"I never did assert it," thought Konstantin Levin.

"...dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women starve the

children, and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helpless

in the hands of every village clerk, while you have at your

disposal a means of helping them, and don't help them because to

your mind it's of no importance."

And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you

are so undeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you

won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do

it.

Konstantin Levin felt that there was no course open to him but to

submit, or to confess to a lack of zeal for the public good. And

this mortified him and hurt his feelings.

"It's both," he said resolutely: "I don't see that it was

possible..."

"What! was it impossible, if the money were properly laid out, to

provide medical aid?"

"Impossible, as it seems to me.... For the three thousand square

miles of our district, what with our thaws, and the storms, and

the work in the fields, I don't see how it is possible to

provide medical aid all over. And besides, I don't believe in

medicine."

"Oh, well, that's unfair...I can quote to you thousands of

instances.... But the schools, anyway."

"Why have schools?"

"What do you mean? Can there be two opinions of the advantage of

education? If it's a good thing for you, it's a good thing for

everyone."

Konstantin Levin felt himself morally pinned against a wall, and

so he got hot, and unconsciously blurted out the chief cause of

his indifference to public business.

"Perhaps it may all be very good; but why should I worry myself

about establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of,

and schools to which I shall never send my children, to which

even the peasants don't want to send their children, and to which

I've no very firm faith that they ought to send them?" said he.

Sergey Ivanovitch was for a minute surprised at this unexpected

view of the subject; but he promptly made a new plan of attack.

He was silent for a little, drew out a hook, threw it in again,

and turned to his brother smiling.

"Come, now.... In the first place, the dispensary is needed. We

ourselves sent for the district doctor for Agafea Mihalovna."

"Oh, well, but I fancy her wrist will never be straight again."

"That remains to be proved.... Next, the peasant who can read

and write is as a workman of more use and value to you."




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