‘Why do you think,’ asked Levin, trying to bring him back to the question, ‘that we could not establish some relation with labour which would make it remunerative?’
‘It will never be done with Russians! We have no power!’ answered the landowner.
‘What new conditions could be discovered?’ said Sviyazhsky who, having eaten his curds and whey and lit a cigarette, now returned to the disputants. ‘Every possible relation to the power of labour has been defined and investigated,’ he said. ‘The remnant of barbarism, the primitive commune with its reciprocal bonds, falls to pieces of itself when serfdom is abolished, and there is nothing left but free labour; its forms are defined and ready and we must accept them. The labourer, the hired man, the farmer, you cannot get away from them.’
‘But the rest of Europe is not satisfied with that system.’
‘No, it is dissatisfied and it is seeking new methods. It will probably find them.’
‘All I wish to say is,’ said Levin, ‘why should we not seek them for ourselves?’
‘Because it would be just the same as inventing new methods of building a railway. They are invented and ready.’
‘But if they don’t suit us? If they are stupid?’ said Levin.
And again he noticed a look of fear in the eyes of Sviyazhsky.
‘Oh yes, it is all child’s play for us: we have discovered what Europe is looking for! I know all that, but excuse me, do you know what has been accomplished in Europe with regard to the labour question?’
‘Not much.’
‘The question is at present occupying the best brains in Europe. There is the Schulze-Delitzsch trend… . Then there is a whole gigantic literature on the labour question, with the most Liberal Lassalle tendency… . The Mulhausen system — that is already a fact. I expect you know about it.’
‘I have some idea about it, but very vague.’
‘Oh, you only say so, I am sure you know about it just as well as I do! I am, of course, not a professor of Sociology, but it interests me, and really if it interests you, you had better study the matter.’
‘But what have they arrived at?’
‘Excuse me …’
The landowners had risen, and Sviyazhsky, having again checked Levin in his disagreeable habit of prying beyond the reception rooms of his mind, went to see his visitors off.
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