“Teaching the peasants to read and write, books of wretched precepts and rhymes, and medical relief centres, cannot diminish either ignorance or the death-rate, just as the light from your windows cannot light up this huge garden,” said I. “You give nothing. By meddling in these people’s lives you only create new wants in them, and new demands on their labour.”

“Ach! Good heavens! But one must do something!” said Lida with vexation, and from her tone one could see that she thought my arguments worthless and despised them.

“The people must be freed from hard physical labour,” said I. “We must lighten their yoke, let them have time to breathe, that they may not spend all their lives at the stove, at the washtub, and in the fields, but may also have time to think of their souls, of God⁠—may have time to develop their spiritual capacities. The highest vocation of man is spiritual activity⁠—the perpetual search for truth and the meaning of life. Make coarse animal labour unnecessary for them, let them feel themselves free, and then you will see what a mockery these dispensaries and books are. Once a man recognises his true vocation, he can only be satisfied by religion, science, and art, and not by these trifles.”

“Free them from labour?” laughed Lida. “But is that possible?”