Short Fiction, Anton Chekhov [websites to read books for free .TXT] 📗

for a long time been craving for the society of someone not a house painter. I was genuinely glad to see him.

“I’ll begin by saying,” he said, sitting down on my bed, “that I sympathize with you from the bottom of my heart, and deeply respect the life you are leading. They don’t understand you here in the town, and, indeed, there is no one to understand, seeing that, as you know, they are all, with very few exceptions, regular Gogolesque pig faces here. But I saw what you were at once that time at the picnic. You are a noble soul, an honest, high-minded man! I respect you, and feel it a great honour to shake hands with you!” he went on enthusiastically. “To have made such a complete and violent change of life as you have done, you must have passed through a complicated spiritual crisis, and to continue this manner of life now, and to keep up to the high standard of your convictions continually, must be a strain on your mind and heart from day to day. Now to begin our talk, tell me, don’t you consider that if you had spent your strength of will, this strained activity, all these powers on something else, for instance, on gradually becoming a great scientist, or artist, your life would have been broader and deeper and would have been more productive?”

We talked, and when we got upon manual labour I expressed this idea: that what is wanted is that the strong should not enslave the weak, that the minority should not be a parasite on the majority, nor a vampire forever sucking its vital sap; that is, all, without exception, strong and weak, rich and poor, should take part equally in the struggle for existence, each one on his own account, and that there was no better means for equalizing things in that way than manual labour, in the form of universal service, compulsory for all.

“Then do you think everyone without exception ought to engage in manual labour?” asked the doctor.

“Yes.”

“And don’t you think that if everyone, including the best men, the thinkers and great scientists, taking part in the struggle for existence, each on his own account, are going to waste their time breaking stones and painting roofs, may not that threaten a grave danger to progress?”

“Where is the danger?” I asked. “Why, progress is in deeds of love, in fulfilling the moral law; if you don’t enslave anyone, if you don’t oppress anyone, what further progress do you want?”

“But, excuse me,” Blagovo suddenly fired up, rising to his feet. “But, excuse me! If a snail in its shell busies itself over perfecting its own personality and muddles about with the moral law, do you call that progress?”

“Why muddles?” I said, offended. “If you don’t force your neighbour to feed and clothe you, to transport you from place to place and defend you from your enemies, surely in the midst of a life entirely resting on slavery, that is progress, isn’t it? To my mind it is the most important progress, and perhaps the only one possible and necessary for man.”

“The limits of universal world progress are in infinity, and to talk of some ‘possible’ progress limited by our needs and temporary theories is, excuse my saying so, positively strange.”

“If the limits of progress are in infinity as you say, it follows that its aims are not definite,” I said. “To live without knowing definitely what you are living for!”

“So be it! But that ‘not knowing’ is not so dull as your ‘knowing.’ I am going up a ladder which is called progress, civilization, culture; I go on and up without knowing definitely where I am going, but really it is worth living for the sake of that delightful ladder; while you know what you are living for, you live for the sake of some people’s not enslaving others, that the artist and the man who rubs his paints may dine equally well. But you know that’s the petty, bourgeois, kitchen, grey side of life, and surely it is revolting to live for that alone? If some insects do enslave others, bother them, let them devour each other! We need not think about them. You know they will die and decay just the same, however zealously you rescue them from slavery. We must think of that great millennium which awaits humanity in the remote future.”

Blagovo argued warmly with me, but at the same time one could see he was troubled by some irrelevant idea.

“I suppose your sister is not coming?” he said, looking at his watch. “She was at our house yesterday, and said she would be seeing you today. You keep saying slavery, slavery⁠ ⁠…” he went on. “But you know that is a special question, and all such questions are solved by humanity gradually.”

We began talking of doing things gradually. I said that “the question of doing good or evil everyone settles for himself, without waiting till humanity settles it by the way of gradual development. Moreover, this gradual process has more than one aspect. Side by side with the gradual development of human ideas the gradual growth of ideas of another order is observed. Serfdom is no more, but the capitalist system is growing. And in the very heyday of emancipating ideas, just as in the days of Baty, the majority feeds, clothes, and defends the minority while remaining hungry, inadequately clad, and defenceless. Such an order of things can be made to fit in finely with any tendencies and currents of thought you like, because the art of enslaving is also gradually being cultivated. We no longer flog our servants in the stable, but we give to slavery refined forms, at least, we succeed in finding a justification for it in each particular case. Ideas are ideas with us, but if now, at the end of the nineteenth century, it were possible to lay the burden of the most unpleasant of our physiological functions