LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 3

      ‘DO you know, I’ve been thinking about you,’ said Koznyshev. ‘From what the doctor told me — and he is by no means a stupid young fellow — the things going on in your district are simply disgraceful. I have already told you, and I say it again, it is not right to stop away from the Zemstvo meetings, and in general to take no part in its activities! If all the better sort stand aside, of course heaven only knows what will happen. We expend money for salaries, but there are no schools, no medical assistance, no midwives, no chemists, no anything!’

      ‘You know I have tried,’ Levin replied slowly and reluctantly, ‘but I can’t! So what am I to do?’

      ‘Why can’t you? I confess I don’t understand. I can’t admit it to be indifference or inaptitude; is it possible that it is mere laziness?’

      ‘Neither the one nor the other — nor the last. I have tried and seen that I can do nothing,’ said Levin.

      He did not pay much attention to what his brother was saying. Peering into the distance across the river, he made out something black in the cornfield, and could not see whether it was only a horse or the steward on horseback.

      ‘Why can you do nothing? You have made an attempt, and because according to your judgment it was a failure, you gave it up. Fancy having so little ambition!’

      ‘Ambition?’ reiterated Levin, stung by his brother’s words. ‘I do not understand it. If at college they had told me that others understood the integral calculus and I did not, that would have been a case for ambition; but in these matters the first requisite is a conviction that one has the necessary ability, and above all that it is all very important.’

      ‘Well, and is it not very important?’ said Koznyshev, stirred by the perception that his occupations were regarded as unimportant and especially by his brother’s evident inattention to what he was saying.

      ‘They don’t appear important to me. Do what you will, they don’t grip me,’ replied Levin, having made out that what he saw was the steward, who was probably dismissing the peasants from their ploughing too soon, for they were turning the ploughs over. ‘Is it possible they have finished ploughing?’ thought he.

      ‘Come now! After all,’ continued the elder brother with a frown on his handsome, intelligent face, ‘there are limits to everything! It is all very well to be a crank, to be sincere and dislike hypocrisy — I know that very well — but what you are saying has either no meaning at all or a very bad meaning. How can you consider it unimportant that the people, whom you love, as you maintain …’

      ‘I never maintained it,’ thought Levin… .

      ‘… are dying without help? Ignorant midwives murder the babies, and the people remain steeped in ignorance, at the mercy of every village clerk; while you have in your power the means of helping them, and yet are not helping because you do not consider it important!’

      And Koznyshev confronted his brother with this dilemma: ‘Either you are so undeveloped that you don’t see all that you might do, or you don’t want to sacrifice your peace of mind or your vanity — I don’t know which — in order to do it.’ Constantine felt that there was nothing for him but to submit or else to own to a lack of love for the common cause, and he felt wounded and grieved.

      ‘Both the one and the other,’ said he resolutely. ‘I can’t see how it is to be done …’

      ‘What? Don’t see how medical help can be given, by distributing the money in a proper way …’

      ‘Well, it seems impossible to me… . To give medical help over the whole three thousand square miles of our district, with our deep snow, impassable when it begins melting, our snowdrifts, and the pressure of work at harvest time, is impossible. Besides, I have no faith in medicine generally …’

      ‘Come now! That is unjust… . I could cite thousands of cases to you… . And how about schools?’

      ‘Schools? What for?’

      ‘What do you mean? Is it possible to doubt the utility of education? If it is good for you, why not for everybody?’

      Constantine felt himself morally cornered, and in consequence became excited and involuntarily betrayed the chief cause of his indifference to social questions.

      ‘All this may be very good, but why should I trouble about medical centres which I should never use or schools to which I should never send my children, and to which the peasants would not wish to send theirs either? — and to which I am not fully convinced they ought to send them?’ said he.

      This unexpected view of the question took Koznyshev by surprise, but he immediately formed a new plan of attack.

      He remained silent awhile, lifted his rod and threw the line again, and then turned to his brother with a smile.

      ‘Now let’s see… . There is need of a medical centre after all. Did we not send for the district doctor for Agatha Mikhaylovna?’

      ‘But I think her hand will remain crooked all the same.’

      ‘That’s very questionable… . And then a peasant who can read and write is more useful to you and worth more.’

      ‘Oh no! Ask anyone you like,’ said Constantine, decidedly. ‘A peasant who can read and write is far worse as a labourer. They can’t mend the roads, and when they build a bridge they steal.’

      ‘However, all that is not to the point,’ said Koznyshev, frowning; he did not like to be contradicted, especially when he was met with arguments that incessantly shifted their ground, introducing new considerations without sequence so that it was difficult to know which of them to answer first. ‘Wait a bit. Do you admit that education is a good thing for the people?’

      ‘I

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