In consequence of vegetarian indiscretions and of trifling with his health in other ways during the exceptionally hot weather then prevailing, the count fell ill. When he got about a little he delighted to talk of death. He said he felt that he was not going to live long, and was glad of it. He asked what we thought of death and the other world, declaring that the future life must be far better than this, though in what it consisted he could not feel any certainty. Naturally he did not agree with our view, that for the lucky ones this world provides a very fair idea of heaven, because his ideal was not happiness for all, but misery for all. He will be forced to revise this ideal if he ever really comes to believe in heaven.
During this illness I persuaded him to read "Looking Backward," which I had received as I was leaving Moscow. When I presented it to him, he promised to examine it "some time;" but when I give books I like to hear the opinion of the recipient in detail, and I had had experience when I gave him "Robert Elsmere." Especially in this case was I anxious to discuss the work.
At first he was very favorably impressed, and said that he would translate the book into Russian. He believed that this was the true way: that people should have, literally, all things in common, and so on. I replied that matters would never arrive at the state described unless this planet were visited by another deluge, and neither Noah nor any other animal endowed with the present human attributes saved to continue this selfish species. I declared that nothing short of a new planet, Utopia, and a newly created, selected, and combined race of Utopian angels, would ever get as far as the personages in that book, not to speak of remaining in equilibrium on that dizzy point when it should have been once attained. He disagreed with me, and an argument royal ensued. In the course of it he said that his only objection lay in the degree of luxury in which the characters of the new perfection lived.
"What harm is there in comfort and luxury to any extent," I asked, "provided that all enjoy it?"
"Luxury is all wrong," he answered severely. "You perceive the sinful luxury in which I live," waving his hand toward the excessively plain furniture, and animadverting with special bitterness on the silver forks and spoons. "It is all a fallacy that we can raise those below us by remaining above them. We must descend to their level in habits, intelligence, and life; then all will rise together."
"Even bread must have yeast; and if we all make ourselves exactly alike, who is to act as yeast? Are we to adopt all vices of the lower classes? That would be the speediest way of putting ourselves on a complete equality with them. But if some of us do not remain yeast, we shall all turn out the flattest sort of dough."
"We certainly cannot change the position of a thing unless we go close enough to grasp it, unless we are on the same plane with it."
"Perhaps not; but being on the same plane does not always answer. Did you ever see an acrobat try that trick? He puts one leg on the table, then tries to lift his whole body by grasping the other leg and putting it on a level to begin with. Logically, it ought to succeed and carry the body with it, if your theory is correct. However, it remains merely a curious and amusing experiment, likely to result in a broken neck to any one not skilled in gymnastics, and certain to end in a tumble even for the one who is thus skilled."
He reiterated his arguments. I retorted that human beings were not moral kangaroos, who could proceed by leaps, and that even the kangaroo is obliged to allow the tip of his tail to follow his paws. I said that in the moral as well as in the physical world it is simply a choice between standing still and putting one foot before the other; that one cannot get upstairs by remaining on the bottom step; one member of the body must rise first.
We were obliged to agree to disagree, as usual, but I fancy that he may have changed to my opinion of the book and the subject by this time. I have already noted that he is open to influence.