Resurrection
“No, he does not know it; they say to him ‘don’t steal,’ and he knows
that the master of the factory steals his labour by keeping back his
wages; that the Government, with its officials, robs him continually by
taxation.”
“Why, this is anarchism,” Rogozhinsky said, quietly defining his
brother-in-law’s words.
“I don’t know what it is; I am only telling you the truth,” Nekhludoff
continued. “He knows that the Government is robbing him, knows that we
landed proprietors have robbed him long since, robbed him of the land
which should be the common property of all, and then, if he picks up dry
wood to light his fire on that land stolen from him, we put him in jail,
and try to persuade him that he is a thief. Of course he knows that not
he but those who robbed him of the land are thieves, and that to get any
restitution of what has been robbed is his duty towards his family.”
“I don’t understand, or if I do I cannot agree with it. The land must
be somebody’s property,” began Rogozhinsky quietly, and, convinced that
Nekhludoff was a Socialist, and that Socialism demands that all the land
should be divided equally, that such a division would be very foolish,
and that he could easily prove it to be so, he said. “If you divided
it equally to-day, it would to-morrow be again in the hands of the most
industrious and clever.”
“Nobody is thinking of dividing the land equally. The land must not
be anybody’s property; must not be a thing to be bought and sold or
rented.”
“The rights of property are inborn in man; without them the cultivation
of land would present no interest. Destroy the rights of property and
we lapse into barbarism.” Rogozhinsky uttered this authoritatively,
repeating the usual argument in favour of private ownership of land
which is supposed to be irrefutable, based on the assumption that
people’s desire to possess land proves that they need it.
“On the contrary, only when the land is nobody’s property will it cease
to lie idle, as it does now, while the landlords, like dogs in the
manger, unable themselves to put it to use, will not let those use it
who are able.”
“But, Dmitri Ivanovitch, what you are saying is sheer madness. Is it
possible to abolish property in land in our age? I know it is your old
hobby. But allow me to tell you straight,” and Rogozhinsky grew pale,
and his voice trembled. It was evident that this question touched him
very nearly. “I should advise you to consider this question well before
attempting to solve it practically.”
“Are you speaking of my personal affairs?”
“Yes, I hold that we who are placed in special circumstances should
bear the responsibilities which spring from those circumstances, should
uphold the conditions in which we were born, and which we have
inherited from our predecessors, and which we ought to pass on to our
descendants.”
“I consider it my duty--”
“Wait a bit,” said Rogozhinsky, not permitting the interruption. “I am
not speaking for myself or my children. The position of my children is
assured, and I earn enough for us to live comfortably, and I expect my
children will live so too, so that my interest in your action--which,
if you will allow me to say so, is not well considered--is not based
on personal motives; it is on principle that I cannot agree with you. I
should advise you to think it well over, to read---?”
“Please allow me to settle my affairs, and to choose what to read and
what not to read, myself,” said Nekhludoff, turning pale. Feeling
his hands grow cold, and that he was no longer master of himself, he
stopped, and began drinking his tea.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE AIM OF THE LAW.
“Well, and how are the children?” Nekhludoff asked his sister when he
was calmer. The sister told him about the children. She said they were
staying with their grandmother (their father’s mother), and, pleased
that his dispute with her husband had come to an end, she began telling
him how her children played that they were travelling, just as he used
to do with his three dolls, one of them a negro and another which he
called the French lady.
“Can you really remember it all?” said Nekhludoff, smiling.
“Yes, and just fancy, they play in the very same way.”
The unpleasant conversation had been brought to an end, and Nathalie was
quieter, but she did not care to talk in her husband’s presence of what
could be comprehensible only to her brother, so, wishing to start a
general conversation, she began talking about the sorrow of Kamenski’s
mother at losing her only son, who had fallen in a duel, for this
Petersburg topic of the day had now reached Moscow. Rogozhinsky
expressed disapproval at the state of things that excluded murder in a
duel from the ordinary criminal offences. This remark evoked a rejoinder
from Nekhludoff, and a new dispute arose on the subject. Nothing was
fully explained, neither of the antagonists expressed all he had in
his mind, each keeping to his conviction, which condemned the other.
Rogozhinsky felt that Nekhludoff condemned him and despised his
activity, and he wished to show him the injustice of his opinions.
Nekhludoff, on the other hand, felt provoked by his brother-in-law’s
interference in his affairs concerning the land. And knowing in his
heart of hearts that his sister, her husband, and their children, as his
heirs, had a right to do so, was indignant that this narrow-minded
man persisted with calm assurance to regard as just and lawful what
Nekhludoff no longer doubted was folly and crime.
This man’s arrogance annoyed Nekhludoff.
“What could the law do?” he asked.
“It could sentence one of the two duellists to the mines like an
ordinary murderer.”
Nekhludoff’s hands grew cold.
“Well, and what good would that be?” he asked, hotly.
“It would be just.”
“As if justice were the aim of the law,” said Nekhludoff.
“What else?”
“The upholding of class interests! I think the law is only an instrument
for upholding the existing order of things beneficial to our class.”
“This is a perfectly new view,” said Rogozhinsky with a quiet smile;
“the law is generally supposed to have a totally different aim.”
“Yes, so it has in theory but not in practice, as I have found out. The
law aims only at preserving the present state of things, and therefore
it persecutes and executes those who stand above the ordinary level and
wish to raise it--the so-called political prisoners, as well as those
who are below the average--the so-called criminal types.”
“I do not agree with you. In the first place, I cannot admit that the
criminals classed as political are punished because they are above the
average. In most cases they are the refuse of society, just as much
perverted, though in a different way, as the criminal types whom you
consider below the average.”
“But I happen to know men who are morally far above their judges; all
the sectarians are moral, from--”
But Rogozhinsky, a man not accustomed to be interrupted when he spoke,
did not listen to Nekhludoff, but went on talking at the same time,
thereby irritating him still more.
“Nor can I admit that the object of the law is the upholding of the
present state of things. The law aims at reforming--”
“A nice kind of reform, in a prison!” Nekhludoff put in.
“Or removing,” Rogozhinsky went on, persistently, “the perverted and
brutalised persons that threaten society.”
“That’s just what it doesn’t do. Society has not the means of doing
either the one thing or the other.”
“How is that? I don’t understand,” said Rogozhinsky with a forced smile.
“I mean that only two reasonable kinds of punishment exist. Those used
in the old days: corporal and capital punishment, which, as human nature
gradually softens, come more and more into disuse,” said Nekhludoff.
“There, now, this is quite new and very strange to hear from your lips.”
“Yes, it is reasonable to hurt a man so that he should not do in future
what he is hurt for doing, and it is also quite reasonable to cut a
man’s head off when he is injurious or dangerous to society. These
punishments have a reasonable meaning. But what sense is there in
locking up in a prison a man perverted by want of occupation and bad
example; to place him in a position where he is provided for, where
laziness is imposed on him, and where he is in company with the most
perverted of men? What reason is there to take a man at public cost (it
comes to more than 500 roubles per head) from the Toula to the Irkoatsk
government, or from Koursk--”
“Yes, but all the same, people are afraid of those journeys at public
cost, and if it were not for such journeys and the prisons, you and I
would not be sitting here as we are.”
“The prisons cannot insure our safety, because these people do not
stay there for ever, but are set free again. On the contrary, in those
establishments men are brought to the greatest vice and degradation, so
that the danger is increased.”
“You mean to say that the penitentiary system should be improved.”
“It cannot be improved. Improved prisons would cost more than all that
is being now spent on the people’s education, and would lay a still
heavier burden on the people.”
“The shortcomings of the penitentiary system in nowise invalidate
the law itself,” Rogozhinsky continued again, without heeding his
brother-in-law.
“There is no remedy for these shortcomings,” said Nekhludoff, raising
his voice.
“What of that? Shall we therefore go and kill, or, as a certain
statesman proposed, go putting out people’s eyes?” Rogozhinsky remarked.
“Yes; that would be cruel, but it would be effective. What is done
now is cruel, and not only ineffective, but so stupid that one cannot
understand how people in their senses can take part in so absurd and
cruel a business as criminal law.”
“But I happen to take part in it,” said Rogozhinsky, growing pale.
“That is your business. But to me it is incomprehensible.”
“I think there are a good many things incomprehensible to you,” said
Rogozhinsky, with a trembling voice.
“I have seen how one public prosecutor did his very best to get an
unfortunate boy condemned, who could have evoked nothing but sympathy in
an unperverted mind. I know how another cross-examined a sectarian and
put down the reading of the Gospels as a criminal offence; in fact, the
whole business of the Law Courts consists in senseless and cruel actions
of that sort.”
“I should not serve if I thought so,” said Rogozhinsky, rising.
Nekhludoff noticed a peculiar glitter under his brother-in-law’s
spectacles. “Can it be tears?” he thought. And they were really tears
of injured pride. Rogozhinsky went up to the window, got out his
handkerchief, coughed and rubbed his spectacles, took them off, and
wiped his eyes.
When he returned to the sofa he lit a cigar, and did not speak any more.
Nekhludoff felt pained and ashamed of having offended his brother-in-law
and his sister to such a degree, especially as he was going away the
next day.
He parted with them in confusion, and drove home.
“All I have said may be true--anyhow he did not reply. But it was not
said in the right way. How little I must have changed if I could be
carried away by ill-feeling to such an extent as to hurt and wound poor
Nathalie in such a way!” he thought.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE PRISONERS START FOR SIBERIA.
The gang of prisoners, among whom was Maslova, was to leave Moscow by
rail at 3 p.m.; therefore, in order to see the gang start, and walk
to the station with the prisoners Nekhludoff meant to reach the prison
before 12 o’clock.
The night before, as he was packing up and sorting his papers, he came
upon his diary, and read some bits here and there. The last bit written
before he left for Petersburg ran thus: “Katusha does not wish to accept