‘But how are we to educate the peasantry?’
‘To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.’
‘But you said yourself that the peasantry stand at a low level of material development. How will schools help?’
‘You know, you remind me of the anecdote about giving advice to a sick man: “Why don’t you try a laxative?” “I did: got worse.” “Try leeches.” “Tried them: got worse.” “Well, then, just pray to God.” “Tried that: got worse.” It’s the same with you and me. I say political economy, and you say: worse. I say socialism-worse. Education - worse.’
‘But how will schools help?’
‘They’ll give them different needs.’
‘That’s something I’ve never understood,’ Levin objected hotly. ‘How will schools help the peasantry to improve their material well-being? You say that schools, education, will give them new needs. So much the worse, because they won’t be able to satisfy them. And how the knowledge of addition, subtraction and the catechism will help them to improve their material condition, I never could understand. The evening before last I met a woman with an infant at her breast and asked her where she had been. She said: “To the wise woman, because a shriek-hag has got into the child, so I took him to be treated.” I asked how the wise woman treats the shriek-hag. “She puts the baby on a roost with the chickens and mumbles something.” ’
‘Well, there you’ve said it yourself! We need schools so that she won’t treat the shriek-hag by putting the baby on a roost ...’ Sviyazhsky said, smiling gaily.
‘Ah, no!’ Levin said in vexation. ‘For me that treatment is like treating the peasantry with schools. The peasants are poor and uneducated, we see that as surely as the woman sees the shriek-hag because the baby shrieks. But why schools will help in this trouble - poverty and unedu cation - is as incomprehensible as why chickens on a roost help against the shriek-hag. What must be helped is the cause of the poverty.’
‘Well, in that at least you agree with Spencer,29 whom you dislike so. He, too, says that education may result from a greater well-being and comfort in life - from frequent ablutions, as he says - but not from the ability to read and write ...’
‘Well, I’m very glad, or, on the contrary, very not-glad, that I agree with Spencer - only I’ve known it for a long time. Schools won’t help, what will help is an economic system in which the peasantry will be wealthier, there will be more leisure - and then there will also be schools.’
‘Nevertheless, all over Europe schools are now compulsory.’
‘And how about you? Do you agree with Spencer?’ asked Levin.
But a look of fear flashed in Sviyazhsky’s eyes, and he said, smiling:
‘Ah, but that shriek-hag is excellent! You actually heard it yourself?’
Levin saw that he was not going to find a connection between this man’s life and his thoughts. Evidently it made absolutely no difference to him where his reasoning led him; he needed only the process of reasoning itself. And it was unpleasant for him when the process of reasoning led him to a dead end. That alone he disliked and avoided, turning the conversation to something pleasantly cheerful.
All the impressions of that day, starting with the muzhik half-way there, which seemed to serve as the fundamental basis for all that day’s impressions and thoughts, stirred Levin deeply. This good Sviyazhsky, who kept his thoughts only for public use and evidently had some other bases of life, hidden from Levin, though at the same time he and that crowd whose name was legion guided public opinion with these thoughts that were alien to him; this embittered landowner, perfectly right in his reasoning which he had suffered through in his life, but not right in his bitterness against a whole class, and that the best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction with his activity and the vague hope of finding a remedy for it - all this merged into a feeling of inner anxiety and the expectation of an imminent resolution.
Left alone in the room given him, lying on a spring mattress that unexpectedly tossed his arms and legs up with every movement, Levin did not fall asleep for a long time. Not one conversation with Sviyazhsky, though he had said many intelligent things, had interested Levin; but the landowner’s arguments called for discussion. Levin involuntarily recalled all his words and in his imagination corrected his own replies.
