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Katavasov in a few words told him the last piece of news from the
war, and going into his study, introduced Levin to a short, thick-set
man of pleasant appearance. This was Metrov. The conversation
touched for a brief space on politics and on how recent events were
looked at in the higher spheres in Petersburg. Metrov repeated a say-
ing that had reached him through a most trustworthy source, reported
as having been uttered on this subject by the Tsar and one of the
ministers. Katavasov had heard also on excellent authority that the
Tsar had said something quite different. Levin tried to imagine cir-
cumstances in which both sayings might have been uttered, and the
conversation on that topic dropped.
“Yes, here he’s written almost a book on the natural conditions of
the laborer in relation to the land,” said Katavasov; “I’m not a specialist,
but I, as a natural science man, was pleased at his not taking mankind
as something outside biological laws; but, on the contrary, seeing his
dependence on his surroundings, and in that dependence seeking the
laws of his development.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Metrov.
“What I began precisely was to write a book on agriculture; but
studying the chief instrument of agriculture, the laborer,” said Levin,
reddening, “I could not help coming to quite unexpected results.”
And Levin began carefully, as it were, feeling his ground, to ex-
pound his views. He knew Metrov had written an article against the
generally accepted theory of political economy, but to what extent he
could reckon on his sympathy with his own new views he did not know
and could not guess from the clever and serene face of the learned
man.
“But in what do you see the special characteristics of the Russian
laborer?” said Metrov; “in his biological characteristics, so to speak, or in
the condition in which he is placed?”
Levin saw that there was an idea underlying this question with
which he did not agree. But he went on explaining his own idea that
the Russian laborer has a quite special view of the land, different from
that of other people; and to support this proposition he made haste to
add that in his opinion this attitude of the Russian peasant was due to
the consciousness of his vocation to people vast unoccupied expanses
in the East.
“One may easily be led into error in basing any conclusion on the
general vocation of a people,” said Metrov, interrupting Levin. “The
condition of the laborer will always depend on his relation to the land
and to capital.”
And without letting Levin finish explaining his idea, Metrov be-
gan expounding to him the special point of his own theory.
In what the point of his theory lay, Levin did not understand,
because he did not take the trouble to understand. He saw that Metrov,
like other people, in spite of his own article, in which he had attacked
the current theory of political economy, looked at the position of the
Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages, and
rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the east-
ern—much the larger—part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for nine-
tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian peasants wages took the
form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does not
so far exist except in the form of the most primitive tools. Yet it was
only from that point of view that he considered every laborer, though in
many points he differed from the economists and had his own theory
of the wage-fund, which he expounded to Levin.
Levin listened reluctantly, and at first made objections. He would
have liked to interrupt Metrov, to explain his own thought, which in his