequence of the law of heredity and fitness,

in the course of an interminably long time--is no solution at all,

but merely a re-statement of the problem in a new form.

According to Moses' solution of the question (in the dispute with

whom the entire significance of this theory lies), it appears that

the diversity of the species of living creatures proceeded according

to the will of God, and according to His almighty power; but

according to the theory of evolution, it appears that the difference

between living creatures arose by chance, and on account of varying

conditions of heredity and surroundings, through an endless period

of time. The theory of evolution, to speak in simple language,

merely asserts, that by chance, in an incalculably long period of

time, out of any thing you like, any thing else that you like may

develop.

This is no answer to the problem. And the same problem is

differently expressed: instead of will, chance is offered, and the

co-efficient of the eternal is transposed from the power to the

time. But this fresh assertion strengthened Comte's assertion.

And, moreover, according to the ingenuous confession of the founder

of Darwin's theory himself, his idea was aroused in him by the law

of Malthus; and he therefore propounded the theory of the struggle

of living creatures and people for existence, as the fundamental law

of every living thing. And lo! only this was needed by the throng

of idle people for their justification.

Two insecure theories, incapable of sustaining themselves on their

feet, upheld each other, and acquired the semblance of stability.

Both theories bore with them that idea which is precious to the

crowd, that in the existent evil of human societies, men are not to

blame, and that the existing order of things is that which should

prevail; and the new theory was adopted by the throng with entire

faith and unheard-of enthusiasm. And behold, on the strength of

these two arbitrary and erroneous hypotheses, accepted as dogmas of

belief, the new scientific doctrine was ratified.

Spencer, for example, in one of his first works, expresses this

doctrine thus:-

"Societies and organisms," he says, "are alike in the following

points:-

"1. In that, beginning as tiny aggregates, they imperceptibly grow

in mass, so that some of them attain to the size of ten thousand

times their original bulk.

"2. In that while they were, in the beginning, of such simple

structure, that they can be regarded as destitute of all structure,

they acquire during the period of their growth a constantly

increasing complication of structure.

"3. In that although in their early, undeveloped period, there

exists between them hardly any interdependence of parts, their parts

gradually acquire an interdependence, which eventually becomes so

strong, that the life and activity of each part becomes possible

only on condition of the life and activity of the remaining parts.

"4. In that life and the development of society are independent,

and more protracted than the life and development of any one of the

units constituting it, which are born, grow, act, reproduce

themselves, and die separately; while the political body formed from

them, continues to live generation after generation, developing in

mass in perfection and functional activity."

The points of difference between organisms and society go farther;

and it is proved that these differences are merely apparent, but

that organisms and societies are absolutely similar.

For the uninitiated man the question immediately presents itself:

"What are you talking about? Why is mankind an organism, or similar

to an organism?"

You say that societies resemble organisms in these four features;

but it is nothing of the sort. You only take a few features of the

organism, and beneath them you range human communities. You bring

forward four features of resemblance, then you take four features of

dissimilarity, which are, however, only apparent (according to you);

and you thence conclude that human societies can be regarded as

organisms. But surely, this is an empty game of dialectics, and

nothing more. On the same foundation, under the features of an

organism, you may range whatever you please. I will take the fist

thing that comes into my head. Let us suppose it to be a forest,--

the manner in which it sows itself in the plain, and spreads abroad.

1. Beginning with a small aggregate, it increases imperceptibly in

mass, and so forth. Exactly the same thing takes place in the

fields, when they gradually seed themselves down, and bring forth a

forest. 2. In the beginning the structure is simple: afterwards it

increases in complication, and so forth. Exactly the same thing

happens with the forest,--in the first place, there were only bitch-

trees, then came brush-wood and hazel-bushes; at first all grow

erect, then they interlace their branches. 3. The interdependence

of the parts is so augmented, that the life of each part depends on

the life and activity of the remaining parts. It is precisely so

with the forest,--the hazel-bush warms the tree-boles (cut it down,

and the other trees will freeze), the hazel-bush protects from the

wind, the seed-bearing trees carry on reproduction, the tall and

leafy trees afford shade, and the life of one tree depends on the

life of another. 4. The separate parts may die, but the whole

lives. Exactly the case with the forest. The forest does not mourn

one tree.

Having proved that, in accordance with this theory, you may regard

the forest as an organism, you fancy that you have proved to the

disciples of the organic doctrine the error of their definition.

Nothing of the sort. The definition which they give to the organism

is so inaccurate and so elastic that under this definition they may

include what they will. "Yes," they say; "and the forest may also

be regarded as an organism. The forest is mutual re-action of

individuals, which do not annihilate each other,--an aggregate; its

parts may also enter into a more intimate union, as the hive of bees

constitutes itself an organism." Then you will say, "If that is so,

then the birds and the insects and the grass of this forest, which

re-act upon each other, and do not destroy each other, may also be

regarded as one organism, in company with the trees." And to this

also they will agree. Every collection of living individuals, which

re-act upon each other, and do not destroy each other, may be

regarded as organisms, according to their theory. You may affirm a

connection and interaction between whatever you choose, and,

according to evolution, you may affirm, that, out of whatever you

please, any other thing that you please may proceed, in a very long

period of time.

And the most remarkable thing of all is, that this same identical

positive science recognizes the scientific method as the sign of

true knowledge, and has itself defined what it designates as the

scientific method.

By the scientific method it means common-sense.

And common-sense convicts it at every step. As soon as the Popes

felt that nothing holy remained in them, they called themselves most

holy.

As soon as science felt that no common-sense was left in her she

called herself sensible, that is to say, scientific science.

CHAPTER III.

Division of labor is the law of all existing things, and, therefore,

it should be present in human societies. It is very possible that

this is so; but still the question remains, Of what nature is that

division of labor which I behold in my human society? is it that

division of labor which should exist? And if people regard a

certain division of labor as unreasonable and unjust, then no

science whatever can convince men that that should exist which they

regard as unreasonable and unjust.

Division of labor is the condition of existence of organisms, and of

human societies; but what, in these human societies, is to be

regarded as an organic division of labor? And, to whatever extent

science may have investigated the division of labor in the cells of

worms, all these observations do not compel a man to acknowledge

that division of labor to be correct which his own sense and

conscience do not recognize as correct. No matter how convincing

may be the proofs of the division of labor of the cells in the

organisms studied, man, if he has not parted with his judgment, will

say, nevertheless, that a man should not weave calico all his life,

and that this is not division of labor, but persecution of the

people. Spencer and others say that there is a whole community of

weavers, and that the profession of weaving is an organic division

of labor. There are weavers; so, of course, there is such a

division of labor. It would be well enough to speak thus if the

colony of weavers had arisen by the free will of its member's; but

we know that it is not thus formed of their initiative, but that we

make it. Hence it is necessary to find out whether we have made

these weavers in accordance with an organic law, or with some other.

Men live. They support themselves by agriculture, as is natural to

all men. One man has set up a blacksmith's forge, and repaired his

plough; his neighbor comes to him, and asks him to mend his also,

and promises him in return either work or money. A third comes, and

a fourth; and in the community formed by these men, there arises the

following division of labor,--a blacksmith is created. Another man

has instructed his children well; his neighbor brings his children

to him, and requests him to teach them also, and a teacher is

created. But both blacksmith and teacher have been created, and

continue to be such, merely because they have been asked; and they

remain such as long as they are requested to be blacksmith and

teacher. If it should come to pass that many blacksmiths and

teachers should set themselves up, or that their work is not

requited, they will immediately, as commonsense demands and as

always happens when there is no occasion for disturbing the regular

course of division of labor,--they will immediately abandon their

trade, and betake themselves once more to agriculture.

Men who behave thus are guided by their sense, their conscience; and

hence we, the men endowed with sense and conscience, all assert that

such a division of labor is right. But if it should chance that the

blacksmiths were able to compel other people to work for them, and

should continue to make horse-shoes when they were not wanted, and

if the teachers should go on teaching when there was no one to

teach, then it is obvious to every sane man, as a man, i.e., as a

being endowed with reason and conscience, that this would not be

division, but appropriation, of labor. And yet precisely that sort

of activity is what is called division of labor by scientific

science. People do that which others do not think of requiring, and

demand that they shall be supported for so doing, and say that this

is just because it is division of labor.

That which constitutes the cause of the economical poverty of our

age is what the English call over-production (which means that a

mass of things are made which are of no use to anybody, and with

which nothing can be done).

It would be odd to see a shoemaker, who should consider that people

were bound to feed him because he incessantly made boots which had

been of no use to any one for a long time; but what shall we say of

those men who make nothing,--who not only produce nothing that is

visible, but nothing that is of use for people at large,--for whose

wares there are no customers, and who yet demand, with the same

boldness, on the ground of division of labor, that they shall be

supplied with fine food and drink, and that they shall be dressed

well? There may be, and there are, sorcerers for whose services a

demand makes itself felt, and for this purpose there are brought to

them pancakes and flasks; but it is difficult to imagine the

existence of sorcerers whose spells are useless to every one, and

who boldly demand that they shall be luxuriously supported because

they exercise sorcery. And it is the same in our world. And all

this comes about on the basis of that false conception of the

division of labor, which is defined not by reason and conscience,

but by observation, which men of science avow with such unanimity.

Division of labor has, in reality, always existed, and still exists;

but it is right only when man decides with his reason and his

conscience that it should be so, and not when he merely investigates

it. And reason and conscience decide the question for all men very

simply, unanimously, and in a manner not to be doubted. They always

decide it thus: that division of labor is right only when a special

branch of man's activity is so needful to men, that they, entreating

him to serve them, voluntarily propose to support him in requital

for that which he shall do for them. But, when a man can live from

infancy to the age of thirty years on the necks of others, promising

to do, when he shall have been taught, something extremely useful,

for which no one asks him; and when, from the age of thirty until

his death, he can live in the same manner, still merely on the

promise to do something, for which there has been no request, this

will not be division of labor (and, as a matter of fact, there is no

such thing in our society), but it will be what it already is,--

merely the appropriation, by force, of the toil of others; that same

appropriation by force of the toil of others which the philosophers

formerly designated by various names,--for instance, as

indispensable forms of life,--but which scientific science now calls

the organic division of labor.

The whole significance of scientific science lies in this alone. It

has now become a distributer of diplomas for idleness; for it alone,

in its sanctuaries, selects and determines what is parasitical, and

what is organic activity, in the social organism. Just as though

every man could not find this out for himself much more accurately

and more speedily, by taking counsel of his reason and his

conscience. It seems to men of scientific science, that there can

be no doubt of this, and that their activity is also indubitably

organic; they, the scientific and artistic workers, are the brain

cells, and the most precious cells in the whole organism.

Ever since men--reasoning beings--have existed, they have

distinguished good from evil, and have profited by the fact that men

have made this distinction before them; they have warred against

evil, and have sought the good, and have slowly but uninterruptedly

advanced in that path. And divers delusions have always stood

before men, hemming in this path, and having for their object to

demonstrate to them, that it was not necessary to do this, and that

it was not necessary to live as they were living. With fearful

conflict and difficulty, men have freed themselves from many

delusions. And behold, a new and a still more evil delusion has

sprung up in the path of mankind,--the scientific delusion.

This new delusion is precisely the same in nature as the old ones;

its gist lies in secretly leading astray the activity of our reason

and conscience, and of those who have lived before us, by something

external. In scientific science, this external thing is--

investigation.

The cunning of this science consists in this,--that, after pointing

out to men the coarsest false interpretations of the activity of the

reason and conscience of man, it destroys in them faith in their own

reason and conscience, and assures them that every thing which their

reason and conscience say to them, that all that these have said to

the loftiest representatives of man heretofore, ever since the world

has existed,--that all this is conventional and subjective. "All

this must be abandoned," they say; "it is impossible to understand

the truth by the reason, for we may be mistaken. But there exists

another unerring and almost mechanical path: it is necessary to

investigate facts."

But facts must be investigated on the foundation of scientific

science, i.e., of the two hypotheses of positivism and evolution,

which are not borne out by any thing, and which give themselves out

as undoubted truths. And the reigning science announces, with

delusive solemnity, that the solution of all problems of life is

possible only through the study of facts, of nature, and, in

particular, of organisms. The credulous mass of young people,

overwhelmed by the novelty of this authority, which has not yet been

overthrown or even touched by criticism, flings itself into the

study of natural sciences, into that sole path, which, according to

the assertion of the reigning science, can lead to the elucidation

of the problems of life.

But the farther the disciples proceed in this study, the farther and

farther does not only the possibility, but even the very idea, of

the solution of the problems of life withdraw from them, and the

more and more do they become accustomed, not so much to investigate,

as to believe in the assertions of other investigators (to believe

in cells, in protoplasm, in the fourth condition of bodies, and so

forth); the more and more does the form veil the contents from them;

the more and more do they lose the consciousness of good and evil,

and the capacity of understanding those expressions and definitions

of good and evil which have been elaborated through the whole

foregoing life of mankind; and the more and more do they appropriate

to themselves the special scientific jargon of conventional

expressions, which possesses no universally human significance; and

the deeper and deeper do they plunge into the debris of utterly

unilluminated investigations; the more and more do they lose the

power, not only of independent thought, but even of understanding

the fresh human thought of others, which lies beyond the bounds of

their Talmud. But the principal thing is, that they pass their best

years in getting disused to life; they grow accustomed to consider

their position as justifiable; and they convert themselves

physically into utterly useless parasites, and mentally they

dislocate their brains and become mental eunuchs. And in precisely

the same manner, according to the measure of their folly, do they

acquire self-conceit, which deprives them forever of all possibility

of return to a simple life of toil, to a simple, clear, and

universally human train of reasoning.

Division of labor always has existed in human communities, and will

probably always exist; but the question for us lies not in the fact

that it has existed, and that it will exist, but in this,--how are

we to govern ourselves so that this division shall be right? But if

we take investigation as our rule of action, we by this very act

repudiate all rule; then in that case we shall regard as right every

division of labor which we shall descry among men, and which appears

to us to be right--to which conclusion the prevailing scientific

science also leads.

Division of labor!

Some are busied in mental or moral, others in muscular or physical,

labor. With what confidence people enunciate this! They wish to

think so, and it seems to them that, in point of fact, a perfectly

regular exchange of services does take place.

But we, in our blindness, have so completely lost sight of the

responsibility which we have assumed, that we have even forgotten in

whose name our labor is prosecuted; and the very people whom we have

undertaken to serve have become the objects of our scientific and

artistic activity. We study and depict them for our amusement and

diversion. We have totally forgotten that what we need to do is not

to study and depict them, but to serve them. To such a degree have

we lost sight of this duty which we have taken upon us, that we have

not even noticed that what we have undertaken to perform in the

realm of science and art has been accomplished not by us, but by

others, and that our place has turned out to be occupied.

It proves that while we have been disputing, one about the

spontaneous origin of organisms, another as to what else there is in

protoplasm, and so on, the common people have been in need of

spiritual food; and the unsuccessful and rejected of art and

science, in obedience to the mandate of adventurers who have in view

the sole aim of profit, have begun to furnish the people with this

spiritual food, and still so furnish them. For the last forty years

in Europe, and for the last ten years with us here in Russia,

millions of books and pictures and song-books have been distributed,

and stalls have been opened, and the people gaze and sing and

receive spiritual nourishment, but not from us who have undertaken

to provide it; while we, justifying our idleness by that spiritual

food which we are supposed to furnish, sit by and wink at it.

But it is impossible for us to wink at it, for our last

justification is slipping from beneath our feet. We have become

specialized. We have our particular functional activity. We are

the brains of the people. They support us, and we have undertaken

to teach them. It is only under this pretence that we have excused

ourselves from work. But what have we taught them, and what are we

now teaching them? They have waited for years--for tens, for

hundreds of years. And we keep on diverting our minds with chatter,

and we instruct each other, and we console ourselves, and we have

utterly forgotten them. We have so entirely forgotten them, that

others have undertaken to instruct them, and we have not even

perceived it. We have spoken of the division of labor with such

lack of seriousness, that it is obvious that what we have said about

the benefits which we have conferred on the people was simply a

shameless evasion.

CHAPTER IV.

Science and art have arrogated to themselves the right of idleness,

and of the enjoyment of the labor of others, and have betrayed their

calling. And their errors have arisen merely because their

servants, having set forth a falsely conceived principle of the

division of labor, have recognized their own right to make use of

the labor of others, and have lost the significance of their

vocation; having taken for their aim, not the profit of the people,

but the mysterious profit of science and art, and delivered

themselves over to idleness and vice--not so much of the senses as

of the mind.

They say, "Science and art have bestowed a great deal on mankind."

Science and art have bestowed a great deal on mankind, not because

the men of art and science, under the pretext of a division of

labor, live on other people, but in spite of this.

The Roman Republic was powerful, not because her citizens had the

power to live a vicious life, but because among their number there

were heroic citizens. It is the same with art and science. Art and

science have bestowed much on mankind, but not because their

followers formerly possessed on rare occasions (and now possess on

every occasion) the possibility of getting rid of labor; but because

there have been men of genius, who, without making use of these

rights, have led mankind forward.

The class of learned men and artists, which has advanced, on the

fictitious basis of a division of labor, its demands to the right of

using the labors of others, cannot co-operate in the success of true

science and true art, because a lie cannot bring forth the truth.

We have become so accustomed to these, our tenderly reared or

weakened representatives of mental labor, that it seems to us

horrible that a man of science or an artist should plough or cart

manure. It seems to us that every thing would go to destruction,

and that all his wisdom would be rattled out of him in the cart, and

that all those grand picturesque images which he bears about in his

breast would be soiled in the manure; but we have become so inured

to this, that it does not strike us as strange that our servitor of

science--that is to say, the servant and teacher of the truth--by

making other people do for him that which he might do for himself,

passes half his time in dainty eating, in smoking, in talking, in

free and easy gossip, in reading the newspapers and romances, and in

visiting the theatres. It is not strange to us to see our

philosopher in the tavern, in the theatre, and at the ball. It is

not strange in our eyes to learn that those artists who sweeten and

ennoble our souls have passed their lives in drunkenness, cards, and

women, if not in something worse.

Art and science are very beautiful things; but just because they are

so beautiful they should not be spoiled by the compulsory

combination with them of vice: that is to say, a man should not get

rid of his obligation to serve his own life and that of other people

by his own labor. Art and science have caused mankind to progress.

Yes; but not because men of art and science, under the guise of

division of labor, have rid themselves of the very first and most

indisputable of human obligations,--to labor with their hands in the

universal struggle of mankind with nature.

"But only the division of labor, the freedom of men of science and

of art from the necessity of earning them living, has rendered

possible that remarkable success of science which we behold in our

day," is the answer to this. "If all were forced to till the soil,

those VAST results would not have been attained which have been

attained in our day; there would have been none of those STRIKING

successes which have so greatly augmented man's power over nature,

were it not for these astronomical discoveries WHICH ARE SO

ASTOUNDING TO THE MIND OF MAN, and which have added to the security

of navigation; there would be no steamers, no railways, none of

those WONDERFUL bridges, tunnels, steam-engines and telegraphs,

photography, telephones, sewing-machines, phonographs, electricity,

telescopes, spectroscopes, microscopes, chloroform, Lister's

bandages, and carbolic acid."

I will not enumerate every thing on which our age thus prides

itself. This enumeration and pride of enthusiasm over ourselves and

our exploits can be found in almost any newspaper and popular

pamphlet. This enthusiasm over ourselves is often repeated to such

a degree that none of us can sufficiently rejoice over ourselves,

that we are seriously convinced that art and science have never made

such progress as in our own time. And, as we are indebted for all

this marvellous progress to the division of labor, why not

acknowledge it?

Let us admit that the progress made in our day is noteworthy,

marvellous, unusual; let us admit that we are fortunate mortals to

live in such a remarkable epoch: but let us endeavor to appraise

this progress, not on the basis of our self-satisfaction, but of

that principle which defends itself with this progress,--the

division of labor. All this progress is very amazing; but by a

peculiarly unlucky chance, admitted even by the men of science, this

progress has not so far improved, but it has rather rendered worse,

the position of the majority, that is to say, of the workingman.

If the workingman can travel on the railway, instead of walking,

still that same railway has burned down his forest, has carried off

his grain under his very nose, and has brought his condition very

near to slavery--to the capitalist. If, thanks to steam-engines and

machines, the workingman can purchase inferior calico at a cheap

rate, on the other hand these engines and machines have deprived him

of work at home, and have brought him into a state of abject slavery

to the manufacturer. If there are telephones and telescopes, poems,

romances, theatres, ballets, symphonies, operas, picture-galleries,

and so forth, on the other hand the life of the workingman has not

been bettered by all this; for all of them, by the same unlucky

chance, are inaccessible to him.

So that, on the whole (and even men of science admit this), up to

the present time, all these remarkable discoveries and products of

science and art have certainly not ameliorated the condition of the

workingman, if, indeed, they have not made it worse. So that, if we

set against the question as to the reality of the progress attained

by the arts and sciences, not our own rapture, but that standard

upon the basis of which the division of labor is defended,--the good

of the laboring man,--we shall see that we have no firm foundations

for that self-satisfaction in which we are so fond of indulging.

The peasant travels on the railway, the woman buys calico, in the

isba (cottage) there will be a lamp instead of a pine-knot, and the

peasant will light his pipe with a match,--this is convenient; but

what right have I to say that the railway and the factory have

proved advantageous to the people?

If the peasant rides on the railway, and buys calico, a lamp, and

matches, it is only because it is impossible to forbid the peasant's

buying them; but surely we are all aware that the construction of

railways and factories has never been carried out for the benefit of

the lower classes: so why should a casual convenience which the

workingman enjoys lead to a proof of the utility of all these

institutions for the people?

There is something useful in every injurious thing. After a

conflagration, one can warm one's self, and light one's pipe with a

firebrand; but why declare that the conflagration is beneficial?

Men of art and science might say that their pursuits are beneficial

to the people, only when men of art and science have assigned to

themselves the object of serving the people, as they now assign

themselves the object of serving the authorities and the

capitalists. We might say this if men of art and science had taken

as their aim the needs of the people; but there are none such. All

scientists are busy with their priestly avocations, out of which

proceed investigations into protoplasm, the spectral analyses of

stars, and so on. But science has never once thought of what axe or

what hatchet is the most profitable to chop with, what saw is the

most handy, what is the best way to mix bread, from what flour, how

to set it, how to build and heat an oven, what food and drink, and

what utensils, are the most convenient and advantageous under

certain conditions, what mushrooms may be eaten, how to propagate

them, and how to prepare them in the most suitable manner. And yet

all this is the province of science.

I am aware, that, according to its own definition, science ought to

be useless, i.e., science for the sake of science; but surely this

is an obvious evasion. The province of science is to serve the

people. We have invented telegraphs, telephones, phonographs; but

what advances have we effected in the life, in the labor, of the

people? We have reckoned up two millions of beetles! And we have

not tamed a single animal since biblical times, when all our animals

were already domesticated; but the reindeer, the stag, the

partridge, the heath-cock, all remain wild.

Our botanists have discovered the cell, and in the cell protoplasm,

and in that protoplasm still something more, and in that atom yet

another thing. It is evident that these occupations will not end

for a long time to come, because it is obvious that there can be no

end to them, and therefore the scientist has no time to devote to

those things which are necessary to the people. And therefore,

again, from the time of Egyptian and Hebrew antiquity, when wheat

and lentils had already been cultivated, down to our own times, not

a single plant has been added to the food of the people, with the

exception of the potato, and that was not obtained by science.

Torpedoes have been invented, and apparatus for taxation, and so

forth. But the spinning-whined, the woman's weaving-loom, the

plough, the hatchet, the chain, the rake, the bucket, the well-

sweep, are exactly the same as they were in the days of Rurik; and

if there has been any change, then that change has not been effected

by scientific people.

And it is the same with the arts. We have elevated a lot of people

to the rank of great writers; we have picked these writers to

pieces, and have written mountains of criticism, and criticism on

the critics, and criticism on the critics of the critics. And we

have collected picture-galleries, and have studied different schools

of art in detail; and we have so many symphonies and orchestras and

operas, that it is becoming difficult even for us to listen to them.

But what have we added to the popular bylini [the epic songs],

legends, tales, songs? What music, what pictures, have we given to

the people?

On the Nikolskaya books are manufactured for the people, and

harmonicas in Tula; and in neither have we taken any part. The

falsity of the whole direction of our arts and sciences is more

striking and more apparent in precisely those very branches, which,

it would seem, should, from their very nature, be of use to the

people, and which, in consequence of their false attitude, seem

rather injurious than useful. The technologist, the physician, the

teacher, the artist, the author, should, in virtue of their very

callings, it would seem, serve the people. And, what then? Under

the present regime, they can do nothing but harm to the people.

The technologist or the mechanic has to work with capital. Without

capital he is good for nothing. All his acquirements are such that

for their display he requires capital, and the exploitation of the

laboring-man on the largest scale; and--not to mention that he is

trained to live, at the lowest, on from fifteen hundred to two

thousand a year, and that, therefore, he cannot go to the country,

where no one can give him such wages,--he is, by virtue of his very

occupation, unfitted for serving the people. He knows how to

calculate the highest mathematical arch of a bridge, how to

calculate the force and transfer of the motive power, and so on; but

he is confounded by the simplest questions of a peasant: how to

improve a plough or a cart, or how to make irrigating canals. All

this in the conditions of life in which the laboring man finds

himself. Of this, he neither knows nor understands any thing,--

less, indeed, than the very stupidest peasant. Give him workshops,

all sorts of workmen at his desire, an order for a machine from

abroad, and he will get along. But how to devise means of

lightening toil, under the conditions of labor of millions of men,--

this is what he does not and can not know; and because of his

knowledge, his habits, and his demands on life, he is unfitted for

this business.

In a still worse predicament is the physician. His fancied science

is all so arranged, that he only knows how to heal those persons who

do nothing. He requires an incalculable quantity of expensive

preparations, instruments, drugs, and hygienic apparatus.

He has studied with celebrities in the capitals, who only retain

patients who can be cured in the hospital, or who, in the course of

their cure, can purchase the appliances requisite for healing, and

even go at once from the North to the South, to some baths or other.

Science is of such a nature, that every rural physic-man laments

because there are no means of curing working-men, because he is so

poor that he has not the means to place the sick man in the proper

hygienic conditions; and at the same time this physician complains

that there are no hospitals, and that he cannot get through with his

work, that he needs assistants, more doctors and practitioners.

What is the inference? This: that the people's principal lack,

from which diseases arise, and spread abroad, and refuse to be

healed, is the lack of means of subsistence. And here Science,

under the banner of the division of labor, summons her warriors to

the aid of the people. Science is entirely arranged for the wealthy

classes, and it has adopted for its task the healing of the people

who can obtain every thing for themselves; and it attempts to heal

those who possess no superfluity, by the same means.

But there are no means, and therefore it is necessary to take them

from the people who are ailing, and pest-stricken, and who cannot

recover for lack of means. And now the defenders of medicine for

the people say that this matter has been, as yet, but little

developed. Evidently it has been but little developed, because if

(which God forbid!) it had been developed, and that through

oppressing the people,--instead of two doctors, midwives, and

practitioners in a district, twenty would have settled down, since

they desire this, and half the people would have died through the

difficulty of supporting this medical staff, and soon there would be

no one to heal.

Scientific co-operation with the people, of which the defenders of

science talk, must be something quite different. And this co-

operation which should exist has not yet begun. It will begin when

the man of science, technologist or physician, will not consider it

legal to take from people--I will not say a hundred thousand, but

even a modest ten thousand, or five hundred rubles for assisting

them; but when he will live among the toiling people, under the same

conditions, and exactly as they do, then he will be able to apply

his knowledge to the questions of mechanics, technics, hygiene, and

the healing of the laboring people. But now science, supporting

itself at the expense of the working-people, has entirely forgotten

the conditions of life among these people, ignores (as it puts it)

these conditions, and takes very grave offence because its fancied

knowledge finds no adherents among the people.

The domain of medicine, like the domain of technical science, still

lies untouched. All questions as to how the time of labor is best

divided, what is the best method of nourishment, with what, in what

shape, and when it is best to clothe one's self, to shoe one's self,

to counteract dampness and cold, how best to wash one's self, to

feed the children, to swaddle them, and so on, in just those

conditions in which the working-people find themselves,--all these

questions have not yet been propounded.

The same is the case with the activity of the teachers of science,--

pedagogical teachers. Exactly in the same manner science has so

arranged this matter, that only wealthy people are able to study

science, and teachers, like technologists and physicians, cling to

money.

And this cannot be otherwise, because a school built on a model plan

(as a general rule, the more scientifically built the school, the

more costly it is), with pivot chains, and globes, and maps, and

library, and petty text-books for teachers and scholars and

pedagogues, is a sort of thing for which it would be necessary to

double the taxes in every village. This science demands. The

people need money for their work; and the more there is needed, the

poorer they are.

Defenders of science say: "Pedagogy is even now proving of

advantage to the people, but give it a chance to develop, and then

it will do still better." Yes, if it does develop, and instead of

twenty schools in a district there are a hundred, and all

scientific, and if the people support these schools, they will grow

poorer than ever, and they will more than ever need work for their

children's sake. "What is to be done?" they say to this. The

government will build the schools, and will make education

obligatory, as it is in Europe; but again, surely, the money is

taken from the people just the same, and it will be harder to work,

and they will have less leisure for work, and there will be no

education even by compulsion. Again the sole salvation is this:

that the teacher should live under the conditions of the working-

men, and should teach for that compensation which they give him

freely and voluntarily.

Such is the false course of science, which deprives it of the power

of fulfilling its obligation, which is, to serve the people.

But in nothing is this false course of science so obviously

apparent, as in the vocation of art, which, from its very

significance, ought to be accessible to the people. Science may

fall back on its stupid excuse, that science acts for science, and

that when it turns out learned men it is laboring for the people;

but art, if it is art, should be accessible to all the people, and

in particular to those in whose name it is executed. And our

definition of art, in a striking manner, convicts those who busy

themselves with art, of their lack of desire, lack of knowledge, and

lack of power, to be useful to the people.

The painter, for the production of his great works, must have a

studio of at least such dimensions that a whole association of

carpenters (forty in number) or shoemakers, now sickening or

stifling in lairs, would be able to work in it. But this is not

all; he must have a model, costumes, travels. Millions are expended

on the encouragement of art, and the products of this art are both

incomprehensible and useless to the people. Musicians, in order to

express their grand ideas, must assemble two hundred men in white

neckties, or in costumes, and spend hundreds of thousands of rubles

for the equipment of an opera. And the products of this art cannot

evoke from the people--even if the latter could at any time enjoy

it--any thing except amazement and ennui.

Writers--authors--it appears, do not require surroundings, studios,

models, orchestras, and actors; but it then appears that the author

needs (not to mention comfort in his quarters) all the dainties of

life for the preparation of his great works, travels, palaces,

cabinets, libraries, the pleasures of art, visits to theatres,

concerts, the baths, and so on. If he does not earn a fortune for

himself, he is granted a pension, in order that he may compose the

better. And again, these compositions, so prized by us, remain

useless lumber for the people, and utterly unserviceable to them.

And if still more of these dealers in spiritual nourishment are

developed further, as men of science desire, and a studio is erected

in every village; if an orchestra is set up, and authors are

supported in those conditions which artistic people regard as

indispensable for themselves,--I imagine that the working-classes

will sooner take an oath never to look at any pictures, never to

listen to a symphony, never to read poetry or novels, than to feed

all these persons.

And why, apparently, should art not be of service to the people? In

every cottage there are images and pictures; every peasant man and

woman sings; many own harmonicas; and all recite stories and verses,

and many read. It is as if those two things which are made for each

other--the lock and the key--had parted company; they have sprung so

far apart, that not even the possibility of uniting them presents

itself. Tell the artist that he should paint without a studio,

model, or costumes, and that he should paint five-kopek pictures,

and he will say that that is tantamount to abandoning his art, as he

understands it. Tell the musician that he should play on the

harmonica, and teach the women to sing songs; say to the poet, to

the author, that he ought to cast aside his poems and romances, and

compose song-books, tales, and stories, comprehensible to the

uneducated people,--they will say that you are mad.

The service of the people by science and art will only be performed

when people, dwelling in the midst of the common folk, and, like the

common folk, putting forward no demands, claiming no rights, shall

offer to the common folk their scientific and artistic services; the

acceptance or rejection of which shall depend wholly on the will of

the common folk.

It is said that the activity of science and art has aided in the

forward march of mankind,--meaning by this activity, that which is

now called by that name; which is the same as saying that an

unskilled banging of oars on a vessel that is floating with the

tide, which merely hinders the progress of the vessel, is assisting

the movement of the ship. It only retards it. The so-called

division of labor, which has become in our day the condition of

activity of men of science and art, was, and has remained, the chief

cause of the tardy forward movement of mankind.

The proofs of this lie in that confession of all men of science,

that the gains of science and art are inaccessible to the laboring

masses, in consequence of the faulty distribution of riches. The

irregularity of this distribution does not decrease in proportion to

the progress of science and art, but only increases. Men of art and

science assume an air of deep pity for this unfortunate circumstance

which does not depend upon them. But this unfortunate circumstance

is produced by themselves; for this irregular distribution of wealth

flows solely from the theory of the division of labor.

Science maintains the division of labor as a unalterable law; it

sees that the distribution of wealth, founded on the division of

labor, is wrong and ruinous; and it affirms that its activity, which

recognizes the division of labor, will lead people to bliss. The

result is, that some people make use of the labor of others; but

that, if they shall make use of the labor of others for a very long

period of time, and in still larger measure, then this wrongful

distribution of wealth, i.e., the use of the labor of others, will

come to an end.

Men stand beside a constantly swelling spring of water, and are

occupied with the problem of diverting it to one side, away from the

thirsty people, and they assert that they are producing this water,

and that soon enough will be collected for all. But this water

which has flowed, and which still flows unceasingly, and nourishes

all mankind, not only is not the result of the activity of the men

who, standing at its source, turn it aside, but this water flows and

gushes out, in spite of the efforts of these men to obstruct its

flow.

There have always existed a true science, and a true art; but true

science and art are not such because they called themselves by that

name. It always seems to those who claim at any given period to be

the representatives of science and art, that they have performed,

and are performing, and--most of all--that they will presently

perform, the most amazing marvels, and that beside them there never

has been and there is not any science or any art. Thus it seemed to

the sophists, the scholastics, the alchemists, the cabalists, the

talmudists; and thus it seems to our own scientific science, and to

our art for the sake of art.

CHAPTER V.

"But art,--science! You repudiate art and science; that is, you

repudiate that by which mankind lives!" People are constantly

making this--it is not a reply--to me, and they employ this mode of

reception in order to reject my deductions without examining into

them. "He repudiates science and art, he wants to send people back

again into a savage state; so what is the use of listening to him

and of talking to him?" But this is unjust. I not only do not

repudiate art and science, but, in the name of that which is true

art and true science, I say that which I do say; merely in order

that mankind may emerge from that savage state into which it will

speedily fall, thanks to the erroneous teaching of our time,--only

for this purpose do I say that which I say.

Art and science are as indispensable as food and drink and

clothing,--more indispensable even; but they become so, not because

we decide that what we designate as art and science are

indispensable, but simply because they really are indispensable to

people.

Surely, if hay is prepared for the bodily nourishment of men, the

fact that we are convinced that hay is the proper food for man will

not make hay the food of man. Surely I cannot say, "Why do not you

eat hay, when it is the indispensable food?" Food is indispensable,

but it may happen that that which I offer is not food at all. This

same thing has occurred with our art and science. It seems to us,

that if we add to a Greek word the word "logy," and call that a

science, it will be a science; and, if we call any abominable thing-

-like the dancing of nude females--by a Greek word, choreography,

that that is art, and that it will be art. But no matter how much

we may say this, the business with which we occupy ourselves when we

count beetles, and investigate the chemical constituents of the

stars in the Milky Way, when we paint nymphs and compose novels and

symphonies,--our business will not become either art or science

until such time as it is accepted by those people for whom it is

wrought.

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. {3}

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.

Footnote:

{1} An omission by the censor, which I am unable to supply. TRANS.

{2} 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.

{3} v prikusku, when a lump of sugar is held in the teeth instead

of being put into the tea.