Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/567

Rh both physical and moral, lying on the floor, wrapped in his cloak, as Marcus Aurelius did; and thus he might save all the labor and trouble involved in the manufacture of mattresses, springs, and pillows, as also the daily labor of the laundress,—one of the weaker sex burdened by the bearing and nursing of children,—who washes linen for this strong man. By going to bed earlier and getting up earlier he might save window-curtains and the evening lamp. He might sleep in the same shirt he wears during the day, might step barefooted upon the floor, and go out into the yard; he might wash at the well,—in a word, he might live like those who work for him, and might thus save all this work that is done for him. He might save all the labor expended upon his clothing, his refined food, his recreations. And he knows under what conditions all these labors are performed: how in performing them men perish, suffer, and often hate those that take advantage of their poverty to force them to do it.

How then is such a man to do good to others, and to lead a righteous life, without abandoning this effeminate, luxurious life?

But we need not speak of how other people appear in our eyes,—every one must see and feel this with regard to himself.

I cannot but repeat this same thing again and again, notwithstanding the cold and hostile silence with which my words are received. A moral man, living a life of comfort, a man even of the middle class (I will not speak of the upper classes, who daily consume, to satisfy their caprices, the results of hundreds of working days), cannot live quietly, knowing that all that he is using is produced by the labor and crushed lives of the working-people, who are dying without hope, ignorant, drunken, dissolute, half savage creatures, employed in mines, factories, and at agricultural labor, producing the articles that he uses.

At the present moment I, who am writing this, and you who will read it, whoever you may be, both you and I have