What Shall We Do?

by graf Leo Tolstoy

In answer to the question, “Is it necessary to organize this physical labour, to establish a society in a village upon this basis?” it appeared that it was not at all necessary to do all this; that if the labour does not aim at rendering idleness possible, and at utilizing other men's labour,—as is the case with men who save up money,—but merely the satisfying of necessities, then such labour will naturally induce people to leave towns for the country, where this labour is most agreeable and productive.

There was also no need to establish a society, because a workingman will naturally associate with other working-people. In answer to the question, “Would not this labour take up all my time, and would it not deprive me of the possibility of that mental activity which I am so fond of, and to which I have become accustomed, and which in moments of doubt I consider to be useful?” the answer will be quite an unexpected one. The energy of my mental activity increased in proportion to bodily exercise, being freed from all that was superfluous.

In fact, having spent eight hours in physical labour,—half a day,—which formerly I used to spend in endeavouring to struggle with dulness, there still remained for me eight hours, out of which in my circumstances I required five for mental labour; and if I, a very prolific writer, who had been doing nothing but write during forty years, and who had written three hundred printed sheets, then if during these forty years I had been doing ordinary work along with working-people, and, not taking into consideration winter evenings and holidays, had been reading and learning during the five hours a day, and had written only on holidays two pages a day (and I have sometimes written sixteen pages a day), I should have written the same three hundred printed sheets in fourteen years.

A wonderful thing: a most simple arithmetical calculation which every boy of seven years of age may do, but which I had never done. Day and night have together twenty-four hours; we sleep eight hours; there remain sixteen hours. If any man labour mentally five hours a day, he will do a vast amount of business; what do we, then, do during the remaining eleven hours?

So it appears that physical labour not only does not exclude the possibility of mental activity, but improves and stimulates it.

In answer to the question, whether this physical labour would deprive me of many innocent enjoyments proper to man, such as enjoyment of art, acquirement of knowledge, of social intercourse, and, generally, of the happiness of life, it was really quite the reverse: the more intense my physical labour, the more it approached that labour which is considered the hardest, to wit, agricultural labour, the more I acquired enjoyments, and knowledge, and the closer and more affectionate was my intercourse with mankind, and the more happiness did I feel in life.

In answer to the question (which I hear so often from men who are not quite sincere), “What result can there be from such an awfully small drop in the sea? what is all my personal physical labour in comparison with the sea of labour which I swallow up?”

To this question I also received a very unexpected answer.

It appeared that as soon as I had made physical labour the ordinary condition of my life, at once the greatest part of the false and expensive habits and wants which I had while I had been physically idle, ceased of themselves, without any endeavour on my part. To say nothing of the habit of turning day into night, and vice versa, of my bedding, clothes, my conventional cleanliness, which all became impossible and embarrassing when I began to labour physically, both the quantity and the quality of my food was totally changed. Instead of the sweet, rich, delicate, complicated, and highly spiced food, which I formerly liked, I now required and obtained plain food as being the most agreeable,—sour cabbage soup, porridge, black bread, tea with a bit of sugar.

So that, apart from the example of common workingmen satisfied with little, with whom I came in closer intercourse, my very wants themselves were gradually changed by my life of labour; so that in proportion to my growing accustomed to this labour and acquiring the ways of it, my drop of physical labour became indeed more perceptible in the ocean of common labour; and in proportion as my labour grew more fruitful, my demands for other men's labour grew less and less, and, without effort or privation, my life naturally came nearer to that simple life of which I could not even have dreamed without fulfilling the law of labour.