Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 28
is an economic organization in which the people will become richer, will have more
leisure–and then there will be schools.”
“Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory.”
“And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?” asked Levin.
But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky’s eyes, and he said smiling:
“No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really hear it yourself?”
Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection between this man’s life and
his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the least what his reasoning led him to;
all he wanted was the process of reasoning. And he did not like it when the process
of reasoning brought him into a blind alley. That was the only thing he disliked, and
avoided by changing the conversation to something agreeable and amusing.
All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression made by the old
peasant, which served, as it were, as the fundamental basis of all the conceptions
and ideas of the day, threw Levin into violent excitement. This dear good Sviazhsky,
keeping a stock of ideas simply for social purposes, and obviously having some
other principles hidden from Levin, while with the crowd, whose name is legion, he
guided public opinion by ideas he did not share; that irascible country gentleman,
perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been worried into by life, but wrong
in his exasperation against a whole class, and that the best class in Russia; his own
dissatisfaction with the work he had been doing, and the vague hope of finding a
remedy for all this–all was blended in a sense of inward turmoil, and anticipation of
some solution near at hand.
Left alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring mattress that yielded unexpectedly
at every movement of his arm or his leg, Levin did not fall asleep for a
long while. Not one conversation with Sviazhsky, though he had said a great deal
that was clever, had interested Levin; but the conclusions of the irascible landowner
required consideration. Levin could not help recalling every word he had said, and
in imagination amending his own replies.
“Yes, I ought to have said to him: You say that our husbandry does not answer
because the peasant hates improvements, and that they must be forced on him by
authority. If no system of husbandry answered at all without these improvements,
you would be quite right. But the only system that does answer is where laborer
is working in accordance with his habits, just as on the old peasant’s land half-way
here. Your and our general dissatisfaction with the system shows that either we are
to blame or the laborers. We have gone our way–the European way–a long while,
without asking ourselves about the qualities of our labor force. Let us try to look
upon the labor force not as an abstract force, but as the Russian peasant with his instincts,
and we shall arrange our system of culture in accordance with that. Imagine,
I ought to have said to him, that you have the same system as the old peasant has,
that you have found means of making your laborers take an interest in the success of
the work, and have found the happy mean in the way of improvements which they
will admit, and you will, without exhausting the soil, get twice or three times the
yield you got before. Divide it in halves, give half as the share of labor, the surplus
left you will be greater, and the share of labor will be greater too. And to do this one
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