'You are joking,’ said Pierre, getting more and more earnest. ‘What error and evil can there be in my wishing (I have done very little and done it very badly), but still wishing to do good, and doing indeed something any way? Where can be the harm if unhappy people, our peasants, people just like ourselves, growing up and dying with no other idea of God and the truth, but a senseless prayer and ceremony, if they are instructed in the consoling doctrines of a future life, of retribution, and recompense and consolation? What harm and error can there be in my giving them doctors, and a hospital, and a refuge for the aged, when men are dying of disease without help, and it is so easy to give them material aid? And isn’t there palpable, incontestable good, when the peasants and the women with young children have no rest day or night,! and I give them leisure and rest? . . .’ said Pierre, talking hurriedly and lisping. ‘And I have done that; badly it’s true, and too little of it, but I have done something-towards it, and you’ll not only fail to shake ( my conviction that I have done well, you’ll not even shake my conviction that you don’t believe that yourself. And the great thing,’ Pierre continued, ‘is that I know this—and know it for a certainty—that the enjoyment of doing this good is the only real happiness in life.’
‘Oh, if you put the question like that, it’s a different matter,’ said Prince Andrey. ‘I’m building a house and laying out a garden, while you are building hospitals. Either occupation may serve to pass the time. But as to what’s right and what’s good—leave that to one who knows- all to judge; it’s not for us to decide. Well, you want an argument,’ he! added; ‘all right, let us have one.’ They got up from the table and sat out on the steps in default of a balcony. ‘Come, let us argue the matter, 1 said Prince Andrey. ‘You talk of schools,’ he went on, crooking one finger, ‘instruction, and so forth, that is, you want'to draw him’ (he pointed to a- 1 peasant who passed by them taking off his cap), ‘out of his animal condition and to give him spiritual needs, but it seems to me that the onlj- possible happiness is animal happiness, and you want to deprive him of it I envy him, while you are trying to make him into me, without giving hirn my circumstances. Another thing you speak of is lightening his toil But to my notions, physical labour is as much a necessity for him, a; much a condition of his existence, as intellectual work is for me anc for you. You can’t help thinking. I go to bed at three o’clock, thought; come into my mind, and I can’t go to sleep; I turn over, and can’t sleep
till morning, because I'm thinking, and I can’t help thinking, just as he can’t help ploughing and mowing. If he didn’t, he would go to the tavern, or become ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical labour, but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical inactivity, he would grow fat and die. The third thing—what was it you talked about?’
Prince Andrev crooked his third finger.
‘Oh, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit and dies, but you have him bled and cure him. He will drag about an invalid for ten years, a burden to every one. It would be ever so much simpler and more comfortable for him to die. Others are born, and there are always plenty. If you grudge losing a labourer—that’s how I look at him—but you want to cure him from love for him. But he has no need of that. And besides, what a notion that medicine has ever cured any one! Killed them—yes!’ he said, scowling and turning away from Pierre.
, Prince Andrey gave such clear and precise utterance to his ideas that it was evident he had thought more than once of this already, and he talked rapidly and eagerly, as a man does who has long been silent. His eyes grew keener, the more pessimistic were the views he expressed.
‘Oh, this is awful, awful!’ said Pierre. ‘I don’t understand how one can live with such ideas. I have had moments of thinking like that; it was not long ago at Moscow and on a journey, but then I become so abject that I don’t live at all, everything’s hateful to me . . . myself, most of all. Then I don’t eat, I don’t wash . . . how can you go on? . . .’
‘Why not wash, that’s not clean,’ said Prince Andrey; ‘on the contrary, one has to try and make one’s life more agreeable as far as one can. I’m alive, and it's not my fault that I am, and so I have to try without hurting others to get on as well as I can till death.’
‘But what impulse have you to live with such ideas? You would sit still without stirring, taking no part in anything. . . .’
