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“I will not argue with you,” said Lyda. “I have heard all that.” She put down her paper. “I will only tell you one thing, it is no good sitting with folded hands. It is true, we do not save mankind, and perhaps we do make mistakes, but we do what we can and we are right. The highest and most sacred truth for an educated being–is to help his neighbours, and we do what we can to help. You do not like it, but it is impossible to please everybody.”

“True, Lyda, true,” said her mother.

In Lyda’s presence her courage always failed her, and as she talked she would look timidly at her, for she was afraid of saying something foolish or out of place: and she never contradicted, but would always agree: “True, Lyda, true.”

“Teaching peasants to read and write, giving them little moral pamphlets and medical assistance, cannot decrease either ignorance or mortality, just as the light from your windows cannot illuminate this huge garden,” I said. “You give nothing by your interference in the lives of these people. You only create new demands, and a new compulsion to work.”

“Ah! My God, but we must do something!” said Lyda exasperatedly, and I could tell by her voice that she thought my opinions negligible and despised me.

“It is necessary,” I said, “to free people from hard physical work. It is necessary to relieve them of their yoke, to give them breathing space, to save them from spending their whole lives in the kitchen or the byre, in the fields; they should have time to take thought of their souls, of God and to develop their spiritual capacities. Every human being’s salvation lies in spiritual activity–in his continual search for truth and the meaning of life. Give them some relief from rough, animal labour, let them feel free, then you will see how ridiculous at bottom your pamphlets and pharmacies are. Once a human being is aware of his vocation, then he can only be satisfied with religion, service, art, and not with trifles like that.”

“Free them from work?” Lyda gave a smile. “Is that possible?”

“Yes…. Take upon yourself a part of their work. If we all, in town and country, without exception, agreed to share the work which is being spent by mankind in the satisfaction of physical demands, then none of us would have to work more than two or three hours a day. If all of us, rich and poor, worked three hours a day the rest of our time would be free. And then to be still less dependent on our bodies, we should invent machines to do the work and we should try to reduce our demands to the minimum. We should toughen ourselves and our children should not be afraid of hunger and cold, and we should not be anxious about their health, as Anna, Maria, Pelagueya were anxious. Then supposing we did not bother about doctors and pharmacies, and did away with tobacco factories and distilleries–what a lot of free time we should have! We should give our leisure to service and the arts. Just as peasants all work together to repair the roads, so the whole community would work together to seek truth and the meaning of life, and, I am sure of it–truth would be found very soon, man would get rid of his continual, poignant, depressing fear of death and even of death itself.”

“But you contradict yourself,” said Lyda. “You talk about service and deny education.”

“I deny the education of a man who can only use it to read the signs on the public houses and possibly a pamphlet which he is incapable of understanding–the kind of education we have had from the time of Riurik: and village life has remained exactly as it was then. Not education is wanted but freedom for the full development of spiritual capacities. Not schools are wanted but universities.”