Part 26 (1/2)
It will begin when a man of science, an engineer, or a surgeon, ceases to consider lawful that division of labour, or rather that taking away other men's labour, which now exists, and when he no longer considers that he has the right to take,--I do not say hundreds of thousands,--but even a moderate sum of one thousand or five hundred rubles as compensation for his services; but when such a man comes to live among labouring-people in the same condition and in the same way as they, and applies his information in mechanics, technics or hygiene, to cure them.
But at present, scientific men, who are fed at the expense of the workman, have quite forgotten the conditions of the life of these men: they ignore (as they say) these conditions, and are quite seriously offended that their imaginary knowledge does not find application among the people.
The departments of the healing art as well as of the mechanical have not yet been touched: the questions how best to divide the period of labour, how and upon what it is best to feed, how best to dress, how to counteract dampness and cold, how best to wash, to suckle, and swaddle children, and so on, and all these applied to the conditions in which the workers now exist,--all these questions have not yet been faced.
The same applies to the activity of scientific teachers,--the pedagogues. Science has arranged this business, too, in such a way, that teaching according to science is possible only for those who are rich; and the teachers, like the engineers and surgeons, are involuntarily drawn towards money, and among us in Russia especially towards the government.
And this cannot be otherwise, because a school properly arranged (and the general rule is that the more scientifically a school is arranged the more expensive it is), with convertible benches, globes, maps, libraries, and manuals for teachers and pupils, is just such a school to maintain which it is necessary to double the taxes of the people. So science wants to have it. The children are necessary for work, and the more so with the poorer people. The advocates of science say, ”Pedagogy is even now of use for the people; but let it develop, then it will be still better.” But if it will develop till instead of 20 schools in a district there will be 100--all of them scientific,--and the parents forced to keep up these schools? Then they will be still poorer, and will want the labour of their children still more urgently.
What is to be done then?
To this they will reply, ”The government will establish schools, and will make education obligatory as it is in the rest of Europe.” But the money will still have to be raised from the people, and labour will be still harder for them, and they will have less time to spare from their labour, and there will then be no obligatory education at all.
There is, again, only one escape,--for a teacher to live in the conditions of a workman, and to teach for that compensation which will be freely offered him.
Such is the false tendency of science which deprives it of the possibility to fulfil its duty in serving the people. But this false tendency of our educated cla.s.s is still more obvious in art-activity, which, for the sake of its very meaning ought to be accessible to the people.
Science may point to its stupid excuse that ”science is acting for science,” and that, when fully developed it will become accessible to the people; but art, if it is art indeed, ought to be accessible to all, especially to those for whose sake it is created. But our art strikingly denounces its factors in that they do not wish, and do not understand, and are not able to be of use to the people. A painter, in order to produce his great works, must have a large studio, in which at least forty joiners or boot-makers might work, who are now freezing or suffocating in wretched lodgings. But this is not all: he requires models, costumes, journeys from place to place. The Academy of Art has spent millions of rubles, collected from the people, for the encouragement of art; and the productions of this art are hung in palaces, and are neither intelligible to the people nor wanted by them.
Musicians, in order to express their great ideas, must gather about two hundred men with white neckties or in special costumes, and spend hundreds of thousands of rubles arranging operas. But this art-production would never appear to the people (even if they could afford to use it) as anything but perplexing or dull.
The authors, writers, would seem not to need any particular accommodations, studios, models, orchestras, or actors; but here also it turns out that an author, a writer, in order to prepare his great works, wants travelling, palaces, cabinets, enjoyments of art, theatres, concerts, mineral waters, and so on; to say nothing of all the comforts of his dwelling and all the comforts of his life. If he himself has not saved up enough money for this purpose he is given a pension in order that he may compose better. And, again, these writings, which we value so highly, remain for the people, rubbish, and are not at all necessary to them.
What if, according to the wish of men of science and art, such producers of mental food should so multiply, that, in every village it would be necessary to build a studio, provide an orchestra, and keep an author in the conditions which men of art consider indispensable to them? I dare say working-people would make a vow never to look at a picture, or listen to a symphony, or read poetry and novels, in order only not to be compelled to feed all these good-for-nothing parasites.
And why should not men of art serve the people? In every cottage there are holy images and pictures; each peasant, each woman of the people, sings; many have instruments of music; and all can relate stories, repeat poetry; and many of them read. How came it to pa.s.s that these two things, which were as much made for one another as a key for a lock, were separated, and why are they so separated that we cannot imagine how to re-unite them?
Tell a painter to paint without a studio, models, costumes, and to draw penny pictures, and he will say that this would be a denial of art as he understands it. Tell a musician to play on a harmonium and to teach country-women to sing songs; tell a poet to throw aside writing poems and novels and satires, and to compose song-books for the people, and stories and tales which might be intelligible to illiterate persons,--they will say you are cracked.
But is it not being worse than cracked when the men who have freed themselves from labour because they promised to provide mental food for those who have brought them up, and are feeding and clothing them, have afterwards so forgotten their promise that they have ceased to understand how to make food fit for the people? Yet this very forsaking of their promises they consider dignifies them.
Such is the case everywhere, they say. Then everywhere the case is very unreasonable. And it will be so while men, under the pretext of division of labour, promise to provide mental food for the people, but only swallow up the labour of the people. Men will serve the people with science and art only when living among them and in the same way as the people do, putting forth no claims whatever, they offer to the people their scientific and artistic services, leaving it to the free will of the people to accept or refuse them.
CHAPTER x.x.xV
To say that the activities of the arts and sciences have co-operated in forwarding the progress of mankind, and by these activities to mean that which is now called by this name, is as to say that an awkward moving of the oars, hindering the progress of a boat going down the stream, is forwarding the progress of the boat; while it only hinders it. The so-called division of labour--that is, the violation of other men's labour which has become in our time a condition of the activity of men of art and science--has been, and still remains, the chief cause of the slowness of the progress of mankind.
The proof of it we have in the acknowledgement that the acquisitions of art and science are not accessible to the working-cla.s.ses because of a wrong distribution of wealth. And the incorrectness of this distribution does not diminish in proportion to the progress of art and science, but rather increases. Nor is it astonis.h.i.+ng that such is the case; because the incorrect distribution of wealth proceeds solely from the theory of the division of labour, preached by men of art and science for selfish purposes.
Science, defending the division of labour as an unchangeable law, sees that the distribution of wealth based upon this division is incorrect and pernicious, and a.s.serts that its activity, which recognizes the division of labour, will set all right again, and lead men to happiness.
It appears, then, that some men utilize the labour of others; but if they will only continue to do this for a long time, and on a still larger scale, then this incorrect distribution of wealth, that is, utilizing of other men's labour, will vanish.
Men are standing by an ever-increasing spring of water, and are busy turning it aside from thirsty men, and then they a.s.sert that it is they who produce this water, and that soon there will be so much of it that everybody will have enough and to spare. And this water, which has been running unceasingly, and nouris.h.i.+ng all mankind, is not only not the result of the activity of those who, standing at its source, turn it aside, but it runs and spreads itself in spite of the endeavours to stop it from doing so.
There has always existed a true church,--in other words, men united by the highest truth accessible to them at a certain epoch,--but it has never been that church which gave herself out for such; and there have always been real art and science, but they were not those which call themselves now by these names.