The Complete Plays of Leo Tolstoy (Annotated). Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ He found one poor old man to whom he gave five rubles. He gave the rest to a trustworthy man, for distribution in the neighborhood, as he could find no proper subjects for charity himself, and as those who begged of him were too well known to him, and in a roistering carnival state. Thus ended his scheme of benevolence, and he went off to the country, irritated with others because he had done a stupid and unprofitable deed. But though his experimental philanthropy was at an end, the thoughts evoked by it and the sentiments with which it had inspired him did not cease, and the inward conflict proceeded with redoubled vigor.

      In the country, he says, he had done very little for the poor, but the demands upon him were so moderate that this little created an atmosphere of love and union with the people, which enabled him to believe what he had always heard, namely, that wealth is the gift of God, and that one can help the poor while continuing a life of luxury. A short personal investigation of city poverty convinced him that these wretched working classes could not be helped, because the very fact of their toil attached them to life more closely than he was himself attached, and because their chief misfortune lay in their being exactly the same as himself. For a long time, a false shame, and a liking for the self-satisfaction of feeling himself to be a benefactor, prevented his abandoning his attempts to render material aid. His mistake, which it took him three years longer to discover, lay in thinking that in order to live a good life it was necessary to amend the lives of others, not his own. The result of his reflections has been suppressed by the censor. It is, that the first cause of peculiar poverty of the city, which he was unable to alleviate, lies in the fact that he deprives the country people of their necessaries, and carries them off to town with him. The second cause is, that he employs the goods which he has collected in the village in senseless luxury, thereby demoralizing those country people who follow him thither, in the hope of in some way recovering a portion of their property. One day, as he was talking to his sympathizing sister, and to a peasant named Siutaeff, the latter gave him the first real gleam of light on the subject of true charity, and as to the reason why Tolstoi had been unsuccessful with his gifts of money. "True charity," said Siutaeff, "consists in teaching the poor. Take your proportion of the poor, work beside them in the fields, and they will learn; eat at the same table with them, and let them hear your words." At this point the censor intervenes, and cuts out over a thousand words containing reflections on this theme. Every effort in the life of the wealthy, says Tolstoi, from their food, clothing, and dwellings, down to their cleanliness and their culture, is directed towards keeping the poor at a distance, and nine tenths of their money is spent in attaining this object alone. His socialistic utterances upon this subject are delightfully unconventional, but those on cleanliness, which is regarded as a moral virtue, though in reality only valued as a mark of class distinction, are of the most radical sort. "White hands love other people's work," is the proverb which he takes for his motto. The popular idea of the grades among the upper classes is thus defined: Culture signifies fashionable clothing, political conversation, and clean hands. In the circle next above, a knowledge of French, the ability to play the piano and to write a letter in Russian free from orthographical errors, and a "still greater degree of outward cleanliness" are the requisites. The next step in the social scale brings a knowledge of English, a diploma from one of the higher institutes of learning, and still greater personal cleanliness. "I am convinced," he says, "that between the poor and the rich there rises this wall of cleanliness and culture, and that in order to assist the poor we must break down this wall, first of all, adopt the plan of Siutaeff, and receive the poor among ourselves."

      Another of Count Tolstoi's experiences puzzled him not a little. If he gave a beggar a few kopeks, when requested, without stopping to speak to him, the beggar looked grateful, and the Count was conscious of an agreeable sense of benevolence himself. But if he conversed with the man he felt obliged to give more, and the more he gave the more displeased the beggar appeared. The gift of ten rubles caused the beggar to look as though he had been insulted, and to walk off without saying so much as "Thank you," leaving Tolstoi feeling conscience-stricken and guilty. He concludes that this is the result of deliberately abandoning the rôle of a good-natured passer-by, and assuming that of a kind-hearted man. The solution of this puzzle was furnished him by a little scene at his country place, which the censor has seen fit to omit. He wanted twenty kopeks to give to a tramp, and sent his son to the house to borrow it of some one. It was lent by the cook. Shortly afterwards Tolstoi wanted another twenty kopeks for a tramp, and went to the kitchen to see if the cook cold change a ruble for him. The cook called to his wife to take the money, and she, supposing that it was a gift, kissed Tolstoi's hand, whereupon the latter fled from the kitchen, groaning with shame, and did not undeceive her. The conclusion which he comes to is, that if any man asks three kopeks, or twenty, or even several rubles, one must give them, if one has them, this being merely a "matter of politeness, and not charity," with which view the censor, evidently, does not agree.

      When Tolstoi first went to Moscow to live, he took up the habit of going to the Sparrow Hills to saw wood with a couple of peasants, for the sake of the exercise. One night he walked into town with them, and gave twenty kopeks to an old man who begged of them, thinking what a good impression such charity would make on Semyon, one of the peasants. Semyon pulled out his purse, gave the man a three-kopek piece, and asked for two kopeks in change. The man had but one, and after a momentary hesitation Semyon took off his cap, crossed himself, and went on, leaving the man the money. This set Tolstoi to thinking. Semyon had a wife and two children, and no reserve fund; Tolstoy had about 600,000 rubles saved up. In order to proportion his alms to Semyon's, Tolstoy reckoned that he should have given 3000 rubles, have asked 2000 in change, and then, leaving it all, have crossed himself, and proceeded quietly with his conversation. His deductions do not meet with the favor of the censor, who has cut out some reflections on the source of Tolstoi's fortune. "A part," says the author, "I inherited from my father. The peasant sold his last sheep to furnish me with it. Another part has come from the sale of my books. If my books are injurious, then I only lead people astray with them by selling them, and the money which I receive for them is ill-gained; but if they are helpful to people, my case is even worse. I do not give them to people, but I say, 'Give me seventeen rubles, and then I will give them to you.' And as the peasant sells his last sheep in the country, so here the poor student, the teacher, every poor man, deprives himself of necessaries in order to give me this money. And then I take this money to the city, and only give it to poor men when they comply with my shims, and come to town to clean my sidewalks, my lamps, my boots, and to toil in factories for my benefit. And I get as much as I can out of them, and give them as little as possible. I have erred so far that I have regarded this grasping of thousands with one hand, and this squandering of kopeks with the other, on any one who might strike my fancy, as good. It is no wonder that I was ashamed of myself." Very little of the following chapter meets with the approval of the censor. It contains comparisons of the ways of the rich - the Demidoffs and other families being mentioned by name, the bankers, merchants, and the land-owners, to which latter class the writer himself belongs - with those of the poor. "I go to help the poor," he says. "Who is poorer than I? No one. … I am a weak, good-for-nothing parasite, who can exist only under special conditions; who can exist only when thousands of people toil for the support of this life, which is useful to no one. … I know how to do nothing but eat, and talk, and listen, and write, and sleep. … The only wonder is that I should ever have had so stupid a thought as helping people who are good for something," is his conclusion. "I have never done anything in my life. I do nothing, and never shall do anything except cut off coupons, and yet I firmly believe that money represents labor. This is amazing! Talk of lunatics after that!" he exclaims at the conclusion of an earnest argument that money is only a new form of slavery. The root of all slavery is the use of the labor of others; and having once perceived the "immorality" of his position, Count Tolstoi resolved to use no more of his money to compel slavery, to do everything for himself, or to do without it. "This simple and inevitable deduction enters into all the details of my life," he says. "It alters it completely, at once frees me from those moral sufferings which I experienced at the sight of the sufferings and vice of men, and instantly annihilates all those causes of my inability to help the poor which I discovered while seeking the reason of my failure." These causes are, the herding together of the poor in towns, the isolation of the rich from the poor, and the shame consequent on the consciousness of being wrongfully in possession of the money with which he tried to assist the poor; money, being СКАЧАТЬ