Part Three: Chapter 3

by Leo Tolstoy

　　"Do you know I've been thinking about you," said SergeyIvanovitch. "It's beyond everything what's being done in thedistrict, according to what this doctor tells me. He's a veryintelligent fellow. And as I've told you before, I tell youagain: it's not right for you not to go to the meetings, andaltogether to keep out of the district business. If decentpeople won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong.We pay the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are noschools, nor district nurses, nor midwives, nor drugstores--nothing."

　　"Well, I did try, you know," Levin said slowly and unwillingly."I can't! and so there's no help for it."

　　"But why can't you? I must own I can't make it out.Idifference, incapacity--I won't admit; surely it's not simplylaziness?"

　　"None of those things. I've tried, and I see I can do nothing,"said Levin.

　　He had hardly grasped what his brother was saying. Lookingtowards the plough land across the river, he made out somethingblack, but he could not distinguish whether it was a horse or thebailiff on horseback.

　　"Why is it you can do nothing? You made an attempt and didn'tsucceed, as you think, and you give in. How can you have solittle self-respect?"

　　"Self-respect!" said Levin, stung to the quick by his brother'swords; "I don't understand. If they'd told me at college thatother people understood the integral calculus, and I didn't,then pride would have come in. But in this case one wants firstto be convinced that one has certain qualifications for this sortof business, and especially that all this business is of greatimportance."

　　"What! do you mean to say it's not of importance?" said SergeyIvanovitch, stung to the quick too at his brother's consideringanything of no importance that interested him, and still more athis obviously paying little attention to what he was saying.

　　"I don't think it important; it does not take hold of me, Ican't help it," answered Levin, making out that what he saw wasthe bailiff, and that the bailiff seemed to be letting thepeasants go off the ploughed land. They were turning the ploughover. "Can they have finished ploughing?" he wondered.

　　"Come, really though," said the elder brother, with a frown onhis handsome, clever face, "there's a limit to everything. It'svery well to be original and genuine, and to dislike everythingconventional--I know all about that; but really, what you'resaying either has no meaning, or it has a very wrong meaning.How can you think it a matter of no importance whether thepeasant, whom you love as you assert..."

　　"I never did assert it," thought Konstantin Levin.

　　"...dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women starve thechildren, and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helplessin the hands of every village clerk, while you have at yourdisposal a means of helping them, and don't help them because toyour mind it's of no importance."

　　And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either youare so undeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or youwon't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to doit.

　　Konstantin Levin felt that there was no course open to him but tosubmit, or to confess to a lack of zeal for the public good. Andthis mortified him and hurt his feelings.

　　"It's both," he said resolutely: "I don't see that it waspossible..."

　　"What! was it impossible, if the money were properly laid out, toprovide medical aid?"

　　"Impossible, as it seems to me.... For the three thousand squaremiles of our district, what with our thaws, and the storms, andthe work in the fields, I don't see how it is possible toprovide medical aid all over. And besides, I don't believe inmedicine."

　　"Oh, well, that's unfair...I can quote to you thousands ofinstances.... But the schools, anyway."

　　"Why have schools?"

　　"What do you mean? Can there be two opinions of the advantage ofeducation? If it's a good thing for you, it's a good thing foreveryone."

　　Konstantin Levin felt himself morally pinned against a wall, andso he got hot, and unconsciously blurted out the chief cause ofhis indifference to public business.

　　"Perhaps it may all be very good; but why should I worry myselfabout establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of,and schools to which I shall never send my children, to whicheven the peasants don't want to send their children, and to whichI've no very firm faith that they ought to send them?" said he.

　　Sergey Ivanovitch was for a minute surprised at this unexpectedview of the subject; but he promptly made a new plan of attack.He was silent for a little, drew out a hook, threw it in again,and turned to his brother smiling.

　　"Come, now.... In the first place, the dispensary is needed. Weourselves sent for the district doctor for Agafea Mihalovna."

　　"Oh, well, but I fancy her wrist will never be straight again."

　　"That remains to be proved.... Next, the peasant who can readand write is as a workman of more use and value to you."

　　"No, you can ask anyone you like," Konstantin Levin answeredwith decision, "the man that can read and write is much inferioras a workman. And mending the highroads is an impossibility; andas soon as they put up bridges they're stolen."

　　"Still, that's not the point," said Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning.He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that werecontinually skipping from one thing to another, introducing newand disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to which toreply. "Do you admit that education is a benefit for thepeople?"

　　"Yes, I admit it," said Levin without thinking, and he wasconscious immediately that he had said what he did not think. Hefelt that if he admitted that, it would be proved that he hadbeen talking meaningless rubbish. How it would be proved hecould not tell, but he knew that this would inevitably belogically proved to him, and he awaited the proofs.

　　The argument turned out to be far simpler than he had expected.

　　"If you admit that it is a benefit," said Sergey Ivanovitch,"then, as an honest man, you cannot help caring about it andsympathizing with the movement, and so wishing to work for it."

　　"But I still do not admit this movement to be just," saidKonstantin Levin, reddening a little.

　　"What! But you said just now..."

　　"That's to say, I don't admit it's being either good orpossible."

　　"That you can't tell without making the trial."

　　"Well, supposing that's so," said Levin, though he did notsuppose so at all, "supposing that is so, still I don't see, allthe same, what I'm to worry myself about it for."

　　"How so?"

　　"No; since we are talking, explain it to me from thephilosophical point of view," said Levin.

　　"I can't see where philosophy comes in," said Sergey Ivanovitch,in a tone, Levin fancied, as though he did not admit hisbrother's right to talk about philosophy. And that irritatedLevin.

　　"I'll tell you, then," he said with heat, "I imagine themainspring of all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Nowin the local institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing thatcould conduce to my prosperity, and the roads are not better andcould not be better; my horses carry me well enough over badones. Doctors and dispensaries are no use to me. An arbitratorof disputes is no use to me. I never appeal to him, and nevershall appeal to him. The schools are no good to me, butpositively harmful, as I told you. For me the districtinstitutions simply mean the liability to pay fourpence halfpennyfor every three acres, to drive into the town, sleep with bugs,and listen to all sorts of idiocy and loathsomeness, andself-interest offers me no inducement."

　　"Excuse me," Sergey Ivanovitch interposed with a smile,"self-interest did not induce us to work for the emancipation ofthe serfs, but we did work for it."

　　"No!" Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat; "theemancipation of the serfs was a different matter. Thereself-interest did come in. One longed to throw off that yokethat crushed us, all decent people among us. But to be atown councilor and discuss how many dustmen are needed, and howchimneys shall be constructed in the town in which I don'tlive--to serve on a jury and try a peasant who's stolen a flitchof bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts ofjabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, andthe president cross-examining my old half-witted Alioshka, 'Doyou admit, prisoner in the dock, the fact of the removal of the

　　bacon?' 'Eh?'"

　　Konstantin Levin had warmed to his subject, and began mimickingthe president and the half-witted Alioshka: it seemed to him thatit was all to the point.

　　But Sergey Ivanovitch shrugged his shoulders.

　　"Well, what do you mean to say, then?"

　　"I simply mean to say that those rights that touch me...myinterest, I shall always defend to the best of my ability; thatwhen they made raids on us students, and the police read ourletters, I was ready to defend those rights to the utmost, todefend my rights to education and freedom. I can understandcompulsory military service, which affects my children, mybrothers, and myself, I am ready to deliberate on what concernsme; but deliberating on how to spend forty thousand roubles ofdistrict council money, or judging the half-witted Alioshka--Idon't understand, and I can't do it."

　　Konstantin Levin spoke as though the floodgates of his speech hadburst open. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.

　　"But tomorrow it'll be your turn to be tried; would it havesuited your tastes better to be tried in the old criminaltribunal?"

　　"I'm not going to be tried. I shan't murder anybody, and I'veno need of it. Well, I tell you what," he went on, flying offagain to a subject quite beside the point, "our districtself-government and all the rest of it--it's just like thebirch branches we stick in the ground on Trinity Day, forinstance, to look like a copse which has grown up of itself inEurope, and I can't gush over these birch branches and believein them."

　　Sergey Ivanovitch merely shrugged his shoulders, as though toexpress his wonder how the birch branches had come into theirargument at that point, though he did really understand at oncewhat his brother meant.

　　"Excuse me, but you know one really can't argue in that way," heobserved.

　　But Konstantin Levin wanted to justify himself for the failing,of which he was conscious, of lack of zeal for the publicwelfare, and he went on.

　　"I imagine," he said, "that no sort of activity is likely to belasting if it is not founded on self-interest, that's a universalprinciple, a philosophical principle," he said, repeating theword "philosophical" with determination, as though wishing toshow that he had as much right as any one else to talk ofphilosophy.

　　Sergey Ivanovitch smiled. "He too has a philosophy of his own atthe service of his natural tendencies," he thought.

　　"Come, you'd better let philosophy alone," he said. "The chiefproblem of the philosophy of all ages consists just in findingthe indispensable connection which exists between individual andsocial interests. But that's not to the point; what is to thepoint is a correction I must make in your comparison. Thebirches are not simply stuck in, but some are sown and some areplanted, and one must deal carefully with them. It's only thosepeoples that have an intuitive sense of what's of importance andsignificance in their institutions, and know how to value them,that have a future before them--it's only those peoples that onecan truly call historical."

　　And Sergey Ivanovitch carried the subject into the regions ofphilosophical history where Konstantin Levin could not followhim, and showed him all the incorrectness of his view.

　　"As for your dislike of it, excuse my saying so, that's simplyour Russian sloth and old serf-owner's ways, and I'm convincedthat in you it's a temporary error and will pass."

　　Konstantin was silent. He felt himself vanquished on all sides,but he felt at the same time that what he wanted to say wasunintelligible to his brother. Only he could not make up hismind whether it was unintelligible because he was not capable ofexpressing his meaning clearly, or because his brother would notor could not understand him. But he did not pursue thespeculation, and without replying, he fell to musing on a quitedifferent and personal matter.

　　Sergey Ivanovitch wound up the last line, untied the horse, andthey drove off.