544 545
You haven’t read them: they’ve thrashed that question out thoroughly.”
He saw now distinctly that Kauffmann and Michelli had nothing
to tell him. He knew what he wanted. He saw that Russia has splen-
did land, splendid laborers, and that in certain cases, as at the peasant’s
on the way to Sviazhsky’s, the produce raised by the laborers and the
land is great—in the majority of cases when capital is applied in the
European way the produce is small, and that this simply arises from
the fact that the laborers want to work and work well only in their own
peculiar way, and that this antagonism is not incidental but invariable,
and has its roots in the national spirit. He thought that the Russian
people whose task it was to colonize and cultivate vast tracts of unoc-
cupied land, consciously adhered, till all their land was occupied, to the
methods suitable to their purpose, and that their methods were by no
means so bad as was generally supposed. And he wanted to prove this
theoretically in his book and practically on his land.
Chapter 30.
At the end of September the timber had been carted for building
the cattleyard on the land that had been allotted to the association of
peasants, and the butter from the cows was sold and the profits di-
vided. In practice the system worked capitally, or, at least, so it seemed
to Levin. In order to work out the whole subject theoretically and to
complete his book, which, in Levin’s daydreams, was not merely to
effect a revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that science
entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the relation of the
people to the soil, all that was left to do was to make a tour abroad, and
to study on the spot all that had been done in the same direction, and
to collect conclusive evidence that all that had been done there was not
what was wanted. Levin was only waiting for the delivery of his wheat
to receive the money for it and go abroad. But the rains began, pre-
venting the harvesting of the corn and potatoes left in the fields, and
putting a stop to all work, even to the delivery of the wheat.
The mud was impassable along the roads; two mills were carried
away, and the weather got worse and worse.
On the 30th of September the sun came out in the morning, and
hoping for fine weather, Levin began making final preparations for his
journey. He gave orders for the wheat to be delivered, sent the bailiff
to the merchant to get the money owing him, and went out himself to