ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 28

      LEVIN felt intolerably bored by the ladies that evening. He was more than ever excited by the thought that the dissatisfaction with work on the land which he now experienced was not an exceptional state of mind, but the result of the condition of agriculture in Russia generally, and that some arrangement that would make the labourers work as they did for the peasant at the halfway-house was not an idle dream but a problem it was necessary to solve. And he felt that it could be solved, and that he must try to do it.

      Having said good-night to the ladies and promised to stay a whole day longer in order to ride with them and see an interesting landslide in the State forest, Levin before going to bed went to his host’s study to borrow the books on the labour question which Sviyazhsky had offered him. Sviyazhsky’s study was an enormous room lined with book cupboards. There were two tables in it, one a massive writing-table, the other a round one on which lay a number of newspapers and journals in different languages, arranged as if they were mats round the lamp in the centre. Beside the writing-table was a stand with gold-labelled drawers containing various business papers.

      Sviyazhsky got down the books and settled himself in a rocking-chair.

      ‘What is it you are looking at?’ he asked Levin, who, having stopped at the round table, was looking at one of the journals.

      ‘Oh, there is a very interesting article there,’ he added, referring to the journal Levin held in his hand. ‘It turns out that the chief agent in the Partition of Poland was not Frederick at all,’ he added with gleeful animation. ‘It turns out …’

      And with characteristic clearness he briefly recounted these new and very important and interesting discoveries. Though at present Levin was more interested in agriculture than in anything else, he asked himself while listening to his host, ‘What is there inside him? And why, why does the Partition of Poland interest him?’ And when Sviyazhsky had finished he could not help asking him, ‘Well, and what of it?’ But Sviyazhsky had no answer to give. It was interesting that ‘it turns out’, and he did not consider it necessary to explain why it interested him.

      ‘Yes, and I was greatly interested by that cross old landowner,’ said Levin with a sigh. ‘He is intelligent and said much that is true.’

      ‘Oh, pooh! He is secretly a rooted partisan of serfdom, like all of them!’ said Sviyazhsky.

      ‘Whose Marshal you are …’

      ‘Yes, but I marshal them in the opposite direction,’ said Sviyazhsky, laughing.

      ‘What interests me very much is this,’ said Levin: ‘he is right when he says that our rational farming is not a success and that only money-lending methods, like that quiet fellow’s, or very elementary methods, pay, … Whose fault is it?’

      ‘Our own, of course! but it is not true that it does not pay. Vasilchikov makes it pay.’

      ‘A factory… .’

      ‘I still cannot understand what you are surprised at. The people are on so low a level both of material and moral development that they are certain to oppose what is good for them. In Europe rational farming answers because the people are educated; therefore we must educate our people — that’s all.’

      ‘But how is one to educate them?’

      ‘To educate the people three things are necessary: schools, schools, schools!’

      ‘But you yourself just said that the people are on a low level of material development: how will schools help that?’

      ‘Do you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to a sick man: “You should try an aperient.” — “I have, and it made me worse.” “Try leeches.” — “I have, and they made me worse.” “Well, then you had better pray to God.” — “I have, and that made me worse!” It is just the same with us. I mention political economy; you say it makes things worse. I mention Socialism; you say, “still worse”. Education? “Worse and worse.” ’

      ‘But how will schools help?’

      ‘By giving people other wants.’

      ‘Now that I never could understand,’ replied Levin, hotly. ‘How will schools help the peasants to improve their material conditions? You say that schools and education will give them new wants. So much the worse, for they won’t be able to satisfy them. And in what way knowing how to add and subtract and to say the catechism will help them to improve their material condition, I never could understand! The other evening I met a woman with an infant in her arms and asked her where she was going. She replied that she had been to see the “wise woman” because her boy was fractious, and she took him to be cured. I asked her what cure the wise woman had for fractiousness. “She puts the baby on the perch among the fowls and says something.” ’

      ‘Well, there is your answer! Education will stop them from carrying their children to the roosts to cure them of fractiousness,’ said Sviyazhsky with a merry smile.

      ‘Oh, not at all!’ said Levin, crossly. ‘That treatment seems to me just a parallel to treating the peasants by means of schools. The people are poor and ignorant, this we know as surely as the woman knows that the child is fractious because it cries. But why schools should cure the ills of poverty and ignorance is just as incomprehensible as why hens on their perches should cure fractiousness. What needs to be cured is their poverty.’

      ‘Well, in this at least you agree with Spencer, whom you dislike so much; he too says that education may result from increased well-being and comfort — from frequent ablutions, as he expresses it — but not from the ability to read and reckon …’

      ‘Well, I am very glad, or rather very sorry, that I coincide with Spencer; but it is a thing I have long known. Schools are no remedy, but the remedy would be an economic organization under which the people would be better off and have more leisure. Then schools would come.’

      ‘Yet all over Europe education is now compulsory.’

      ‘And how do you agree with Spencer yourself in this matter?’

      A frightened look flashed up in Sviyazhsky’s eyes and he said with a smile:

      ‘Yes, that cure for fractiousness is splendid! Did you really hear it yourself?’

      Levin saw that he would not succeed in finding a connection between this man’s life and his thoughts. It was evidently all the same to him what conclusions his reasoning led to: he only needed the process itself, and he did not like it when the process of reasoning led him up a blind alley. That he disliked and evaded by turning the conversation to something pleasantly jocular.

      All the impressions of that day, beginning with the impression of the peasant at the halfway-house which seemed to serve as a foundation for all СКАЧАТЬ