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 observance of that law of right and
wrong which has been revealed to every man, and therefore he could not
wish for war or advocate war for any general objects whatever. He said as
Mihalitch did and the people, who had expressed their feeling in the
traditional invitations of the Varyagi: “Be princes and rule over us. Gladly
