‘How do you mean?’
‘No, since we’re talking, explain it to me from a philosophical point of view,’ said Levin.
‘I don’t understand what philosophy has got to do with it,’ said Sergei Ivanovich, in such a tone, it seemed to Levin, as if he did not recognize his brother’s right to discuss philosophy. And that vexed Levin.
‘It’s got this to do with it!’ he began hotly. ‘I think that the motive force of all our actions is, after all, personal happiness. In our present-day zemstvo institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that contributes to my well-being. The roads are no better and cannot be better; my horses carry me over the bad ones as well. I have no need of doctors and centres, I have no need of any justice of the peace - I’ve never turned to one and never will. Schools I not only do not need but also find harmful, as I told you. For me the zemstvo institutions are simply an obligation to pay six kopecks an acre, go to town, sleep with bedbugs, and listen to all sorts of nonsense and vileness, and personal interest does not move me to do that.’
‘Excuse me,’ Sergei Ivanovich interrupted with a smile, ‘but personal interest did not move us to work for the emancipation of the serfs, and yet we did.’
‘No!’ Konstantin interrupted, growing more heated. ‘The emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. There was a personal interest. We wanted to throw off the yoke that oppressed us and all good people. But to be a council member,2 arguing about how many privy cleaners are needed and how the sewer pipes should be installed in a town I don’t live in; to be a juror and judge a muzhik who has stolen a ham, and listen for six hours to defence lawyers and prosecutors pouring out all sorts of drivel, and hear the foreman of the jury ask my old Alyoshka-the-fool : “Mister defendant, do you acknowledge the fact of the stolen ham?” “Wha?”’
Konstantin Levin was already side-tracked, impersonating the foreman of the jury and Alyoshka-the-fool; it seemed to him that it was all to the point.
But Sergei Ivanovich shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, what do you mean to say?’
‘I only mean to say that I will always defend with all my might those rights that I ... that touch on my interests. When the gendarmes searched us as students and read our letters, I was ready to defend those rights with all my might, to defend my rights to education, to freedom. I understand military service, which touches the future of my children, my brothers and myself. I’m ready to discuss anything that concerns me. But to decide how to dispose of forty thousand in zemstvo funds, or to judge Alyoshka-the-fool - that I do not understand and cannot do.’
Konstantin Levin spoke as if his words had burst their dam. Sergei Ivanovich smiled.
‘And if you were brought to trial tomorrow, do you mean you’d rather be tried by the old criminal courts?’3
‘I won’t be brought to trial. I’m not going to kill anybody, and I have no need of all that. Really!’ he went on, again skipping to something completely inappropriate, ‘our zemstvo institutions and all that - it’s like the birches we stick up on the day of the Trinity,4 so that it looks like the forest that grew up by itself in Europe, and I can’t put my heart into watering and believing in those birches!’
Sergei Ivanovich merely shrugged his shoulders, expressing by this gesture his surprise at the appearance out of nowhere of these birches in their discussion, though he immediately understood what his brother meant to say by it.
‘Excuse me, but one cannot argue that way,’ he observed.
But Konstantin Levin wanted to vindicate himself in this shortcoming which he knew he had, in his indifference to the common good, and he went on.
‘I think,’ said Konstantin, ‘that no activity can be solid unless it’s based on personal interest. That is a general truth, a philosophical one,’ he said, resolutely repeating the word ‘philosophical’, as if wishing to show that he, too, had the right, like anyone else, to speak of philosophy.
Sergei Ivanovich smiled once more. ‘And he, too, has some sort of philosophy of his own to serve his inclinations,’ he thought.
‘Well, you should leave philosophy alone,’ he said. ‘The chief task of philosophy in all ages has consisted precisely in finding the connection that necessarily exists between personal and common interests. But that is not the point, the point is that I must correct your comparison. The birches are not stuck in, they are planted or seeded, and they ought to be carefully tended. Only those nations have a future, only those nations can be called historical, that have a sense of what is important and significant in their institutions, and value them.’
And Sergei Ivanovich transferred the question to the philosophical-historical realm, inaccessible to Konstantin Levin, and showed him all the incorrectness of his view.
‘As regards your not liking it, forgive me, but that is our Russian laziness and grand manner, and I’m sure that with you it’s a temporary error and will pass.’
