No matter what people have fixed upon as their vocation and their welfare, science will be the doctrine of this vocation and welfare, and art will be the expression of that doctrine. That which is called science and art, among us, is the product of idle minds and feelings, which have for their object to tickle similar idle minds and feelings. Our arts and sciences are incomprehensible, and say nothing to the people, for they have not the welfare of the common people in view.
Ever since the life of men has been known to us, we find, always and everywhere, the reigning doctrine falsely designating itself as science, not manifesting itself to the common people, but obscuring for them the meaning of life. Thus it was among the Greeks the sophists, then among the Christians the mystics, gnostics, scholastics, among the Hebrews the Talmudists and Cabalists, and so on everywhere, down to our own times.
How fortunate it is for us that we live in so peculiar an age, when that mental activity which calls itself science, not only does not err, but finds itself, as we are assured, in a remarkably flourishing condition! Does not this peculiar good fortune arise from the fact that man can not and will not see his own hideousness? Why is there nothing left of those sciences, and sophists, and Cabalists, and Talmudists, but words, while we are so exceptionally happy? Surely the signs are identical. There is the same self-satisfaction and blind confidence that we, precisely we, and only we, are on the right path, and that the real thing is only beginning with us. There is the same expectation that we shall discover something remarkable; and that chief sign which leads us astray convicts us of our error: all our wisdom remains with us, and the common people do not understand, and do not accept, and do not need it.
Our position is a very difficult one, but why not look at it squarely?
It is time to recover our senses, and to scrutinize ourselves. Surely we are nothing else than the scribes and Pharisees, who sit in Moses’ seat, and who have taken the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and will neither go in ourselves, nor permit others to go in. Surely we, the high priests of science and art, are ourselves worthless deceivers, possessing much less right to our position than the most crafty and depraved priests. Surely we have no justification for our privileged position. The priests had a right to their position: they declared that they taught the people life and salvation. But we have taken their place, and we do not instruct the people in life,—we even admit that such instruction is unnecessary,—but we educate our children in the same Talmudic-Greek and Latin grammar, in order that they may be able to pursue the same life of parasites which we lead ourselves. We say, “There used to be castes, but there are none among us.” But what does it mean, that some people and their children toil, while other people and their children do not toil?
Bring hither an Indian ignorant of our language, and show him European life, and our life, for several generations, and he will recognize the same leading, well-defined castes—of laborers and non-laborers—as there are in his own country. And as in his land, so in ours, the right of refusing to labor is conferred by a peculiar consecration, which we call science and art, or, in general terms, culture. It is this culture, and all the distortions of sense connected with it, which have brought us to that marvellous madness, in consequence of which we do not see that which is so clear and indubitable.
CHAPTER VII.
Then, what is to be done? What are we to do?
This question, which includes within itself both an admission that our life is evil and wrong, and in connection with this,—as though it were an exercise for it,—that it is impossible, nevertheless, to change it, this question I have heard, and I continue to hear, on all sides. I have described my own sufferings, my own gropings, and my own solution of this question. I am the same kind of a man as everybody else; and if I am in any wise distinguished from the average man of our circle, it is chiefly in this respect, that I, more than the average man, have served and winked at the false doctrine of our world; I have received more approbation from men professing the prevailing doctrine: and therefore, more than others, have I become depraved, and wandered from the path. And therefore I think that the solution of the problem, which I have found in my own case, will be applicable to all sincere people who are propounding the same question to themselves.
First of all, in answer to the question, “What is to be done?” I told myself: “I must lie neither to other people nor to myself. I must not fear the truth, whithersoever it may lead me.”