people are poor and ignorant—that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees the baby is ill because it screams. But in what way this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by schools is as incomprehensible as how the hen-roost affects the screaming. What has to be cured is what makes him poor.”
“Well, in that, at least, you’re in agreement with Spencer, whom you dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the consequence of greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent washing, as he says, but not of being able to read and write. …”
“Well, then, I’m very glad—or the contrary, very sorry, that I’m in agreement with Spencer; only I’ve known it a long while. Schools can do no good; what will do good is an economic organization in which the people will become richer, will have more leisure—and then there will be schools.”
“Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory.”
“And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?” asked Levin.
But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky’s eyes, and he said smiling:
“No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really hear it yourself?”
Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection between this man’s life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the least what his reasoning led him to; all he wanted was the process of reasoning. And he did not like it when the process of reasoning brought him into a blind alley. That was the only thing he disliked, and avoided by changing the conversation to something agreeable and amusing.
All the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression made by the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the fundamental basis of all