Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/223

 after this he could not get meal anywhere and he and his family should be attacked by famine, he would know that he had done to the best of his ability, and his conscience would be at rest.

But for us, if it is shown that there is no grain to be had, and our labors are brought to naught, and we and the people maybe are perishing together, our consciences will not be at rest. We might have known how much grain would be needed by us, and might have got it. If our learning and our science are of any use to us, then for what more important purpose than to enable us to help in such a universal tribulation as ours to-day? Let us decide how much grain is necessary for the nourishment of those that have none this year and how much there is in Russia, and if there is not as much as is necessary, then let us order from foreign lands as much grain as is needed; this is our direct business, and just as natural as what the muzhik did yesterday when he made a circuit of twenty versts. And our consciences will be at rest only when we make our circuit and do in it all that we can. For him the circuit is Dankof, Klekotki; for us the circuit is India, America, Australia. We not only know that these countries exist, we are already in friendly intercourse with their inhabitants.

But how can we estimate what we need and the grain which we have? Can this be so difficult? We who can count how many kinds of beetles there are in the world, how many microbes there are in such and such a space, how many millions of versts it is to the stars, and how many puds of iron and hydrogen there are in each one—we, forsooth, are not able to reckon up how much people need to eat so as not to perish of starvation, and how much grain has been garnered by the people from the fields whereby we have been, and still are, nourished. We who with such wealth of detail have collected such a mass of statistical materials—so far as I know up to the present time of no use to any living person—details as to the percentage of births as compared to marriages and deaths and the like—we suddenly find ourselves