Pisarev article thinking proletariat summary. "Kind and Strong"

The novel by Mr. Chernyshevsky infuriates everyone who is fed and warmed by routine. They see in it mockery of art, disrespect for the public, immorality, cynicism, and, perhaps, even the germs of all kinds of crimes.

And, of course, they are right: the novel mocks their aesthetics, destroys their morality, shows the falsity of their chastity, and does not hide its contempt for their judges. But all this does not constitute even a hundredth part of the novel’s sins; the main thing is that he could become the banner of a direction they hated, show it the immediate goals and around them, and for them gather everything living and young.

My readers, of course, understand very well that there is nothing terrible in this novel. In him, on the contrary, the presence of the most ardent love for man is felt everywhere; it collects and analyzes the emerging glimmers of new and better aspirations; in it the author looks into the distance with that conscious fullness of passionate hope that our publicists, novelists and all other, as they are also called, mentors of society do not have. Remaining true to all the features of his critical talent and incorporating all his theoretical convictions into his novel, Mr. Chernyshevsky created a work in highest degree original and extremely entertaining. The merits and demerits of this novel belong to him alone; it is similar to all other Russian novels only in its external form: it is similar to them in that its plot is very simple and that there is little characters. This is where any similarity ends. The novel “What to do?” does not belong to the raw products of our mental life. It was created by the work of a strong mind; it bears the stamp of deep thought. Knowing how to peer into the phenomena of life, the author knows how to generalize and comprehend them. His irresistible logic leads him in a direct path from individual phenomena to external theoretical combinations, which lead to despair the pitiful routinists, who respond with pitiful words to every new and strong thought.

All the author’s sympathies lie unconditionally on the side of the future; These sympathies are given undividedly to those inclinations of the future that are already noticed in the present. These inclinations are still buried under a pile of social debris of the past, and the author, of course, has a completely negative attitude towards the past. As a thinker, he understands and, therefore, forgives all his deviations from rationality, but as a doer, as a defender of an idea striving to enter life, he fights against all ugliness and pursues with irony and sarcasm everything that burdens the earth and smokes the sky.

If Mr. Chernyshevsky had to portray new people placed in Bazarov’s position, that is, surrounded by all sorts of old stuff and rags, then his Lopukhov, Kirsanov, Rakhmetov would behave almost exactly the way Bazarov behaves. But Mr. Chernyshevsky has no need to act in this way. He knows not only how new people think and reason, but also how they feel, how they love and respect each other, how they organize their family and everyday life, and how ardently they strive for that time and for that order of things in which they can It would be to love all people and trustingly extend a hand to everyone.

New people consider labor absolutely a necessary condition human life, and this view of work is almost the most significant difference between old and new people. Apparently, there is nothing special here.

Therefore, whoever loves work, acting in his own favor, acts in favor of humanity; whoever loves work consciously loves himself, would love all other people in himself; if only there weren’t such gentlemen in the world who unwittingly or intentionally interfere with all useful work.

New people work and wish their work space and development; in this desire, which constitutes the deepest need of their body, new people converge with all the millions of all breastfeeding people globe, everyone who consciously or unconsciously prays to God and asks their neighbor not to interfere with his work and enjoy the fruits of labor.

New people do not sin and do not repent; they always think and therefore only make errors in calculations, and then correct these errors and avoid them in subsequent calculations. Among new people, goodness and truth, honesty and knowledge, character and intelligence turn out to be identical concepts; The smarter the new person, the more honest he is, because fewer errors creep into the calculations. A new person has no reason for a discord between mind and feeling, because the mind, directed towards beloved and useful work, always advises only what is in accordance with personal benefit, coinciding with the true interests of humanity and, therefore, with the requirements of the strictest justice and the very sensitive moral feeling.

The main features of the new type, which I have talked about so far, can be formulated in three main provisions, which are in the closest connection with each other.

I. New people are addicted to generally useful work.

II. The personal benefit of the new people coincides with the general benefit, and their egoism contains the broadest love for humanity.

III. The mind of new people is in the very complete harmony with their feelings, because neither their mind nor their feelings are distorted by chronic enmity against other people.

And all this together can be expressed even more briefly: new people are thinking workers who love their work.

The development and final improvement of Vera Pavlovna’s workshop are described by Mr. Chernyshevsky very clearly, in detail and with that conscious love that such institutions naturally inspire in him as a specialist in social science.

In practical terms, this description of a workshop, whether it actually exists or is ideal, is perhaps the most remarkable passage in the entire novel.

The main reasons for setting up Vera Pavlovna’s workshop were that the profits were divided equally among all the workers and then spent in the most economical and prudent way: instead of several small apartments, one large one was rented; Instead of buying food supplies in small quantities, they were bought in bulk.

For Vera Pavlovna’s personal life, the organization of the workshop and previous work on lessons are important in the sense that they protect her in the eyes of the reader from suspicion of mental emptiness. Vera Pavlovna is a woman of a new type; her time is filled with useful and exciting work; therefore, if a new feeling is born in her, displacing her attachment to Lopukhov, then this feeling expresses the real need of her nature, and not the random whim of an idle mind and a wandering imagination. The possibility of this new feeling is determined by the very subtle difference that exists between the characters of Lopukhov and his wife. This difference, of course, does not produce mutual displeasure between them, but it prevents them from providing each other with complete family happiness, which both of them have the right to demand from life.

She loves flowers and paintings, loves to eat cream, soak in a warm and soft bed, and have fun opera music; there are no flowers or paintings in his office; on the wall hang only her portrait and the portrait of the “holy old man,” Robert Owen; he works hard and rarely has fun... These external differences are signs of deeper internal differences. She needs the constant presence of her loved one, his constant participation in her work and in her amusements, in her serious thoughts and in her half-childish pranks. In him, on the contrary, there is no need to live the same life with her every minute, to participate in her every joy, to share equally every impression. He will always help her in a moment of thought or grief; he will approach her if she calls him in a moment of fun, but he will approach either at her call, or because he will guess her desire without her words; he himself has no inner attraction to the pleasures that she loves. He sometimes needs to retire and concentrate; He himself says about himself that he rests only when he is completely alone. Therefore, in family life Lopukhovs, one of the spouses certainly had to suppress the personal characteristics of his character for the sake of the other. Under such conditions, complete happiness of love is completely impossible...

Vera Pavlovna hopes to again find happiness and tranquility in a serious and caring love her husband, but Lopukhov, as a more experienced person, understands that it is too late to hope. It’s hard for him to give up what he considered his happiness, but he is not a child and does not try to catch the moon with his hands. He sees that the reasons for the discord lie very deeply, in the very foundations of both characters, and therefore he is trying not to somehow drown out the discord, but, on the contrary, to radically correct the problem, even if he has to completely abandon his relationship with the woman you love. There is no supernatural heroism here; there is only a clear and correct calculation.

That series of actions that were completely logical and necessary on Lopukhov’s part in relation to such people as Vera Pavlovna and Kirsanov, becomes absurd and funny if we put in Vera Pavlovna’s place an empty-headed lady with a sensitive heart, and in that place Kirsanov’s equally an empty lover with fiery passions. Lopukhov would not act absurdly and ridiculously. He is not at all like Don Quixote and will always be able to understand that a windmill is not a giant and that rams are not knights. New people only in relationships with each other develop all the strengths of their character and all the abilities of their mind; With people of the old type, they are constantly in a defensive position, because they know that every honest act in a corrupt society is reinterpreted, distorted and turned into vulgarity, leading to harmful effects. Only in a pure environment do pure feelings and living ideas unfold. Lopukhov's entire course of action, from his trip to Kirsanov to his false suicide, finds a brilliant justification in the complete and reasonable happiness that he created for Vera Pavlovna and Kirsanov. Love, as people of the new type understand it, is worth overthrowing all sorts of obstacles to satisfy it.

Lopukhov, Kirsanov and Vera Pavlovna, who appear in the novel “What to do?” the main representatives of the new type, do not do anything that would exceed ordinary human strength. They are ordinary people, and the author himself recognizes them as such people; This circumstance is extremely important, and it gives the entire novel a particularly deep meaning.

Pointing to Lopukhov, Kirsanov and Vera Pavlovna, Mr. Chernyshevsky told all his readers: this is what ordinary people can be, and this is how they should be if they want to find a lot of happiness and pleasure in life. This meaning permeates his entire novel, and the evidence with which he supports this main idea is so irresistibly convincing that it must certainly influence that part of the public that is generally capable of listening to and understanding any evidence. “The future,” says Mr. Chernyshevsky, “is bright and beautiful. Love him, strive for him, work for him, bring him closer, transfer from him to the present, as much as you can transfer: your life will be as bright and good, rich in joy and pleasure as you can transfer into it from the future. Strive for it, work for it, bring it closer, transfer from it to the present everything that you can transfer.”

Wanting to more convincingly prove to his readers that Lopukhov, Kirsanov and Vera Pavlovna are indeed ordinary people, Mr. Chernyshevsky brings onto the stage the titanic figure of Rakhmetov, whom he himself recognizes as extraordinary and calls “a special person.” Rakhmetov does not participate in the action of the novel, and he has nothing to do in it; people like Rakhmetov are only then and there in their own sphere and in their place, when and where they can be historical figures; for them the richest is cramped and shallow individual life; they are not satisfied with either science or family happiness; they love all people, suffer from every injustice that occurs, experience in their own souls the great grief of millions and give everything they can give to heal this grief. Under certain conditions of development, these people turn into missionaries and go to preach the gospel to the savages various parts Sveta. Under other conditions, they manage to become convinced that in the most educated countries of Europe there are savages who, in the depth of their ignorance and the severity of their suffering, far surpass the Hottentots or Papuans. Then they stay in their homeland and work on what surrounds them.

Mr. Chernyshevsky’s attempt to introduce a “special person” to readers can be called very successful. Before him, only Turgenev took on this matter, but even then completely unsuccessfully. Insarov is the hero of the novel; Rakhmetov cannot even be called a character, and, despite the fact, Insarov remains completely intangible for us, while Rakhmetov is completely understandable. True, we don’t see what exactly Rakhmetov is doing, but we fully understand what kind of person Rakhmetov is... I only want to express the idea that no artistic talent can make up for the lack of materials; Mr. Chernyshevsky saw many such phenomena that speak very clearly about the existence of a new type and activity special people, similar to Rakhmetov. If these phenomena did not exist, then the figure of Rakhmetov would be as pale as the figure of Insarov. And if these phenomena really exist, then perhaps a bright future is not at all as immeasurably far from us as we used to think. Where the Rakhmetovs appear, there they spread bright ideas around them and awaken living hopes.

I. general characteristics novel

... “My readers, of course, understand very well that there is nothing terrible in this novel. In him, on the contrary, the presence of the most ardent love for a person is felt everywhere. It collects and analyzes the emerging glimmers of new and better aspirations. In it, the author looks into the distance with that conscious fullness of passionate hope that our publicists, novelists and all other, as they are also called, mentors of society do not have. Remaining true to all the features of his critical talent and carrying out all his theoretical convictions. created a work that is highly original and extremely entertaining. The merits and demerits of this novel belong to him alone. It is similar to other Russian novels only in its external form: it is similar to them in that its plot is very simple and that there are few characters in it. This is where any similarity ends. The novel "" does not belong to the raw products of our mental life. It was created by the work of a strong mind; it bears the stamp of deep thought. Knowing how to peer into the phenomena of life, the author knows how to generalize and comprehend them. His irresistible logic leads him in a direct path from individual phenomena to the highest theoretical combinations, which lead to despair the pitiful routinists, who respond with pitiful words to every new and strong thought.

All the author’s sympathies lie unconditionally on the side of the future; These sympathies are given undividedly to those inclinations of the future that are already noticed in the present. These inclinations are still buried under a pile of social debris of the past, and the author, of course, has a completely negative attitude towards the past. As a thinker, he understands and, therefore, forgives all his deviations from rationality, but as a doer, as a defender of an idea, striving to enter into life, he fights against all ugliness and pursues with irony and sarcasm everything that burdens the earth and smokes the sky.

II. About the "discerning reader"

The “insightful reader,” whom Chernyshevsky very often and very harshly makes fun of, has nothing in common with that simple and ingenuous reader whom every writer loves and respects. A simple reader picks up a book in order to have a good time or to learn something, but an astute reader - in order to show off the author and give his ideas an inspection. A simple reader who encounters a new thought may not agree with it, but he may also agree. An astute reader of all things new idea considers it impertinent, because this idea does not belong to him and is not part of that closed circle of views, which, in his opinion, constitutes the only container of all truth.

An astute reader gnashes his teeth when talking about new people, but a simple reader has no need to gnash on this occasion.

III. About "New People"

New people consider work to be an absolutely necessary condition of human life, and this view of work constitutes almost the most significant difference between old and new people.

New people do not reason stupidly, but the best thing is that their time is not spent in reasoning about lofty matters. Constantly keeping in mind the common task of all mankind, they meanwhile have already resolved it in application to their private life. For them, work is pleasant, and for them it is productive; There is not a single new person who does not have his favorite work, and this work is not fun for him, but really the goal and meaning of his whole life. A new person without his favorite work is as unthinkable as work without him is unthinkable.

Dear people, pleasures, and a beloved woman are all, undoubtedly, very good things, but a person himself is more precious to himself than anything else in the world. If at the cost of labor and hardship, at the cost of wasted youth, at the cost of lost love, he bought himself the right to deeply and consciously respect himself, the right to take with him to the ends of the world and retain unchanging youth and freshness of mind and feeling in all trials, then it cannot be said that he paid too much! He gave up a piece of his life in order to live his whole life as a human being, he lost two or three joys, but in return he received the highest pleasure, which serves as an adornment for life and support in a moment of agony; he received the right to know his real worth and to see that this price is not small.

This is the egoism of new people, and this egoism has no boundaries: they really sacrifice everyone and everything to it. They love themselves to the point of passion, they respect themselves to the point of reverence: but since they cannot even be blind and condescending towards themselves, they have to keep their ears open in order to retain their love and their respect for themselves at any given moment.

New people do not sin and do not repent: they always think and therefore only make errors in calculations, and therefore correct these errors and avoid them in subsequent calculations. For new people, goodness and truth, honesty and knowledge, character and intelligence turn out to be identical concepts: the smarter the new person, the more honest he is, because the fewer errors creep into his calculations. A new person has no reason for a discord between mind and feeling, because the mind, directed towards beloved and useful work, always advises only what is in accordance with personal benefit, coinciding with the true interests of humanity and, therefore, with the requirements of the strictest justice and the very sensitive moral feeling.

The main features of the new type, which I have spoken about so far, can be formulated in three main provisions, which are in the closest connection with each other.

1. New people are addicted to generally useful work.

2. The personal benefit of new people coincides with the general benefit, and their egoism contains the broadest love for humanity.

3. The mind of new people is in the most complete harmony with their feelings, because neither their mind nor their feelings are distorted by chronic enmity against other people.

And all this together can be expressed even more briefly: new people are thinking workers who love their work.

New people never demand anything from others: they themselves need complete freedom of feelings, thoughts and actions, and therefore they deeply respect this freedom in others. They accept from each other only what is given - I do not say voluntarily - this is not enough, but with joy, with complete and living pleasure. The concept of sacrifice and embarrassment has absolutely no place in their worldview. They know that a person is happy only when his nature develops in its full originality and integrity: therefore, they never allow themselves to invade someone else's life with personal demands or with obsessive participation.

People like Lopukhov are rare nowadays, but such people are not at all taller than human height. Every person who was not born an idiot can develop his thinking ability, can strengthen it with useful work, can rise to a correct and clear understanding of his relationships with people, and when this is accomplished, Lopukhov’s actions will seem completely simple and natural to him, and he will ask with sincere bewilderment; But how could it have been done differently? Indeed, it is impossible to do otherwise: whoever, in Lopukhov’s position, does less than Lopukhov did, will cease to be a man, and retaining the dignity of an honest man does not mean performing a heroic feat.

New people only in relationships with each other develop all the strengths of their character and all the abilities of their mind. With people of the old type, they are constantly in a defensive position, because they know how every honest act in society is reinterpreted, distorted and turned into vulgarity, leading to harmful consequences. Only in a pure environment do pure feelings and living ideas develop: it has long been said that new wine should not be poured into old wineskins, and this thought is as true now as it was grain two thousand years ago.

In our mental life, what stands out sharply from the rest of the mass is the direction in which our real strength lies and against which the most fierce and most ridiculous attacks are pouring in from all sides. This direction is supported by a very small group of people, which, however, despite its small number, all the young look at with complete sympathy, and all the decrepit with the most comical distrust. This group is gradually expanding, enriched with young leaders; the influence of this group on the new part of society already outweighs all the efforts of publicists, scientists and other writers who are subject to a greater or lesser degree of acute or chronic suffering from photophobia *; in the very near future, public opinion will be completely on the side of these people, whom the other engines of Russian progress are constantly trying to denigrate with various accusations and brand with various abusive names. They were accused of ignorance, of despotism of thought**, of mockery of science, of the desire to blow up the entire Russian society along with Russian soil; they were called whistlers, nihilists, boys; the word “pandemonium” was coined for them, they are ranked among the “literary Cossacks”, and they are also credited with the construction of the “bomb of denial” and the “Kalmyk raids on science” ***. All the mellifluous figures of the St. Petersburg and Moscow press are constantly worried about them; They are now scolded, now begged, now laughed at, now renounced, now admonished; but they remain deeply indifferent to all these expressions of participation. Whether their beliefs are good or bad, they have them, and they value them; when possible, they take them into society; when it is impossible, they are silent; but they don’t want to maneuver and change flags, and they don’t know how. Their lot seems unenviable to most, but by their nature they could not change it. From them came people who received the glory of heroic suffering, persecution of tireless, insatiable hatred.<...>This is difficult, but the fact that they are confident in themselves and love their ideals with a living, conscious love helps them to endure all adversity.<...>They know that the truth is with them, they know that they should move forward along their chosen path with a calm and firm step, and that sooner or later everyone will follow them. These people are fanatics, but they are fanaticized by a sober thought, and they are carried into the unknown distance of the future by a very definite and earthly desire to provide all people in general with the greatest possible share of simple everyday happiness.

* (Photophobia - in Aesopian language - meant both timidity of thought and ideological reaction, which met with hostility any glimpses of new ideas.)

** (For example, N. Solovyov wrote about the “despotism of thought” in the article “The Theory of Ugliness” (published in the magazine “Epoch”, 1864, July, p. 14), accusing Pisarev and his like-minded people of exaggerating the role of science and knowledge.)

*** (“Literary Cossacks”, “Kalmyk raids on science”, “bomb of denial” were called by B. N. Chicherin, professor of state law at Moscow University, the militant, fervent speeches of revolutionary democrats against political and literary reaction, against religion and idealism.)

According to the Molchalins and Polonievs * of journalism and society, these are very stupid and bad people, and the author of the novel “What is to be done?” has long been unanimously ranked among the most stupid and bad of these outcast people. But of all the things he wrote, this particular novel was declared to be the worst and the most stupid.

* (Molchalin is the protagonist of A. S. Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit”; his name became a household name to denote cunning, covered with modesty and obedience.

Polonius is a character in William Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet", literary personification obsequiousness.)

And it is really no wonder that this was the general voice of all critics. Never before has the trend that I mentioned at the beginning declared itself on Russian soil so decisively and directly; never before has it presented itself to the eyes of all those who hate it so clearly, so clearly and clearly. Therefore, everyone who is fed and warmed by routine is brought into indescribable rage by Mr. Chernyshevsky’s novel. They see in it mockery of art, disrespect for the public, immorality, cynicism, and, perhaps, even the germs of all kinds of crimes. And, of course, they are right: the novel mocks their aesthetics, destroys their morality, shows the falsity of their chastity, and does not hide its contempt for their judges. But all this does not constitute even a hundredth part of the novel’s sins; the main thing is that he could become the banner of a direction they hated, show it the immediate goals and around them, and for them gather everything living and young.

From their point of view, our mentors were right; but I respect my readers too much and respect myself too much to prove to them how infinitely shameful this circumstance is for them and how deeply their novel “What is to be done?” the hatred and rage that rose up against him. My readers, of course, understand very well that there is nothing terrible in this novel. In him, on the contrary, the presence of the most ardent love for man is felt everywhere; it collects and analyzes the emerging glimmers of new and better aspirations; in it the author looks into the distance with that conscious fullness of passionate hope that our publicists, novelists and all other, as they are also called, mentors of society do not have.<...>The novel "What to do?" does not belong to the raw products of our mental life. It was created by the work of a strong mind; it bears the stamp of deep thought. Knowing how to peer into the phenomena of life, the author knows how to generalize and comprehend them. His irresistible logic leads him in a direct path from individual phenomena to the highest theoretical combinations, which lead to despair the pitiful routinists, who respond with pitiful words to every new and strong thought.

II

* (The chapter begins a brief retelling contents of the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky “What to do?” - Comp.)

This is the whole plot of the novel “What is to be done?”, and there would be nothing special in it if new people had not acted in it, the very people who seem to the discerning reader * very terrible, very vile and very immoral.<...>A simple reader who encounters a new thought may not agree with it, but he may also agree. A discerning reader considers any new idea to be impudent, because this idea does not belong to him and does not enter into that closed circle of views, which, in his opinion, constitutes the only container of all truth. The common reader has prejudices of the most modest nature, such as, for example, that Monday is a hard day or that thirteen people should not sit at a table. These prejudices arise from mental sloppiness; they cannot be considered incurable and for the most part do not prevent the common reader from listening without malice to the opinions of intelligent and developed people. The prejudices of the discerning reader are distinguished, on the contrary, by their bookish character and theoretical direction. He knows everything, predicts everything, judges everything with ready-made aphorisms, and considers all other people more stupid than himself. His thought has trodden well-known paths for itself and moves only along these paths.<...>Any mediocrity who follows this path inevitably turns into an insightful reader. The entire stock of thoughts sitting in the head of the mediocrity is very quickly shaken out, and then one has to repeat himself, phrase it, pour it from empty to empty, become stupid from this pleasant activity and, as a result of all this, become imbued with the deepest hatred of everything that thinks independently. Most professors and journalists of all nations belong to the most boring category of insightful readers. All these gentlemen could have been very nice, simple and intelligent people, but they were mutilated by craft, just as craft mutilates tailors, shoemakers, and lapidaries. They have rubbed calluses on their brains, and these calluses make themselves felt in all the judgments and actions of insightful readers. The astute reader gnashes his teeth when they talk about new people, but the ordinary reader has no need to gnash on this occasion. The simple reader smiles with a good-natured smile and says calmly: “Well, let’s see, let’s see, what kind of new people are these?” - Look here.<...>

* (The expression “insightful reader” was used by Pisarev and other democratic publicists in different senses and was perceived differently by the readers of that time, depending on the context. In some cases, it was supposed to set the reader up to perceive subtext, outwardly hidden by an innocent verbal form. In other cases (including here), this expression concealed an ironic allusion to representatives of the administration, censorship, theology, etc., who arrogated to themselves the right to categorically judge everything and impose their opinions on others.)

New people consider work to be an absolutely necessary condition of human life, and this view of work constitutes almost the most significant difference between old and new people. Apparently there is nothing special here. Who denies respect to work? Who doesn’t recognize its importance and necessity? The Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, sitting on a woolsack and receiving several tens of thousands of pounds sterling a year for this sitting, is firmly convinced that he charges for labor and that he can justifiably say to a factory worker: My dear *, we you and I work for the benefit of society, and work is a holy cause. And the Lord Chancellor will say this, and the Earl of Derby will say this, because he, too, takes the trouble to pocket the land rent, and yet what kind of new people are they? They are very old and very respectable gentlemen. New people do full justice to one and another of their qualities, but they themselves will never agree to respect work the way the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Derby respect it.<...>. For them, work is truly necessary, more necessary than pleasure; for them, work and pleasure merge into one general concept called satisfying the needs of the body. They need food to satisfy hunger, they need sleep to restore strength, and they also need work to preserve, reinforce and develop these forces contained in muscles and nerves. They can go without pleasure for a very long time; Life without work is unthinkable for them.<...>

* (My dear (English) - my dear. - Comp.)

Reflecting often and seriously on what is happening around, new people from different sides and in different ways come to the fundamental conclusion that all the evil that exists in human societies comes from two reasons: from poverty and from idleness; and these two causes originate from one common source, which may be called the chaotic state of labor. Labor and reward are in an inverse relationship: the more labor, the less reward; the less labor, the greater the reward. As a result, there is idleness at one end of the ladder and poverty at the other. Both give rise to their own series of social evils. From idleness comes mental and physical flabbiness, the desire to create artificial interests for oneself and get carried away by them, the need strong sensations, exaggerated irritability of the imagination, debauchery from having nothing to do, attempts to push other people around, small and large clashes in family and public life, endless strife between equals and equals, elders against younger ones, younger ones against older ones, in a word - the whole endless swarm of sorrows and sufferings that people treat each other to without the slightest need and whose existence can only be explained by the expressive saying: “dogs go crazy with fat.” From poverty comes suffering, material, mental, moral, and whatever: here is hunger, and cold, and ignorance, from which one wants to escape, and forced debauchery, against which the nature of the most callous creatures is indignant, and bitter drunkenness, of which one is ashamed himself a drunkard, and the whole gang of criminal offenses that it was impossible for the criminal not to commit. Halfway up the ladder the products of poverty meet the products of idleness; there is less wildness here than below, and less flabbiness than above, but more dirt than anywhere else<...>. The entire ladder from top to bottom is dominated by hatred of work and the eternal antagonism of private interests. It is not surprising that labor produces few products under such conditions; It’s no wonder that love for one’s neighbor is found only in edifying books. Everyone reasons this way or almost this way: if, they say, I directly pull off my neighbor’s fur coat, then I won’t be praised for it and will be put in the police station; but if I put slander under my fur coat and pull it off in a quiet manner, then I will have a double benefit: firstly, I won’t have to make my own fur coat, and secondly, everyone will consider me an intelligent and courteous person.

Not everyone, however, likes this state of affairs; There are individuals who say to idle people: “You are bored because you do nothing; and there are other people who suffer because they are poor. Go find these people, help them, ease their suffering, attend to their needs, and you won’t be so bored, and it won’t be so hard for them to live in the world.” This is what they say good people, but new people are not satisfied with this. “Philanthropy,” say new people, “is as wonderful a thing as prison and all sorts of criminal and correctional punishments. Nowadays it is difficult to do without both, but the present time, like all past times, is engaged only in the eternal sweeping up and cleaning up of those nasty things , which it itself eternally produces. When nasty things are produced, it, of course, should be swept up and cleaned up, but it doesn’t hurt to think about how to stop such unprofitable production of nasty things in the future. Philanthropy itself is offensive to human dignity and contains deep injustice; it forces one person to depend for his existence and well-being on the arbitrary good nature of another similar person; it creates a beggar and a benefactor and corrupts both. It destroys neither poverty nor idleness; it increases neither one penny products of productive labor.In ancient Rome, under the guise of distribution of free bread, and in modern Catholic states southern Europe under the guise of distributing free portions of soup at the monastery gates, this sweet philanthropy completely corrupted the masses of healthy rabble. Not an almshouse, but a workshop can and should renew humanity.<...>

Whoever wants to fight against evil not to pass the time, but in order to someday really defeat and eradicate it, must work on solving the question: how to make work productive for the worker and how to destroy all the unpleasant and difficult aspects modern labor? There is work the only source of wealth; wealth obtained by labor is the only cure against the sufferings of poverty and against the vices of idleness. Therefore, the expedient organization of labor can and should lead to the happiness of mankind. To say that such an organization is impossible means to imitate those flabby old people who consider everything impossible that their predecessors and contemporaries did not think of. To fold one’s hands and sigh about the imperfections of everything earthly, when people suffer from their own stupidities, means to elevate these stupidities into the laws of nature and reveal laziness and timidity of thought, unworthy of a fresh, honest and gifted person with a lively mind.”

III

Relying on their favorite work, which is beneficial for themselves and useful for others, new people arrange their lives in such a way that their personal interests do not in any way contradict the real interests of society.<...>If your work provides for you and gives you high pleasure, then you have no need to rob other people; neither directly nor indirectly, nor through theft-fraud, nor through such exploitation as is not recognized as a criminal offense. When you work, your interests coincide with the interests of all other working people; you yourself are a worker, and all workers are your natural friends, and all exploiters are your natural enemies, because at the same time they are enemies of all humanity, including themselves. If all people worked, then everyone would be rich and happy; but if all people exploited their neighbors without working at all, then the exploiters would eat each other in one week, and the human race would disappear from the face of the earth.<...>

New people work and wish their work space and development; in this desire, which constitutes the deepest need of their body, new people agree with all the millions of all working people on the globe<...>. Unity of interest produces sympathy, and the new people sympathize warmly and consciously with all the real needs of all people. Every human passion is a sign of strength seeking application; depending on how this force is applied to the matter, this passion will be called a virtue or a vice and will bring benefit or harm, benefit or loss to people. The forces and passions applied to the exploitation of one's neighbor must be tempered by some moral motives<...>. People who live by exploitation must beware of exclusive selfishness, because such selfishness deprives them of any human image and turns them into civilized cannibals, which are much more disgusting than savage cannibals. But new people, living by work and feeling a physiological aversion to the most humane and good-natured exploitation, can, without the slightest danger, be selfish to the last degree. The selfishness of the exploiter runs counter to the interests of all other people; to enrich oneself means for the exploiter to take from another; the exploiter is forced to love himself to the detriment of the rest of the world; therefore, if he is good-natured and God-fearing, he tries to love himself in moderation, so that he does not feel offended and does not hurt others too much, but such moderation is very difficult to maintain, and therefore the exploiter always allows too much egoism, so that he begins to devour others , or too little, so that he himself becomes a victim of someone else’s egoistic appetite. Since our beautiful planet is dominated by wholesale exploitation in the family, in society, and in international relations, then it is customary for us to cry out against selfishness, to call notorious scoundrels selfish<...>.

In the life of new people there is no disagreement between attraction and moral duty, between selfishness and philanthropy; this is very important feature; this is a trait that allows them to be philanthropic and honest according to that directly strong attraction of nature, which forces every person to take care of his self-preservation and the satisfaction of the physical needs of his body. There is no forced artificiality in their philanthropy; there is no scrupulous pettiness in their honesty; their good inclinations are simple and healthy, strong and beautiful, like the direct products of rich nature; and they themselves, these new people, are nothing more than the first manifestations of rich human nature, having washed away some of the dirt that had accumulated on it during centuries of historical suffering.

The new man knows very well how relentless and merciless he is towards himself; the new person fears himself more than anyone else<...>. If he does such a nasty thing that it creates internal discord in him, then he knows that there will be no other cure for this discord except suicide or madness. It seems to me that such a need for self-respect and such a fear of one’s own judgment will be stronger than those moral railings that separate people of the old school from various abominations, those railings through which various indivisibles of both sexes so freely and gracefully flutter back and forth,

IV

People who live by exploiting their neighbors or appropriating the labor of others are in a constant offensive war with the entire world around them. War requires weapons, and such weapons turn out to be mental abilities. The intelligence of exploiters is almost exclusively applied to outwitting their neighbor or unraveling his intrigues.<...>The mind is sharpened and tempered for the fight, but everyone knows from experience that the better a weapon is adapted to military affairs, the less suitable it is for peaceful pursuits.<...>In it (a mind trained for internecine strife. - Comp.) certain qualities develop very strongly, completely unnecessary and even positively harmful for the successful development of peaceful thinking. Petty insight, petty suspicion, the ability and desire to peer very carefully into such tiny incidents of everyday life that do not deserve study at all, the ability and desire to fool oneself and others with sophistry sewn on a living thread - these are the properties that usually distinguish the mind of a practical person our time. This mind certainly becomes myopic, because a practical person constantly looks at his feet so as not to fall into some trap. He guards against minor failures very carefully, and indeed he often happens to get rid of them thanks to his petty prudence, but the practical man loses all control over the general direction of his life; he wanders slowly and keeps looking at his feet, and then suddenly looks around and doesn’t know where it’s taken him. Due to the typical properties of his mind, he is absolutely unable to generalize facts; be aware of the general state of affairs and attach some significance to your actions general meaning he is also unable; events take him with them, and greatest wisdom his goal is not to resist their flow, which he still does not understand.

Among people of the old school, the voice of feeling and the voice of reason are in constant discord, and therefore, in order to avoid disharmony, they always silence one of these voices when the other speaks. And from this the natural consequence comes that in their business relations they are almost always cruel and unfair, and in their home life they are absurd and stupid.<...>If there is discord between the demands of our feelings and the judgments of our mind, then this discord must be eliminated: mind and feeling must be reconciled; but they are not reconciled by the fact that we tell one or the other - “be silent!” - but by carefully and calmly comparing the demands of feeling with the judgment of the mind, looking for the hidden reasons for both, and finally, through impartial reflection, reaching a decision that will satisfy both mind and feeling equally. For people who live by appropriation, agreement between mind and feeling is impossible;<...>and their mind does not recognize the most elementary principles of justice, because justice, that is, the common benefit, is in eternal discord with petty, everyday, personal gain.<...>

If I have dwelled for so long on their (i.e., people of the “old school.” - Comp.) mind and feeling, then this gives me the opportunity to very briefly characterize the corresponding features of the mind and feelings of new people: their mind and feeling are in constant harmony, because their mind is not turned into an instrument of offensive struggle; their mind is not used to deceive other people, and therefore they themselves can always and in everything trust his judgments; not accustomed to cheating with neighbors, their mind does not cheat with the owner himself. But new people really have the most boundless trust in their minds.<...>No matter how beautiful and comforting some worldview may be, no matter how many centuries and peoples consider it to be an immutable truth, no matter what world geniuses bow before its persuasiveness, the most modest of new people will accept it only if it meets their needs and the turn of his personal mind.<...>What does not submit to the personal mind, the new man speaks about very modestly: “I don’t understand this,” and what remains incomprehensible, the new man does not allow into his inner world, and to this he testifies from afar with his deepest respect, if external circumstances require it.

When an old man has to have frank conversations with his own mind, some rather delicate truths are expressed. “After all, I know you, friend,” the old man says to his mind, “after all, you are a scoundrel, of which there are few. After all, if you are given free rein, you will come up with such a bunch of nasty things that I myself will feel disgusted, even though I am not a squeamish person. Wait.” "Well, my dear, I will teach you." And then the mind begins to be admonished and intimidated through various extremely respectable concepts with which its too artistic aspirations should be restrained. It is just as impossible for a new person to perform such tricks on his mind, just as it is impossible for any person to bite his own elbow. First of all, how are you going to intimidate him? And secondly, why intimidate? There is nothing and no reason. The new man believes his own mind, and believes only him; he introduces his mind into all the circumstances of his life, into all the cherished corners of his feelings, because there is no thing and no feeling that his mind could stain or vulgarize with its touch.<...>Old people do nothing but sin and repent, and it is unknown when they are meaner: when they sin or when they repent.

New people do not sin and do not repent; they always think and therefore only make errors in calculations, and then correct these errors and avoid them in subsequent calculations. Among new people, goodness and truth, honesty and knowledge, character and intelligence turn out to be identical concepts; The smarter the new person, the more honest he is, because the fewer errors creep into the calculations. A new person has no reason for a discord between mind and feeling, because the mind, directed towards beloved and useful work, always advises only what is in accordance with personal benefit, coinciding with the true interests of humanity and, therefore, with the requirements of the strictest justice and the very sensitive moral feeling.

The main features of the new type, which I have talked about so far, can be formulated in three main provisions, which are in the closest connection with each other.

1. New people are addicted to generally useful work.

P. The personal benefit of new people coincides with the general benefit, and their egoism contains the broadest love for humanity.

III. The mind of new people is in the most complete harmony with their feelings, because neither their mind nor their feelings are distorted by chronic enmity against other people.

And all this together can be expressed even more briefly: new people are thinking workers who love their work. This means there is no need to be angry with them.<...>

D. I. Pisarev

Thinking proletariat

In our mental life, what stands out sharply from the rest of the mass is the direction in which our real strength lies and against which the most fierce and most ridiculous attacks are pouring in from all sides. This direction is supported by a very small group of people, which, however, despite its small number, all the young look at with complete sympathy, and all the decrepit with the most comical distrust. This group is gradually expanding, enriched with young leaders; the influence of this group on the new part of society already outweighs all the efforts of publicists, scientists and other writers who are subject to a greater or lesser degree of acute or chronic suffering from photophobia; in the very near future, public opinion will be completely on the side of these people, whom the other engines of Russian progress are constantly trying to denigrate with various accusations and brand with various abusive names. They were accused of ignorance, of despotism of thought, of mockery of science, of the desire to blow up the entire Russian society along with Russian soil; they were called whistlers, nihilists, boys; the word “pandemonium” was coined for them, they are ranked among the “literary Cossacks”, and the construction of the “bomb of denial” and the “Kalmyk raids on science” are also attributed to them. All the mellifluous figures of the St. Petersburg and Moscow press are constantly worried about them; They are now scolded, now begged, now laughed at, now renounced, now admonished; but they remain deeply indifferent to all these expressions of participation. Whether their beliefs are good or bad, they have them, and they value them; when possible, they take them into society; when it is impossible, they are silent; but they don’t want to maneuver and change flags, and they don’t know how. Their lot seems unenviable to most, but by their nature they could not change it. From them came people who received the glory of heroic suffering, persecution of tireless, insatiable hatred. Others encountered only thousands of petty enemies, and in the struggle against unworthy and despised obstacles their activities took place, which saw a wider field for themselves in the distance and was worthy of it. This is difficult, but the fact that they are confident in themselves and love their ideals with a living, conscious love helps them to endure all adversity. They are not surprised, much less irritated, by the comedies with disguises played out by our publicists; they do not believe in the depth of Russian scholarship; the beauty of Russian fiction is not admired; they are indifferent to some manifestations of our mental life; others are treated with the most calm, deeply conscious and completely merciless contempt. And how could it be otherwise, when in literature, as in society, a whole gulf separates them from the official and patented mentors of the masses? In literature, they stand completely apart from the rest of the crowd and feel neither the need nor the desire to approach it or get along with its artificial representatives in any way. In society, they are not afraid of their current loneliness. They know that the truth is with them, they know that they should move forward along their chosen path with a calm and firm step, and that sooner or later everyone will follow them. These people are fanatics, but they are fanaticized by a sober thought, and they are carried into the unknown distance of the future by a very definite and earthly desire to provide all people with the greatest possible share of simple everyday happiness.

According to the Molchalins and Polonievs of journalism and society, these are very stupid and bad people, and the author of the novel “What is to be done?” has long been unanimously ranked among the most stupid and bad of these outcast people. But of all the things he wrote, this particular novel was declared to be the worst and the most stupid.

From their point of view, our mentors were right; but I respect my readers too much and respect myself too much to prove to them how infinitely shameful this circumstance is for them and how deeply their novel “What is to be done?” the hatred and rage that rose up against him. My readers, of course, understand very well that there is nothing terrible in this novel. In him, on the contrary, the presence of the most ardent love for man is felt everywhere; it collects and analyzes the emerging glimmers of new and better aspirations; in it the author looks into the distance with that conscious fullness of passionate hope that our publicists, novelists and all other, as they are also called, mentors of society do not have. Remaining true to all the features of his critical talent and incorporating all his theoretical convictions into his novel, Mr. Chernyshevsky created a work that is highly original and extremely remarkable. The merits and demerits of this novel belong to him alone; It is similar to other Russian novels only in its external form: it is similar to them in that its plot is very simple and that there are few characters in it. This is where any similarity ends. The novel "What to do?" does not belong to the raw products of our mental life. It was created by the work of a strong mind; it bears the stamp of deep thought. Knowing how to peer into the phenomena of life, the author knows how to generalize and comprehend them. His irresistible logic leads him in a direct path from individual phenomena to the highest theoretical combinations, which lead to despair the pitiful routinists, who respond with pitiful words to every new and strong thought.

In the early fifties, a petty official named Rozalsky lived in St. Petersburg. The wife of this official, Marya Alekseevna, wants to marry off her daughter, Vera Pavlovna, to a rich and stupid groom, and Vera Pavlovna, on the contrary, secretly from her parents marries a medical student Lopukhov, who, in order to get married, leaves the academy a few weeks before graduation course. The Lopukhovs live peacefully and happily for four years, but Vera Pavlovna falls in love with her husband’s friend, physician Kirsanov, who also feels strong love for her. In order not to interfere with their happiness, Lopukhov officially shoots himself, but in fact leaves Russia and spends several years in America. Then he returns to St. Petersburg under the name of American citizen Charles Beaumont, marries a very good young girl and becomes very friendly with Kirsanov and his wife, Vera Pavlovna, who, of course, have long known the real meaning of his suicide. This is the entire plot of the novel “What is to be done?”, and there would be nothing special in it if new people had not acted in it, the very people who seem to the discerning reader very terrible, very vile and very immoral. The “insightful reader,” whom Mr. Chernyshevsky very often and very harshly makes fun of, has nothing in common with that simple and ingenuous reader whom every writer loves and respects. A simple reader picks up a book in order to have a good time, or to learn something, but an astute reader - in order to show off the author and inspect his ideas. A simple reader who encounters a new thought may not agree with it, but he may also agree. A discerning reader considers any new idea to be impudent, because this idea does not belong to him and does not enter into that closed circle of views, which, in his opinion, constitutes the only container of all truth. The common reader has prejudices of the most modest nature, such as, for example, that Monday is a hard day or that thirteen people should not sit at a table. These prejudices arise from mental sloppiness; they cannot be considered incurable and for the most part do not prevent the common reader from listening without malice to the opinions of intelligent and developed people. The prejudices of the discerning reader, on the contrary, differ in their bookish character and theoretical direction. He knows everything, predicts everything, judges everything with ready-made aphorisms, and considers all other people more stupid than himself. His thought has trodden well-known paths for itself and moves only along these paths. Panshin (in "The Noble Nest") and Kurnatovsky (in "On the Eve") can be considered excellent representatives of this type. In real life, insightful readers most often come across those people for whom mental work is a profession. Any mediocrity who follows this path inevitably turns into an insightful reader. The entire stock of thoughts sitting in the head of the mediocrity is very quickly shaken out, and then one has to repeat himself, phrase it, pour it from empty to empty, become stupid from this pleasant activity and, as a result of all this, become imbued with the deepest hatred of everything that thinks independently. Most professors and journalists of all nations belong to the most boring category of insightful readers. All these gentlemen could have been very nice, simple and intelligent people, but they were mutilated by craft, just as craft mutilates tailors, shoemakers, and lapidaries. They have rubbed calluses on their brains, and these calluses make themselves felt in all the judgments and actions of insightful readers. The astute reader gnashes his teeth when they talk about new people, but the ordinary reader has no need to gnash on this occasion. The simple reader smiles with a good-natured smile and says calmly: “Well, let’s see, let’s see, what kind of new people are these?” - Look here.

Turgenev was the first to think about the existence of new people in our fiction. Insarov was an unsuccessful attempt in this direction; Bazarov was a very prominent representative of the new type; but Turgenev obviously did not have enough materials to more fully describe his hero from different sides. In addition, Turgenev, due to his age and some properties of his personal, could not fully sympathize with the new type; in his last novel crept in false notes, which caused a strict and unfair review of Mr. Antonovich from Sovremennik. This review was a mistake, and its best refutation is Mr. Chernyshevsky’s novel, in which all the new people belong to the Bazarov type, although all of them are outlined much more clearly and explained in much more detail than the hero of Turgenev’s last novel is outlined and explained. Turgenev is a stranger in relation to people of a new type; he could only observe them from afar and note only those aspects that these people reveal when they come into conflict with people of a completely different temperament. Bazarov is alone in a circle that does not at all correspond to his mental needs; Bazarov has no one to love and respect, and therefore it may seem to every reader, and the “discerning” one in particular, that Bazarov is incapable of loving and respecting. This last opinion is completely absurd; There is no person who does not have the ability and need to love and respect people like himself; nothing gives us the right to think that Turgenev would want to inflict such an empty fable on his hero; he simply did not know how the Bazarovs behaved with other Bazarovs; I didn’t know how feelings of serious love and conscious respect manifest themselves in such people; he feels the unprecedented nature of this type and is perplexed in front of him, and he still stops at this bewilderment because there are not enough materials. If Mr. Chernyshevsky had to portray new people placed in Bazarov’s position, that is, surrounded by all sorts of old stuff and rags, then his Lopukhov, Kirsanov, Rakhmetov would behave almost exactly the way Bazarov behaves. But Mr. Chernyshevsky has no need to act in this way. He knows not only how new people think and reason (Turgenev also knows this - from magazine articles written by new people), but also how they feel, how they love and respect each other, how they organize their family and everyday life and how passionately they strive for that time and for that order of things in which one could love all people and trustingly extend a hand to everyone. After this, it is not difficult to understand why Turgenev was forced in his Bazarov to dwell on one harsh side of negation and why, on the contrary, under the hand of Mr. Chernyshevsky new type grew and became clear to the certainty and beauty to which he rises in the magnificent figures of Lopukhov, Kirsanov and Rakhmetov.

New people consider work to be an absolutely necessary condition of human life, and this view of work constitutes almost the most significant difference between old and new people. Apparently there is nothing special here. Who denies respect to work? Who doesn’t recognize its importance and necessity? The Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, sitting on a woolsack and receiving several tens of thousands of pounds sterling a year for this sitting, is firmly convinced that he charges for labor and that he can rightfully say to a factory worker: My dear, we We work with you for the benefit of society, and work is a holy cause. And the Lord Chancellor will say this, and the Earl of Derby will say this, because he, too, takes the trouble to pocket the land rent, and yet what kind of new people are they? They are very old and very respectable gentlemen. New people do full justice to one and another of their qualities, but they themselves will never agree to respect work in the same way as the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Derby respect it; they themselves would never agree to earn so much while sitting on a wool bag or on a velvet bench in the House of Peers. They themselves do not want to harbor a platonic tenderness for work from afar. For them, work is truly necessary, more necessary than pleasure; for them, work and pleasure merge into one general concept called satisfying the needs of the body. They need food to satisfy hunger, they need sleep to restore strength, and they also need work to preserve, reinforce and develop these forces contained in muscles and nerves. They can go without pleasure for a very long time; Life without work is unthinkable for them. They can refuse to work only when they are paralyzed, or when they are put in a cage, or generally when they, in one way or another, lose the ability to control their own strength.

Reflecting often and seriously on what is happening around, new people from different sides and in different ways come to the fundamental conclusion that all the evil that exists in human societies comes from two reasons: from poverty and from idleness; and these two causes originate from one common source, which may be called the chaotic state of labor. Labor and reward are now in an inverse relationship with each other: the more labor, the less reward; the less labor, the greater the reward. As a result, there is idleness at one end of the ladder and poverty at the other. Both give rise to their own series of social evils. From idleness comes mental and physical flabbiness, the desire to create artificial interests for oneself and get carried away by them, the need for strong sensations, exaggerated irritability of the imagination, debauchery from having nothing to do, attempts to push other people around, small and large clashes in family and social life, endless discord between equals and equals. , elders with younger ones, younger ones with older ones, in a word - the whole endless swarm of sorrows and sufferings that people treat each other to without the slightest need and whose existence can only be explained by the expressive saying: “dogs go crazy with fat.” From poverty comes suffering, material, mental, moral, and whatever: here is hunger, and cold, and ignorance, from which one wants to escape, and forced debauchery, against which the nature of the most callous creatures is indignant, and bitter drunkenness, of which one is ashamed himself a drunkard, and the whole gang of criminal offenses that it was impossible for the criminal not to commit. Halfway up the ladder the products of poverty meet the products of idleness; there is less wildness here than below, and less flabbiness than above, but more dirt than anywhere else; here you have to cower because you want to reign; you have to live in a place with a cook or a janitor because you have to go on a party; keep the children in the cold nursery because the living room needs to be furnished; eat spoiled beef because I need to sew a silk mantilla. The entire ladder from top to bottom is dominated by hatred of work and the eternal antagonism of private interests. It is no wonder that labor produces few products under such conditions; It is also no wonder that love for one’s neighbor is found only in edifying books. Everyone reasons this way or almost this way: if, they say, I directly pull off my neighbor’s fur coat, then I won’t be praised for it and will be put in the police station; but if I put slander under my fur coat and pull it off in a quiet manner, then I will have a double benefit: firstly, I won’t have to make my own fur coat, and secondly, everyone will consider me an intelligent and courteous person.

Not everyone, however, likes this state of affairs; There are individuals who say to idle people: “You are bored because you do nothing; and there are other people who suffer because they are poor. Go find these people, help them, ease their suffering, attend to their needs, and you won’t be so bored, and it won’t be so hard for them to live in the world.” Good people say this, but new people are not satisfied with this. “Philanthropy,” say new people, “is as wonderful a thing as prison and all sorts of criminal and correctional punishments. Nowadays it is difficult to do without both, but the present time, like all past times, is engaged only in the eternal sweeping up and cleaning up of those nasty things , which it itself eternally produces. When nasty things are produced, it, of course, should be swept up and cleaned up, but it doesn’t hurt to think about how to stop such unprofitable production of nasty things in the future. Philanthropy itself is offensive to human dignity and contains deep injustice; it forces one person to depend for his existence and well-being on the arbitrary good nature of another similar person; it creates a beggar and a benefactor and corrupts both. It destroys neither poverty nor idleness; it increases neither one kopeck products of productive labor.In ancient Rome, under the guise of distribution of free bread, and in the newest Catholic states of southern Europe, under the guise of distribution of free portions of soup at the monastery gates, this sweet philanthropy completely corrupted the masses of healthy rabble. Not an almshouse, but a workshop can and should renew humanity. A healthy person marooned on a desert island can feed himself; A person's strength increases hundreds and thousands of times when he enters into industrial association with other people. Therefore, a healthy person living in a civilized society can and should, through his own labor, feed and clothe himself, acquire an education for himself and raise his children. Here, one’s own labor cannot be replaced by any other ingredient. There is no scope for labor, labor is poorly paid, labor is enslaved, and from these reasons all existing evil comes.

Whoever wants to fight against evil, not to pass the time, but in order to someday really defeat and eradicate it, must work to solve the question: how to make labor productive for the worker and how to destroy all the unpleasant and difficult aspects of modern labor? Labor is the only source of wealth; wealth obtained by labor is the only cure against the sufferings of poverty and against the vices of idleness. Therefore, the expedient organization of labor can and should lead to the happiness of mankind. To say that such an organization is impossible means to imitate those flabby old men who consider everything impossible that their predecessors and contemporaries did not think of. To fold one’s hands and sigh about the imperfections of everything earthly, when people suffer from their own stupidities, means to elevate these stupidities into the laws of nature and reveal laziness and timidity of thought, unworthy of a fresh, honest and gifted person with a lively mind.”

This is how new people talk about lofty matters, or almost this way; Having looked closely at these reasonings, every reader, except the “insightful” one, will see that there is nothing terrible in them and that, on the contrary, there is a lot of usefulness in them. It is in any case much more rational to seek renewal in labor than to see the alpha and omega of human well-being in the establishment of the Chamber of Deputies or the Chamber of Peers. The best chamber can only save the income of the country, and good workshops can tenfold this income, tenfold, in addition, the amount of physical, mental and moral forces workers and thus preparing every year for a greater increase in wealth, education and general prosperity. New people do not reason stupidly, but the best thing is that their time is not spent in reasoning about lofty matters. Constantly keeping in mind the common task of all mankind, they meanwhile have already resolved it in application to their private life. For them, work is pleasant, and for them it is productive; There is not a single new person who does not have his favorite work, and this work is not fun for him, but really the goal and meaning of his whole life. We can no more imagine a new man without his beloved work, just as we cannot imagine work without him. Previous people cared about their position in society and, above all, tried to create a career and fortune for themselves, even if the paths leading to both inspired them with the deepest disgust. For a new person, it is necessary, first of all, that work be to his liking and within his strength. Until he finds such work, he seeks it; found it - and the matter is over: then he falls in love with him, works with passion, enjoys all the joys of creativity and feels that he is not superfluous in this world. And there is no such new person who would not find something he loves, because in general there is no healthy person who would not be capable of something. And when all the workers on the globe love their work, then everyone will be new people, then there will be neither the poor, nor the idle, nor philanthropists, then those “milk rivers in the jelly banks” with which “insightful readers” so victoriously amaze will truly flow bad boys. “This is impossible,” growls one of the insightful ones. - Of course, it’s impossible, but there was a time when steam engines were completely impossible. What has happened has passed, and what will happen cannot be avoided.

Relying on their favorite work, which is beneficial for themselves and useful for others, new people arrange their lives in such a way that their personal interests do not in any way contradict the real interests of society. This is not at all difficult to arrange. One has only to love useful work, and then everything that distracts from this work will seem like an unpleasant hindrance: the more you indulge in your favorite useful work, the better it will be for you and the better it will be for others. If your work provides for you and gives you high pleasure, then you have no need to rob other people; neither directly nor indirectly, nor through theft-fraud, nor through such exploitation as is not recognized as a criminal offense. When you work, your interests coincide with the interests of all other working people; you yourself are a worker, and all workers are your natural friends, and all exploiters are your natural enemies, because at the same time they are enemies of all humanity, including themselves. If all people worked, then everyone would be rich and happy; but if all people exploited their neighbors without working at all, then the exploiters would eat each other in one week, and the human race would disappear from the face of the earth. Therefore, whoever loves work, acting in his own favor, acts in favor of all humanity; whoever loves work consciously loves himself, would love all other people in himself; if only there weren’t such gentlemen in the world who unwittingly or intentionally interfere with all useful work.

New people work and wish their work space and development; In this desire, which constitutes the deepest need of their body, new people agree with all the millions of all working people on the globe, all who consciously or unconsciously pray to God and ask their neighbor not to interfere with his work and enjoy the fruits of labor. Unity of interest produces sympathy, and the new people sympathize warmly and consciously with all the real needs of all people. Every human passion is a sign of strength seeking application; depending on how this force is applied to the matter, this passion will be called a virtue or a vice and will bring benefit or harm, benefit or loss to people. The forces and passions applied to the exploitation of one's neighbor must be tempered by some moral motives, because otherwise they will bring a person through vice to a criminal court; but the forces and passions directed towards productive labor can harmlessly grow and develop to any size. People who live by exploitation must beware of exclusive selfishness, because such selfishness deprives them of any human image and turns them into civilized cannibals, which are much more disgusting than savage cannibals. But new people, living by work and feeling a physiological aversion to the most humane and good-natured exploitation, can, without the slightest danger, be selfish to the last degree. The selfishness of the exploiter runs counter to the interests of all other people; to enrich oneself means for the exploiter to take from another; the exploiter is forced to love himself to the detriment of the rest of the world, therefore, if he is good-natured and God-fearing, he tries to love himself moderately, so that it does not hurt himself and does not hurt others too much, but such moderation is very difficult to maintain, and therefore the exploiter always allows either there is too much egoism, so that it begins to devour others, or too little, so that one becomes a victim of someone else’s egoistic appetite. Since our beautiful planet is dominated by general exploitation in the family, in society, and in international relations, it is customary for us to utter cries against selfishness, to call notorious scoundrels selfish and, conversely, to accuse of immorality such people who are just not on the in its place. New people keep aloof from all exploitation, without the slightest trepidation and without any harm to themselves or to others, plunge into the deepest abyss of selfishness and do not accept a single stain of injustice, solely because they know how to find their place and become addicted to their work.

If a person of the old school is engaged in medical practice, then his egoism is expressed in the fact that he tries to make as many visits as possible per day and acquire as many green and blue pieces of paper as possible; he exploits his patients, listens to them inattentively, prescribes prescriptions at random, visits patients who are not sick at all, and does all this solely out of his affection for the little blue ones and the green ones. Such a person, of course, must sometimes tame his egoism and read quite convincing moral lectures to himself from time to time. A new person practices medicine only out of passion; every hour is precious to him, because every hour is devoted to his favorite study; For him, money is only a means by which he supports his life in order to be able to devote this life to work. Before the sick bed, he is a thinker resolving a scientific question. He does not want to rob the patient, but to cure him, because to cure him means to solve the problem; the patient also wants not to be robbed, but to be cured; thus, the interests of the physician and the interests of the patient merge with each other, and exploitation does not exist; A doctor of the new style can indulge in his egoistic desires in the most unscrupulous way, and his patients, their relatives, and the public opinion of all fellow citizens will thank him for this. And this doctor has no need to frighten himself with the idea of duty, because for him there is no difference between duty and free inclination. Why is that all? All because a favorite work has been found, because a person has found his place. This condition is necessary. Without it, it is very difficult, and maybe even completely impossible, to be an honest person in general.

We see in this way that in the life of new people there is no disagreement between attraction and moral duty, between selfishness and philanthropy; This is a very important feature; this is a trait that allows them to be philanthropic and honest according to that directly strong attraction of nature, which forces every person to take care of his self-preservation and the satisfaction of the physical needs of his body. There is no forced artificiality in their philanthropy; there is no scrupulous pettiness in their honesty; their good inclinations are simple and healthy, strong and beautiful, like the direct products of rich nature; and they themselves, these new people, are nothing more than the first manifestations of rich human nature, which has washed away some of the dirt that accumulated on it during centuries of historical suffering. If public opinion does not recognize in these people simple but honest representatives of their breed, if it sees in them something special, something terrible and sinister, then this only means that this so-called public opinion has lost all concept of human form, has forgotten all his signs, is frightened when meeting him, as if he were something unfamiliar, and mistakes for real people that strange breed of bipeds that Jonathan Swift brings out in Gulliver's travels under the name jahou and to which stupidity and anger are so clearly opposed the intelligence and generosity of thinking and talking horses. Working for themselves, being carried away and enjoying the process of work, new people work for the benefit of humanity, because every productive work is useful for people. At first, new people bring benefit and do good unconsciously, but then the very process of bringing benefit and doing good lays the foundation for a moral connection between the one who brings and does, and those to whom it is brought and for whom it is done. This connection grows stronger as a new worker brings more benefit and does more good. This is already an old truth that we tend to love those to whom we have done or are doing good, and this old truth finds confirmation at every step. Garibaldi loves Italy more than any other Italian, and probably now old Garibaldi, who spent his life in labor and in exile, wounded at Aspromonte by an Italian bullet, loves his Italy even more than the fiery youth Garibaldi could love it thirty years ago ; then he loved only his homeland in her; now, in addition to his homeland, he loves in it all his exploits, all his sufferings, the whole brilliant string of his pure memories. Robert Owen, the “holy old man,” as Lopukhov calls him from Mr. Chernyshevsky, worked all his life for people, and, of course, in his old age his love for people was even wider, even warmer and in any case much more abundant in conscious forgiveness, what the same love was like in the first days of his youth. For men like Owen and Garibaldi, senility does not exist; such people will be new people for all ages and nations. But the phenomenon that we notice in their lives is a common feature of all figures or thinkers who devoted their energies to their beloved and useful work. In these figures and thinkers, love for people grows and strengthens as they become involved in their work and become aware of its usefulness; they are constantly becoming better and cleaner; they are constantly getting younger, instead of becoming decrepit and sent away; They, through the process of their living and intelligent labor, wash away from themselves the dirt with which their parents have covered them, with which the school has sprinkled them, and which the “utter darkness” of the surrounding life constantly splashes on them.

People of former times were beautiful and mentally fresh only when they were young; Ten years passed, and all this beauty and freshness disappeared along with the blush of the cheeks; there was painstakingness and pettiness, cheap prudence and chicken cowardice; the cockerel turned into a capon, the brilliant student became a notorious philistine and a “most insightful” reader. All this was completely natural, because the former young people were only furious and excited, only chatted eloquently and became beautifully soft; the fun of youth had to pass along with youth, because it was fun. Whoever in his youth did not connect himself with strong ties to a great and wonderful cause, or at least to simple, but honest and useful work, can consider his youth lost without a trace, no matter how fun it was and no matter how many pleasant memories it left. Take the feelings of youth with you, you won’t get them back later, says Gogol, and he speaks the truth. How can you take them with you if you don’t invest them entirely in something you care about? last minute your life will resonate with every fiber of your being. Whoever managed to do this has nothing to regret, even if his youth was spent in harsh work, away from dear and close people, without pleasure, without the embrace of his beloved woman. Dear people, pleasures, and a beloved woman are all, undoubtedly, very good things, but a person himself is more precious to himself than anything else in the world. If at the cost of labor and hardship, at the cost of wasted youth, at the cost of lost love, he bought himself the right to deeply and consciously respect himself, the right to take with him to the ends of the world and retain unchanging youth and freshness of mind and feeling in all trials, then it cannot be said, that he paid too much. He gave up a piece of his life in order to live his whole life as a human being, he lost two or three joys, but in return he received the highest pleasure, which serves as an adornment for life and support in a moment of agony; he received the right to know his real worth and to see that this price is not small.

This is the egoism of new people, and this egoism has no boundaries; to him they really sacrifice everyone and everything. They love themselves to the point of passion, respect themselves to the point of reverence; but since they cannot even be blind and condescending towards themselves, they have to keep their ears open in order to retain their love and their respect for themselves at any given moment. Even more than their love and their respect, they value the direct and frank relationship of their analyzing and controlling self to the self that acts and controls the external conditions of life. If one I could not look boldly and resolutely into the eyes of another I, if one I decided to respond with subterfuges and sophistry to the requests of the other I, and at the same time the other I dared to turn a blind eye and be satisfied with the empty excuses of the first, then after this in the shameful confusion in the soul of the new man such despair would rage and such a convulsive disgust would be born for his desecrated person that he would probably spit in his own eyes and then, having distorted himself in this way, would throw himself head first into the deepest pool. The new man knows very well how relentless and merciless he is towards himself; the new man fears himself more than anyone else; he is strength, and woe to him if ever his strength turns against himself. If he does such a nasty thing that it creates internal discord in him, then he knows that there will be no other cure for this discord except suicide or madness. It seems to me that such a need for self-respect and such a fear of one’s own judgment will be stronger than those moral railings that separate people of the old school from various abominations, those railings through which various indivisibles of both sexes so freely and gracefully flutter back and forth, those railings, for lack of which new people are forced to listen to such tedious instructions from astute readers, masters of the pen, or possessed of a weakness for edifying eloquence. New people owe all the advantages of their type to the life-giving influence of their favorite work. Thanks to him, they can be complete egoists; the deeper their egoism becomes, the stronger their love for humanity becomes, the more unchanged and firmly their youth and freshness is held in new people, the wider their minds and feelings are revealed, the more they value their own respect, the stricter their loyalty to themselves becomes, and as a result of all this, the closer they come to the comprehensive development of their powers and to the boundless fullness of their happiness.

People who live by exploiting their neighbors or appropriating the labor of others are in a constant offensive war with the entire world around them. War requires weapons, and such weapons turn out to be mental abilities. The intelligence of exploiters is almost exclusively applied to outwitting their neighbor or unraveling his intrigues. To defeat your neighbor or parry his deft blow means to reveal the power of your weapon and your ability to use it, or, in less militant and more common language, it means to show a subtle mind and extensive worldly experience. The mind is sharpened and tempered for the fight, but everyone knows from experience that the better a weapon is adapted to military affairs, the less suitable it is for peaceful pursuits. The students, with all their wit, could only use their swords for stirring in the stove, and even for cooking burnt food, but even these two functions are performed rather poorly by the weapon of war and the symbol of honor. The same can be said about a mind trained for internecine strife. Some qualities that are completely unnecessary and even positively harmful for the successful development of peaceful thinking develop very strongly in him. Petty insight, petty suspicion, the ability and desire to peer very carefully into such tiny incidents of everyday life that do not deserve study at all, the ability and desire to fool oneself and others with sophistry sewn on a living thread - these are the properties that usually distinguish the mind of a practical person our time. This mind certainly becomes myopic, because a practical person constantly looks at his feet so as not to fall into some trap. He guards against minor failures very carefully, and indeed he often happens to get rid of them thanks to his petty prudence, but the practical man loses all control over the general direction of his life; he wanders slowly and keeps looking at his feet, and then suddenly looks around and doesn’t know where it’s taken him. Due to the typical properties of his mind, he is absolutely unable to generalize facts; He is also unable to be aware of the general state of affairs and attach any general meaning to his actions; events carry him along with them, and his greatest wisdom is not to resist their flow, which he still does not understand.

The greatest representatives of this type of practical people and exploiters can be called Metternich and Talleyrand: no one will say that these gentlemen did not have a natural mind, but everyone will also understand that this mind, through long-term training, starting from the cradle, was sharpened and hardened for the most one-sided use , precisely in order to fool people with sophisms, without succumbing to the sophisms of the opposite camp. The whole secret of the illusory power of Metternich and Talleyrand lies in their flexibility and colorlessness, in their complete indifference to their own sophisms and in their always readiness to move from one sophism to another, completely opposite. They had no power over events and did not exert the slightest influence on them, just as a weather vane only indicates a change in the wind, but does not produce it. No storm could break Talleyrand, because there was nothing to break in him - there was no solid content. If Metternich was defeated by the revolution of 1848, then this circumstance should be attributed exclusively to the naivety of the good Germans: they took the sign of a principle for the principle itself; the sign was taken down - they shouted “Vivat” and, of course, were left in the cold. The mind of Metternich, Talleyrand and all other exploiters, small and large, is extremely one-sided; he is only good for hitting other people in battle, that is, for leading them by the nose. When such gentlemen are guided by the calculations of their minds, then we can say in advance that these calculations will force them to do some nasty thing, because these calculations are short-sighted, and the suggestions of narrow and myopic egoism always give rise to the most outrageous injustices.

People of the old school know this very well, and therefore they say that the mind should control our actions when we encounter strangers; when we enter our family or enter into relations with our friends, we must put our military weapon into the sheath and act according to the inspiration of feeling, so as not to injure or inadvertently deceive the people whom we truly and disinterestedly love. Among people of the old school, the voice of feeling and the voice of reason are in constant discord, and therefore, in order to avoid disharmony, they always silence one of these voices when the other speaks. And from this the natural consequence comes that in their business relations they are almost always cruel and unfair, and in their home life they are absurd and stupid. Healthy people should not split their being; every object that attracts their attention must be considered from different angles; the impression which an object makes on the immediate sense is as important as the official impression which it leaves on our analyzing mind. If there is discord between the demands of our feelings and the judgment of our mind, then this discord must be eliminated: mind and feeling must be reconciled; but they are not reconciled by the fact that we tell one or the other - “be silent!” - but by carefully and calmly comparing the demands of feeling with the judgment of the mind, looking for the hidden reasons for both, and finally, through impartial reflection, reaching a decision that will satisfy both mind and feeling equally. For people who live by appropriation, agreement between mind and feeling is impossible; their feeling manifests itself in disorderly outbursts that have a purely physiological basis, and their mind does not recognize the most elementary principles of justice, because justice, that is, the general benefit, is in eternal discord with petty, everyday, personal gain. The question arises: is there any possibility of reconciling the feeling that arises from weakness of nerve and ceases after taking laurel-cherry drops, with a calculation based on rubles and kopecks and unable to see behind the rubles and kopecks either the laws of nature or the suffering of a living person? - Of course, there is no possibility and not the slightest need for this. In reality, it would be necessary to destroy both, that is, both stupid sensitivity and stupid stinginess; it would be necessary to return to the disfigured mind its primitive ability for broad thinking, generalizing disparate facts and comprehending the connection between causes and effects; it would be necessary to turn people of the old school into new people; but since such a transformation is completely impossible, then we must give up on them: let them move from office books to cherry laurel drops, from passionate embraces to stock exchange games and from well-intentioned deception to virtuous emotion before sunset.

If I have dwelled for so long on their mind and feelings, then this gives me the opportunity to very briefly characterize the corresponding characteristics of the mind and feelings of new people: their mind and feelings are in constant harmony, because their mind is not turned into an instrument of offensive struggle; their mind is not used to deceive other people, and therefore they themselves can always and in everything trust his judgments; not accustomed to cheating with neighbors, their mind does not cheat with the owner himself. But new people really have the most boundless trust in their minds. This should not be understood in the sense that each of them considers himself the smartest person in the world. Not at all. Each of them only thinks that every adult, gifted with the most ordinary mental abilities, can discuss his situation and his actions much better and more clearly than the greatest of brilliant thinkers could discuss them for him, from the outside. No matter how beautiful and comforting some worldview may be, no matter how many centuries and peoples consider it to be an immutable truth, no matter what world geniuses bow before its persuasiveness, the most modest of new people will accept it only if it meets their needs and the turn of his personal mind. Each new person has his own inner world, in which the personal mind dominates with unlimited autocracy; Only that which the personal mind misses penetrates into this world, and only that which, by its very nature, can recognize the complete dominance of the personal mind over itself. What does not submit to the personal mind, the new man speaks about very modestly: “I don’t understand this,” and what remains incomprehensible, the new man does not allow into his inner world, and to this he testifies from afar with his deepest respect, if external circumstances require it.

When an old man has to have frank conversations with his own mind, some rather delicate truths are expressed. “After all, I know you, friend,” the old man says to his mind, “after all, you are a scoundrel, of which there are few. After all, if you are given free rein, you will come up with such a bunch of nasty things that I myself will feel disgusted, even though I am not a squeamish person. Wait. "Well, my dear, I will teach you." And then the mind begins to be admonished and intimidated through various extremely respectable concepts with which its too artistic aspirations should be restrained. It is just as impossible for a new person to perform such tricks on his mind, just as it is impossible for any person to bite his own elbow. First of all, how are you going to intimidate him? And secondly, why intimidate? There is nothing and no reason. The new man believes his own mind, and believes only him; he introduces his mind into all the circumstances of his life, into all the cherished recesses of his feelings, because there is no thing and no feeling that his mind could dirty or vulgarize with its touch. When old people fall in love, they give their minds an indefinite vacation and, thanks to its absence, do various stupid things, which very often turn into nasty things that are not at all of a comic size. A girl or woman is forced to take a decisive step, and by this time reason returns from its absence - and the old man, frightened by the consequences of his innocent joke, turns into a calculated flight and then justifies himself by the fact that he did not remember himself, that he was like a madman. Old people do nothing but sin and repent, and it is unknown when they are meaner: when they sin or when they repent