Anna Karenina
especially in the matter of war, private citizens must forego their
personal individual will.”
Sergey Ivanovitch and Katavasov had their replies ready, and both began
speaking at the same time.
“But the point is, my dear fellow, that there may be cases when the
government does not carry out the will of the citizens and then the
public asserts its will,” said Katavasov.
But evidently Sergey Ivanovitch did not approve of this answer. His
brows contracted at Katavasov’s words and he said something else.
“You don’t put the matter in its true light. There is no question here
of a declaration of war, but simply the expression of a human Christian
feeling. Our brothers, one with us in religion and in race, are being
massacred. Even supposing they were not our brothers nor
fellow-Christians, but simply children, women, old people, feeling is
aroused and Russians go eagerly to help in stopping these atrocities.
Fancy, if you were going along the street and saw drunken men beating a
woman or a child—I imagine you would not stop to inquire whether war
had been declared on the men, but would throw yourself on them, and
protect the victim.”
“But I should not kill them,” said Levin.
“Yes, you would kill them.”
“I don’t know. If I saw that, I might give way to my impulse of the
moment, but I can’t say beforehand. And such a momentary impulse there
is not, and there cannot be, in the case of the oppression of the
Slavonic peoples.”
“Possibly for you there is not; but for others there is,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch, frowning with displeasure. “There are traditions still
extant among the people of Slavs of the true faith suffering under the
yoke of the ‘unclean sons of Hagar.’ The people have heard of the
sufferings of their brethren and have spoken.”
“Perhaps so,” said Levin evasively; “but I don’t see it. I’m one of the
people myself, and I don’t feel it.”
“Here am I too,” said the old prince. “I’ve been staying abroad and
reading the papers, and I must own, up to the time of the Bulgarian
atrocities, I couldn’t make out why it was all the Russians were all of
a sudden so fond of their Slavonic brethren, while I didn’t feel the
slightest affection for them. I was very much upset, thought I was a
monster, or that it was the influence of Carlsbad on me. But since I
have been here, my mind’s been set at rest. I see that there are people
besides me who’re only interested in Russia, and not in their Slavonic
brethren. Here’s Konstantin too.”
“Personal opinions mean nothing in such a case,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch; “it’s not a matter of personal opinions when all Russia—the
whole people—has expressed its will.”
“But excuse me, I don’t see that. The people don’t know anything about
it, if you come to that,” said the old prince.
“Oh, papa!... how can you say that? And last Sunday in church?” said
Dolly, listening to the conversation. “Please give me a cloth,” she
said to the old man, who was looking at the children with a smile.
“Why, it’s not possible that all....”
“But what was it in church on Sunday? The priest had been told to read
that. He read it. They didn’t understand a word of it. Then they were
told that there was to be a collection for a pious object in church;
well, they pulled out their halfpence and gave them, but what for they
couldn’t say.”
“The people cannot help knowing; the sense of their own destinies is
always in the people, and at such moments as the present that sense
finds utterance,” said Sergey Ivanovitch with conviction, glancing at
the old bee-keeper.
The handsome old man, with black grizzled beard and thick silvery hair,
stood motionless, holding a cup of honey, looking down from the height
of his tall figure with friendly serenity at the gentlefolk, obviously
understanding nothing of their conversation and not caring to
understand it.
“That’s so, no doubt,” he said, with a significant shake of his head at
Sergey Ivanovitch’s words.
“Here, then, ask him. He knows nothing about it and thinks nothing,”
said Levin. “Have you heard about the war, Mihalitch?” he said, turning
to him. “What they read in the church? What do you think about it?
Ought we to fight for the Christians?”
“What should we think? Alexander Nikolaevitch our Emperor has thought
for us; he thinks for us indeed in all things. It’s clearer for him to
see. Shall I bring a bit more bread? Give the little lad some more?” he
said addressing Darya Alexandrovna and pointing to Grisha, who had
finished his crust.
“I don’t need to ask,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, “we have seen and are
seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who give up everything to serve
a just cause, come from every part of Russia, and directly and clearly
express their thought and aim. They bring their halfpence or go
themselves and say directly what for. What does it mean?”
“It means, to my thinking,” said Levin, who was beginning to get warm,
“that among eighty millions of people there can always be found not
hundreds, as now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste,
ne’er-do-wells, who are always ready to go anywhere—to Pogatchev’s
bands, to Khiva, to Servia....”
“I tell you that it’s not a case of hundreds or of ne’er-do-wells, but
the best representatives of the people!” said Sergey Ivanovitch, with
as much irritation as if he were defending the last penny of his
fortune. “And what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole
people directly expressing their will.”
“That word ‘people’ is so vague,” said Levin. “Parish clerks, teachers,
and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it’s all about.
The rest of the eighty millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing
their will, haven’t the faintest idea what there is for them to express
their will about. What right have we to say that this is the people’s
will?”
Chapter 16
Sergey Ivanovitch, being practiced in argument, did not reply, but at
once turned the conversation to another aspect of the subject.
“Oh, if you want to learn the spirit of the people by arithmetical
computation, of course it’s very difficult to arrive at it. And voting
has not been introduced among us and cannot be introduced, for it does
not express the will of the people; but there are other ways of
reaching that. It is felt in the air, it is felt by the heart. I won’t
speak of those deep currents which are astir in the still ocean of the
people, and which are evident to every unprejudiced man; let us look at
society in the narrow sense. All the most diverse sections of the
educated public, hostile before, are merged in one. Every division is
at an end, all the public organs say the same thing over and over
again, all feel the mighty torrent that has overtaken them and is
carrying them in one direction.”
“Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,” said the prince.
“That’s true. But so it is the same thing that all the frogs croak
before a storm. One can hear nothing for them.”
“Frogs or no frogs, I’m not the editor of a paper and I don’t want to
defend them; but I am speaking of the unanimity in the intellectual
world,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, addressing his brother. Levin would
have answered, but the old prince interrupted him.
“Well, about that unanimity, that’s another thing, one may say,” said
the prince. “There’s my son-in-law, Stepan Arkadyevitch, you know him.
He’s got a place now on the committee of a commission and something or
other, I don’t remember. Only there’s nothing to do in it—why, Dolly,
it’s no secret!—and a salary of eight thousand. You try asking him
whether his post is of use, he’ll prove to you that it’s most
necessary. And he’s a truthful man too, but there’s no refusing to
believe in the utility of eight thousand roubles.”
“Yes, he asked me to give a message to Darya Alexandrovna about the
post,” said Sergey Ivanovitch reluctantly, feeling the prince’s remark
to be ill-timed.
“So it is with the unanimity of the press. That’s been explained to me:
as soon as there’s war their incomes are doubled. How can they help
believing in the destinies of the people and the Slavonic races ... and
all that?”
“I don’t care for many of the papers, but that’s unjust,” said Sergey
Ivanovitch.
“I would only make one condition,” pursued the old prince. “Alphonse
Karr said a capital thing before the war with Prussia: ‘You consider
war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be
enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of
every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!’”
“A nice lot the editors would make!” said Katavasov, with a loud roar,
as he pictured the editors he knew in this picked legion.
“But they’d run,” said Dolly, “they’d only be in the way.”
“Oh, if they ran away, then we’d have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips
behind them,” said the prince.
“But that’s a joke, and a poor one too, if you’ll excuse my saying so,
prince,” said Sergey Ivanovitch.
“I don’t see that it was a joke, that....” Levin was beginning, but
Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.
“Every member of society is called upon to do his own special work,”
said he. “And men of thought are doing their work when they express
public opinion. And the single-hearted and full expression of public
opinion is the service of the press and a phenomenon to rejoice us at
the same time. Twenty years ago we should have been silent, but now we
have heard the voice of the Russian people, which is ready to rise as
one man and ready to sacrifice itself for its oppressed brethren; that
is a great step and a proof of strength.”
“But it’s not only making a sacrifice, but killing Turks,” said Levin
timidly. “The people make sacrifices and are ready to make sacrifices
for their soul, but not for murder,” he added, instinctively connecting
the conversation with the ideas that had been absorbing his mind.
“For their soul? That’s a most puzzling expression for a natural
science man, do you understand? What sort of thing is the soul?” said
Katavasov, smiling.
“Oh, you know!”
“No, by God, I haven’t the faintest idea!” said Katavasov with a loud
roar of laughter.
“‘I bring not peace, but a sword,’ says Christ,” Sergey Ivanovitch
rejoined for his part, quoting as simply as though it were the easiest
thing to understand the very passage that had always puzzled Levin
most.
“That’s so, no doubt,” the old man repeated again. He was standing near
them and responded to a chance glance turned in his direction.
“Ah, my dear fellow, you’re defeated, utterly defeated!” cried
Katavasov good-humoredly.
Levin reddened with vexation, not at being defeated, but at having
failed to control himself and being drawn into argument.
“No, I can’t argue with them,” he thought; “they wear impenetrable
armor, while I’m naked.”
He saw that it was impossible to convince his brother and Katavasov,
and he saw even less possibility of himself agreeing with them. What
they advocated was the very pride of intellect that had almost been his
ruin. He could not admit that some dozens of men, among them his
brother, had the right, on the ground of what they were told by some
hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the capital, to say that they
and the newspapers were expressing the will and feeling of the people,
and a feeling which was expressed in vengeance and murder. He could not
admit this, because he neither saw the expression of such feelings in
the people among whom he was living, nor found them in himself (and he
could not but consider himself one of the persons making up the Russian
people), and most of all because he, like the people, did not know and
could not know what is for the general good, though he knew beyond a
doubt that this general good could be attained only by the strict