390 391
ourselves 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 read and
write is as a workman of more use and value to you.”
“No, you can ask anyone you like,” Konstantin Levin answered
with decision, “the man that can read and write is much inferior as a
workman. And mending the highroads is an impossibility; and as 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 were continually
skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected
points, so that there was no knowing to which to reply. “Do you admit
that education is a benefit for the people?”
“Yes, I admit it,” said Levin without thinking, and he was conscious
immediately that he had said what he did not think. He felt that if he
admitted that, it would be proved that he had been talking meaning-
less rubbish. How it would be proved he could not tell, but he knew
that this would inevitably be logically 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 and sympathizing with
the movement, and so wishing to work for it.”
“But I still do not admit this movement to be just,” said Konstantin
Levin, reddening a little.
“What! But you said just now...”
“That’s to say, I don’t admit it’s being either good or possible.”
“That you can’t tell without making the trial.”
“Well, supposing that’s so,” said Levin, though he did not suppose
so at all, “supposing that is so, still I don’t see, all the same, what I’m to
worry myself about it for.”
“How so?”
“No; since we are talking, explain it to me from the philosophical
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 his brother’s right to
talk about philosophy. And that irritated Levin.
“I’ll tell you, then,” he said with heat, “I imagine the mainspring of
all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now in the local institutions I,
as a nobleman, see nothing that could conduce to my prosperity, and
the roads are not better and could not be better; my horses carry me
well enough over bad ones. Doctors and dispensaries are no use to me.
An arbitrator of disputes is no use to me. I never appeal to him, and
never shall appeal to him. The schools are no good to me, but positively
harmful, as I told you. For me the district institutions simply mean the
liability to pay fourpence halfpenny for every three acres, to drive into
the town, sleep with bugs, and listen to all sorts of idiocy and loath-
someness, and self-interest offers me no inducement.”
“Excuse me,” Sergey Ivanovitch interposed with a smile, “self-
interest did not induce us to work for the emancipation of the serfs, but
we did work for it.”
“No!” Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat; “the eman-
cipation of the serfs was a different matter. There self-interest did
come in. One longed to throw off that yoke that crushed us, all decent
people among us. But to be a town councilor and discuss how many
dustmen are needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the
town in which I don’t live—to serve on a jury and try a peasant who’s
stolen a flitch of bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of