Part 30 (1/2)
It is only to our perverted ideas, that it seems, when the master sends his clerk to be a peasant, or government sentences one of its ministers to deportation, that they are punished and have been dealt with hardly.
In reality they have had a great good done to them; that is, they have exchanged their heavy special work for a pleasant alternation of labour.
In a natural society all is different. I know a commune where the people earn their living themselves. One of the members of this community was more educated than the rest; and they require him to deliver lectures, for which he has to prepare himself during the day, that he may be able to deliver them in the evening. He does it joyfully, feeling that he is useful to others, and that he can do it well. But he grows tired of the exclusive mental labour, and his health suffers accordingly. The members of the community therefore pity him, and ask him to come and labour in the field again.
For men who consider labour to be the essential thing and the joy of life, the ground, the basis, of it will always be the struggle with nature,--not only in agricultural labour, but also in that of handicraft, mental work, and intercourse with men.
The divergence from one or many of these kinds of labour, and specialities of labour, will be performed only when a man of special gifts, being fond of this work, and knowing that he performs it better than anybody else, will sacrifice his own advantage in order to fulfil the demands which others put directly to him.
Only with such a view of labour and the natural division of labour resulting from it, will that curse disappear which in our imagination we have put upon labour; and every labour will always be a joy, because man will do either an unquestionably useful, pleasant, and easy work, or will be conscious that he makes a sacrifice by performing a more difficult special labour for the good of others.
But the division of labour is, it is said, more advantageous.
Advantageous for whom? Is it more advantageous to make with all speed as many boots and cotton-prints as possible? But who will make these boots and cotton-prints? Men who from generation to generation have been making only pin-heads? How, then, can it be more advantageous for people? If the object were to make as many cotton-prints and pins as possible, it would be so; but the question is, how to make people happy?
The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labour.
How, then, can the necessity of painful, oppressing work be advantageous for men? If the question were only for the advantage of some men without any consideration of the welfare of all, then it might be most advantageous for some men to eat others. They say it is savoury!
The thing most advantageous for all men is what I wish for myself,--the greatest welfare and the satisfying of all my wants which are ingrafted in me, those of body as well as those of soul, of conscience, and of reason.
Now, for myself I have found, that for my welfare and for the satisfying of these wants, I need only to be cured of the folly in which I (as well as the Krapivensky madman) have lived, consisting in the idea that gentlefolk need not work, and that all must be done for them by others, and that, producing nothing, I have to do only what is proper to man,--satisfy my own wants.
Having discovered this, I became persuaded that this labour for the satisfying of my own wants, is divisible into various kinds of labour, each of which has its own charm, and is not only no burden, but serves as rest after some other labour.
I have roughly divided labour, not in the least insisting on the propriety of such a division, into four parts parallel to the four parts of the labourer's day's work, divided by his meals; and thus I try to satisfy my wants.
These are, then, the answers to the question, ”What shall we do?” which I have found for myself.
_First_, Not to lie to myself. However far I have gone astray from that road of life which my reason shows to me, I must not be afraid of the truth.
_Secondly_, To renounce my own righteousness, my own advantages, peculiarities, distinguis.h.i.+ng me from others, and to own my guilt.
_Thirdly_, To fulfil the eternal, unquestionable law of man,--by labouring with all my being to struggle with nature, to sustain my own life, and the lives of others.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX
I have now finished, having said all that concerns myself; but I cannot restrain my desire to say that which concerns every one, and to verify my own deductions by several considerations.
I wish to explain why I think that a great many of my own cla.s.s must arrive where I myself am, and I must also speak of what will result if even a few men arrive there; in the first place, if men of our circle, our caste, will only seriously think the matter out themselves, the younger generation, who seek their own personal happiness, will become afraid of the ever-increasing misery of lives which obviously lead them to ruin; scrupulous persons among us (if they would examine themselves more closely) will be terrified at the cruelty and unlawfulness of their own lives, and timid persons will be frightened at the danger of their mode of life.
_The misery of our lives!_ However we, rich men, may try to mend and to support, with the a.s.sistance of science and art, this our false life, it must become weaker every day, unhealthier, and more and more painful: with each year, suicide, and the sin against the unborn babe, increase; with each year the new generations of our cla.s.s grow weaker, with each year we feel more and more the increasing misery of our lives.
It is obvious that on this road, with all its increase of the comforts and delights of life, of cures, artificial teeth and hair, and so on, there can be no salvation.
This truth has become such a truism, that in newspapers advertis.e.m.e.nts are printed about stomach powder for rich people, under the t.i.tle ”Blessings of the poor,” where they say that only poor people have a good digestion, and the rich need help, and among other things this powder. You cannot ameliorate this matter by any kind of amus.e.m.e.nts, comforts, powders, but only by turning over a new leaf.
_The contradiction of our life with our conscience._ However we may try to justify to ourselves our treason against mankind, all our justification falls to pieces before evidence: around us, people are dying from overwork and want; and we destroy the food, clothes, and labour of men merely to amuse ourselves. Therefore the conscience of a man of our circle, though he may have but a small remainder of it in his breast, cannot be stifled, and poisons all these comforts and charms of life which our suffering and peris.h.i.+ng brethren procure for us. Not only does every conscientious man feel this himself, but he must feel it more acutely at present, because the best part of art and science, that part which still retains a sense of its high calling, constantly reminds him of his cruelty, and of the unlawfulness of his position.
The old secure justifications are all destroyed; and the new ephemeral justifications of the progress of science for science's sake, and art for art's sake, will not bear the light of plain common sense.