The peasant Bondaref, who wrote an article about this, threw great light upon the wisdom of this sentence. During the whole of my life, two thinking men—Russians—have exercised a great influence over me: they have enriched my thoughts, and enlightened my contemplation of the world.
These men were neither poets, nor learned men, nor preachers: they were two remarkable men, both now living, peasants,—Sutaief and Bondaref. But “nous avons changé tout ça,” as says one of Molière's personages, talking at random about the healing art, and saying that the liver is on the left side, “we have changed all that.” Men need not work,—all work will be done by machines; and women need not bring forth children. The healing art will teach different means of avoiding this, for there are already too many people in the world.
In the Krapivensky district,[6] there wanders a ragged peasant, who during the war was a purchaser of bread for a commissary of stores. Having become acquainted with this functionary, and having seen his comfortable life, he became mad, and now thinks that he, too, can live as gentlemen do, without work, being provided for by the Emperor.
This peasant now calls himself “the Most Serene Marshal Prince Blokhin, purveyor of war-stores of all kinds.”
He says of himself that he has gone through all ranks, and for his services during the war he has to receive from the Emperor an unlimited bank-account, clothes, uniforms, horses, carriages, tea, servants, and all kinds of provision. When anybody asks him whether he would like to work a little, he only answers, “Thanks: the peasants will attend to all that.” When we say to him that the peasants also may not be disposed to work, he answers, “Machines have been invented to ease the labour of peasants. They have no difficulty in their business.” When we ask him what he is living for, he answers, “To pass away the time.”
I always consider this man as a mirror. I see in him myself and all my class. To pass through all ranks in order to live to pass away the time, and to receive an unlimited bank-account, while peasants attend to every thing, and find it easy to do so, because of the invention of machines.
This is the exact form of the foolish belief of men of our class. When we ask what have we particularly to do, we are in reality asking nothing, but only asserting—not so sincerely indeed as the Most Serene Marshal Prince Blokhin, who had passed through all ranks, and lost his mind—that we do not wish to do anything.
He who has come to his senses cannot ask this, because from one side all that he makes use of has been done, and is being done, by the hands of men; on the other side, as soon as a healthy man has got up and breakfasted, he feels the inclination to work, as well with his feet as with his hands and brain. In order to find work, he has only not to restrain himself from labour. Only he who considers labour to be a shame,—like the lady who asked her guest not to trouble herself to open the door, but to wait till she called a servant to do it,—only such persons can ask what is there to be done in particular.
The difficulty is not in inventing work,—every one has enough to do for himself and for others,—but in losing this criminal view of life, that we eat and sleep for our own pleasure, and in gaining that simple and correct view in which every working-person grows up, that man first of all is a machine which is charged with food, and that therefore it is shameful, difficult, and impossible to eat and not to work; that to eat and not to work is a most dangerous state, and as bad as incendiarism.
It is necessary only to have this consciousness, and we shall find work and this work will always be pleasant, and capable of satisfying all the wants of our soul and body.