War and Peace
means. Then you say, ‘lighten his toil.’ But as I see it, physical
labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his existence, as
mental activity is to you or me. You can’t help thinking. I go to bed
after two in the morning, thoughts come and I can’t sleep but toss
about till dawn, because I think and can’t help thinking, just as
he can’t help plowing and mowing; if he didn’t, he would go to the
drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical
labor but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical
idleness, but would grow fat and die. The third thing—what else was
it you talked about?” and Prince Andrew crooked a third finger. “Ah,
yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit, he is dying, and you come and
bleed him and patch him up. He will drag about as a cripple, a burden to
everybody, for another ten years. It would be far easier and simpler for
him to die. Others are being born and there are plenty of them as it is.
It would be different if you grudged losing a laborer—that’s how I
regard him—but you want to cure him from love of him. And he does not
want that. And besides, what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone!
Killed them, yes!” said he, frowning angrily and turning away from
Pierre.
Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that it was
evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he spoke
readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long time. His
glance became more animated as his conclusions became more hopeless.
“Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!” said Pierre. “I don’t
understand how one can live with such ideas. I had such moments
myself not long ago, in Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I
collapsed so that I don’t live at all—everything seems hateful to
me... myself most of all. Then I don’t eat, don’t wash... and how is
it with you?...”
“Why not wash? That is not cleanly,” said Prince Andrew; “on the
contrary one must try to make one’s life as pleasant as possible.
I’m alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best I
can without hurting others.”
“But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would sit
without moving, undertaking nothing....”
“Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do
nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me the
honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to get
out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary
qualifications for it—the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness
necessary for the position. Then there’s this house, which must be
built in order to have a nook of one’s own in which to be quiet. And
now there’s this recruiting.”
“Why aren’t you serving in the army?”
“After Austerlitz!” said Prince Andrew gloomily. “No, thank you
very much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active
Russian army. And I won’t—not even if Bonaparte were here at
Smolénsk threatening Bald Hills—even then I wouldn’t serve in the
Russian army! Well, as I was saying,” he continued, recovering his
composure, “now there’s this recruiting. My father is chief in
command of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active
service is to serve under him.”
“Then you are serving?”
“I am.”
He paused a little while.
“And why do you serve?”
“Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men of
his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he has too
energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited power that he is
terrible, and now he has this authority of a commander in chief of
the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had been two hours late
a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster’s clerk at Yúkhnovna
hanged,” said Prince Andrew with a smile. “So I am serving because
I alone have any influence with my father, and now and then can save him
from actions which would torment him afterwards.”
“Well, there you see!”
“Yes, but it is not as you imagine,” Prince Andrew continued. “I
did not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk
who had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been
very glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father—that again
is for myself.”
Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered feverishly
while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there was no
desire to do good to his neighbor.
“There now, you wish to liberate your serfs,” he continued; “that
is a very good thing, but not for you—I don’t suppose you ever had
anyone flogged or sent to Siberia—and still less for your serfs. If
they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don’t suppose they are
any the worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and the
stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it is
a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon
themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being
able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people I
pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You
may not have seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those
traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more irritable,
become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot restrain
themselves and grow more and more miserable.”
Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking
that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his
father’s case.
He did not reply.
“So that’s what I’m sorry for—human dignity, peace of mind,
purity, and not the serfs’ backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave
as you may, always remain the same backs and foreheads.”
“No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you,” said
Pierre.
CHAPTER XII
In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and drove to
Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the silence now and
then with remarks which showed that he was in a good temper.
Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making in
his husbandry.
Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and
apparently immersed in his own thoughts.
He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did not
see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid, enlighten, and
raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he should say, he felt that
Prince Andrew with one word, one argument, would upset all his teaching,
and he shrank from beginning, afraid of exposing to possible ridicule
what to him was precious and sacred.
“No, but why do you think so?” Pierre suddenly began, lowering his
head and looking like a bull about to charge, “why do you think so?
You should not think so.”
“Think? What about?” asked Prince Andrew with surprise.
“About life, about man’s destiny. It can’t be so. I myself thought
like that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don’t
smile. Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought
it was: Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal,
aspects of humanity.”
And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince
Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed
from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality, brotherhood,
and love.
“Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the rest
is a dream,” said Pierre. “Understand, my dear fellow, that outside
this union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree with you
that nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to live out
his life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But make our
fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood, give yourself up
to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once feel yourself, as I
have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible chain the beginning of
which is hidden in heaven,” said Pierre.
Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence to
Pierre’s words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels prevented
his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it, and by the
peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew’s eyes and by his silence,
Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that Prince Andrew would
not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.
They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they had to
cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed on it,
they also stepped on the raft.
Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed silently at
the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.
“Well, what do you think about it?” Pierre asked. “Why are you
silent?”
“What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It’s all very
well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of
life, the destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who
are we? Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see what
you see? You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I don’t
see it.”
Pierre interrupted him.
“Do you believe in a future life?” he asked.
“A future life?” Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no
time to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as he
knew Prince Andrew’s former atheistic convictions.
“You say you can’t see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor
could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the end
of everything. On earth, here on this earth” (Pierre pointed to
the fields), “there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the
universe, in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we who
are now the children of earth are—eternally—children of the
whole universe. Don’t I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
harmonious whole? Don’t I feel that I form one link, one step, between
the lower and higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of
beings in whom the Deity—the Supreme Power if you prefer the term—is
manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man,
why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go farther and
farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing vanishes in this
world, but that I shall always exist and always have existed. I feel
that beyond me and above me there are spirits, and that in this world
there is truth.”
“Yes, that is Herder’s theory,” said Prince Andrew, “but it is
not that which can convince me, dear friend—life and death are what
convince. What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound
up with one’s own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped to
make it right” (Prince Andrew’s voice trembled and he turned away),
“and suddenly that being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to
exist.... Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe there
is.... That’s what convinces, that is what has convinced me,” said
Prince Andrew.
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Pierre, “isn’t that what I’m
saying?”
“No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the
necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with
someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, and
you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked
in....”
“Well, that’s it then! You know that there is a there and there is a
Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is—God.”
Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long since been
taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The sun had sunk half
below the horizon and an evening frost was starring the puddles near
the ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the astonishment of the footmen,