Sviiazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking chair.
`What are you looking at there?' he said to Levin, who was standing at the round table looking through the reviews. `Oh, yes, there's a very interesting article here,' said Sviiazhsky, pointing to the review Levin was holding in his hand. `It appears,' he went on, with eager interest, `that Friedrich was not, after all, the person chiefly responsible for the partition of Poland. It is proved...'
And, with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new, very important, and interesting revelations. Although Levin was engrossed at the moment by his ideas about the problem of the land, he wondered, as he heard Sviiazhsky: `What is there inside of him? And why, why is he interested in the partition of Poland?' When Sviiazhsky had finished, Levin could not help asking: `Well, and what then?' But there was nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that such and such had been `proved.'
But Sviiazhsky did not explain, and saw no need of explaining, why it was interesting to him.
`Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor,'
said Levin, sighing. `He's a clever fellow, and said a lot that was true.'
`Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at heart, like all of them!' said Sviiazhsky.
`Whose marshal you are.'
`Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction,' said Sviiazhsky, laughing.
`I'll tell you what interests me very much,' said Levin. `He's right that our system, that is to say, of rational farming, doesn't answer;that the only thing that answers is the moneylender system, like that meek-looking gentleman's, or else the very ******st. Whose fault is it?'
`Our own, of course. Besides, it's not true that it doesn't answer.
It answers with Vassilchikov.'
`A factory...'
`But I really don't know what it is you are surprised at. The people are at such a low stage of material and moral development, that obviously they're bound to oppose everything that's necessary to them.
In Europe, a rational system answers because the people are educated; it follows that we must educate the people - that's all.'
`But how are we to educate the people?'
`To educate the people three things are needed: schools, and schools, and schools.'
`But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage of material development: what help are schools for that?'
`Do you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to the sick man. - You should try purgative medicine. Taken it: worse. Try leeches. Tried them: worse. Well, then, there's nothing left but to pray to God. Tried it: worse. That's just how it is with us. I say political economy; you say - worse. I say socialism - worse. Education - worse.'
`But how do schools help matters?'
`They give the peasant fresh wants.'
`Well, that's a thing I've never understood,' Levin replied with heat. `In what way are schools going to help the people to improve their material position? You say schools, education, will give them fresh wants.
So much the worse, since they won't be capable of satisfying them. And in what way a knowledge of addition and subtraction and the catechi** is going to improve their material condition, I never could make out. The day before yesterday I met a peasant woman in the evening with a little baby, and asked her where she was going. She said she was going to the wisewoman; her boy had screaming fits, so she was taking him to be doctored.
I asked, ``Why, how does the wisewoman cure screaming fits?' ``She puts the child on the hen roost and repeats some charm....''
`Well, you're saying it yourself! What's wanted to prevent her taking her child to the hen roost to cure it of screaming fits is just...'
Sviiazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.
`Oh, no!' said Levin with annoyance; `that method of doctoring I merely meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools. The people are poor and ignorant - that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees the baby has fits because it screams. But in what way this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by schools is as incomprehensible as how the hen roost affects the screaming. What has to be cured is what makes him poor.'
`Well, in that, at least, you're in agreement with Spencer, whom you dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the consequence of greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent washing, as he says, but not of being able to read and write....'
`Well, then, I'm very glad - or the contrary, very sorry - that I'm in agreement with Spencer; only I've known it a long while. Schools can do no good; what will do good is an economic organization in which the people will become richer, will have more leisure - and then there will be schools.'
`Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory.'
`And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?' asked Levin.
But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviiazhsky's eyes, and he said smiling:
`No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really hear it yourself?'
Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection between this man's life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the least what his reasoning led him to; all he wanted was the process of reasoning. And he did not like it when the process of reasoning brought him into a blind alley. That was the only thing he disliked, and avoided by changing the conversation to something agreeable and amusing.
All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression made by the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the thorough bass of all the conceptions and ideas of the day, threw Levin into violent excitement.