The possessed or, The devils
nothing; those who don't, hold up their right hands."
"Those who don't want it?" inquired the schoolboy. "Are you doing it on
purpose?" cried Madame Virginsky wrathfully.
"No. Excuse me, those who want it, or those who don't want it? For one
must know that definitely," cried two or three voices.
"Those who don't want it--those who _don't_ want it."
"Yes, but what is one to do, hold up one's hand or not hold it up if one
doesn't want it?" cried an officer.
"Ech, we are not accustomed to constitutional methods yet!" remarked the
major.
"Mr. Lyamshin, excuse me, but you are thumping so that no one can hear
anything," observed the lame teacher.
"But, upon my word, Arina Prohorovna, nobody is listening, really!"
cried Lyamshin, jumping up. "I won't play! I've come to you as a
visitor, not as a drummer!"
"Gentlemen," Virginsky went on, "answer verbally, are we a meeting or
not?"
"We are! We are!" was heard on all sides. "If so, there's no need to
vote, that's enough. Are you satisfied, gentlemen? Is there any need to
put it to the vote?"
"No need--no need, we understand."
"Perhaps someone doesn't want it to be a meeting?"
"No, no; we all want it."
"But what does 'meeting' mean?" cried a voice. No one answered.
"We must choose a chairman," people cried from different parts of the
room.
"Our host, of course, our host!"
"Gentlemen, if so," Virginsky, the chosen chairman, began, "I propose
my original motion. If anyone wants to say anything more relevant to the
subject, or has some statement to make, let him bring it forward without
loss of time."
There was a general silence. The eyes of all were turned again on
Verhovensky and Stavrogin.
"Verhovensky, have you no statement to make?" Madame Virginsky asked him
directly.
"Nothing whatever," he answered, yawning and stretching on his chair.
"But I should like a glass of brandy."
"Stavrogin, don't you want to?"
"Thank you, I don't drink."
"I mean don't you want to speak, not don't you want brandy."
"To speak, what about? No, I don't want to."
"They'll bring you some brandy," she answered Verhovensky.
The girl-student got up. She had darted up several times already.
"I have come to make a statement about the sufferings of poor students
and the means of rousing them to protest."
But she broke off. At the other end of the table a rival had risen, and
all eyes turned to him. Shigalov, the man with the long ears, slowly
rose from his seat with a gloomy and sullen air and mournfully laid on
the table a thick notebook filled with extremely small handwriting.
He remained standing in silence. Many people looked at the notebook
in consternation, but Liputin, Virginsky, and the lame teacher seemed
pleased.
"I ask leave to address the meeting," Shigalov pronounced sullenly but
resolutely.
"You have leave." Virginsky gave his sanction.
The orator sat down, was silent for half a minute, and pronounced in a
solemn voice,
"Gentlemen!"
"Here's the brandy," the sister who had been pouring out tea and had
gone to fetch brandy rapped out, contemptuously and disdainfully putting
the bottle before Verhovensky, together with the wineglass which she
brought in her fingers without a tray or a plate.
The interrupted orator made a dignified pause.
"Never mind, go on, I am not listening," cried Verhovensky, pouring
himself out a glass.
"Gentlemen, asking your attention and, as you will see later, soliciting
your aid in a matter of the first importance," Shigalov began again, "I
must make some prefatory remarks."
"Arina Prohorovna, haven't you some scissors?" Pyotr Stepanovitch asked
suddenly.
"What do you want scissors for?" she asked, with wide-open eyes.
"I've forgotten to cut my nails; I've been meaning to for the last three
days," he observed, scrutinising his long and dirty nails with unruffled
composure.
Arina Prohorovna crimsoned, but Miss Virginsky seemed pleased.
"I believe I saw them just now on the window." She got up from the
table, went and found the scissors, and at once brought them. Pyotr
Stepanovitch did not even look at her, took the scissors, and set to
work with them. Arina Prohorovna grasped that these were realistic
manners, and was ashamed of her sensitiveness. People looked at one
another in silence. The lame teacher looked vindictively and enviously
at Verhovensky. Shigalov went on.
"Dedicating my energies to the study of the social organisation which is
in the future to replace the present condition of things, I've come to
the conviction that all makers of social systems from ancient times up
to the present year, 187-, have been dreamers, tellers of fairy-tales,
fools who contradicted themselves, who understood nothing of natural
science and the strange animal called man. Plato, Rousseau, Fourier,
columns of aluminium, are only fit for sparrows and not for human
society. But, now that we are all at last preparing to act, a new
form of social organisation is essential. In order to avoid further
uncertainty, I propose my own system of world-organisation. Here it is."
He tapped the notebook. "I wanted to expound my views to the meeting in
the most concise form possible, but I see that I should need to add a
great many verbal explanations, and so the whole exposition would occupy
at least ten evenings, one for each of my chapters." (There was the
sound of laughter.) "I must add, besides, that my system is not yet
complete." (Laughter again.) "I am perplexed by my own data and my
conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which I
start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.
I will add, however, that there can be no solution of the social problem
but mine."
The laughter grew louder and louder, but it came chiefly from the
younger and less initiated visitors. There was an expression of some
annoyance on the faces of Madame Virginsky, Liputin, and the lame
teacher.
"If you've been unsuccessful in making your system consistent, and have
been reduced to despair yourself, what could we do with it?" one officer
observed warily.
"You are right, Mr. Officer"--Shigalov turned sharply to
him--"especially in using the word despair. Yes, I am reduced to despair.
Nevertheless, nothing can take the place of the system set forth in my
book, and there is no other way out of it; no one can invent anything
else. And so I hasten without loss of time to invite the whole society
to listen for ten evenings to my book and then give their opinions of
it. If the members are unwilling to listen to me, let us break up from
the start--the men to take up service under government, the women to
their cooking; for if you reject my solution you'll find no other, none
whatever! If they let the opportunity slip, it will simply be their
loss, for they will be bound to come back to it again."
There was a stir in the company. "Is he mad, or what?" voices asked.
"So the whole point lies in Shigalov's despair," Lyamshin commented,
"and the essential question is whether he must despair or not?"
"Shigalov's being on the brink of despair is a personal question,"
declared the schoolboy.
"I propose we put it to the vote how far Shigalov's despair affects the
common cause, and at the same time whether it's worth while listening to
him or not," an officer suggested gaily.
"That's not right." The lame teacher put in his spoke at last. As a rule
he spoke with a rather mocking smile, so that it was difficult to make
out whether he was in earnest or joking. "That's not right, gentlemen.
Mr. Shigalov is too much devoted to his task and is also too modest.
I know his book. He suggests as a final solution of the question the
division of mankind into two unequal parts. One-tenth enjoys absolute
liberty and unbounded power over the other nine-tenths. The others
have to give up all individuality and become, so to speak, a herd, and,
through boundless submission, will by a series of regenerations attain
primæval innocence, something like the Garden of Eden. They'll have
to work, however. The measures proposed by the author for depriving
nine-tenths of mankind of their freedom and transforming them into a
herd through the education of whole generations are very remarkable,
founded on the facts of nature and highly logical. One may not agree
with some of the deductions, but it would be difficult to doubt the
intelligence and knowledge of the author. It's a pity that the time
required--ten evenings--is impossible to arrange for, or we might hear a
great deal that's interesting."
"Can you be in earnest?" Madame Virginsky addressed the lame gentleman
with a shade of positive uneasiness in her voice, "when that man doesn't
know what to do with people and so turns nine-tenths of them into
slaves? I've suspected him for a long time."
"You say that of your own brother?" asked the lame man.
"Relationship? Are you laughing at me?"
"And besides, to work for aristocrats and to obey them as though they
were gods is contemptible!" observed the girl-student fiercely.
"What I propose is not contemptible; it's paradise, an earthly
paradise, and there can be no other on earth," Shigalov pronounced
authoritatively.
"For my part," said Lyamshin, "if I didn't know what to do with
nine-tenths of mankind, I'd take them and blow them up into the air
instead of putting them in paradise. I'd only leave a handful of
educated people, who would live happily ever afterwards on scientific
principles."
"No one but a buffoon can talk like that!" cried the girl, flaring up.
"He is a buffoon, but he is of use," Madame Virginsky whispered to her.
"And possibly that would be the best solution of the problem," said
Shigalov, turning hotly to Lyamshin. "You certainly don't know what a
profound thing you've succeeded in saying, my merry friend. But as it's
hardly possible to carry out your idea, we must confine ourselves to an
earthly paradise, since that's what they call it."
"This is pretty thorough rot," broke, as though involuntarily, from
Verhovensky. Without even raising his eyes, however, he went on cutting
his nails with perfect nonchalance.
"Why is it rot?" The lame man took it up instantly, as though he had
been lying in wait for his first words to catch at them. "Why is it
rot? Mr. Shigalov is somewhat fanatical in his love for humanity, but
remember that Fourier, still more Cabet and even Proudhon himself,
advocated a number of the most despotic and even fantastic measures. Mr.
Shigalov is perhaps far more sober in his suggestions than they are. I
assure you that when one reads his book it's almost impossible not to
agree with some things. He is perhaps less far from realism than anyone
and his earthly paradise is almost the real one--if it ever existed--for
the loss of which man is always sighing."
"I knew I was in for something," Verhovensky muttered again.
"Allow me," said the lame man, getting more and more excited.
"Conversations and arguments about the future organisation of society
are almost an actual necessity for all thinking people nowadays. Herzen
was occupied with nothing else all his life. Byelinsky, as I know on
very good authority, used to spend whole evenings with his friends
debating and settling beforehand even the minutest, so to speak,
domestic, details of the social organisation of the future."
"Some people go crazy over it," the major observed suddenly.
"We are more likely to arrive at something by talking, anyway, than by
sitting silent and posing as dictators," Liputin hissed, as though at
last venturing to begin the attack.
"I didn't mean Shigalov when I said it was rot," Verhovensky mumbled.
"You see, gentlemen,"--he raised his eyes a trifle--"to my mind all
these books, Fourier, Cabet, all this talk about the right to work,