Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

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

tomorrow 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 he 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