Page:Tolstoy - Demands of Love and Reason.djvu/11

5 to be made upon them and constantly increase. A process commences comparable to the subsidence and running down to a level of the grains in a heap. They settle down till there is no longer any heap rising above the average level.

Besides the begging, natural demands for the division of what they have in excess of others make themselves heard, and apart from these demands, the new settlers themselves, being always in close touch with the village folk, feel the inevitable necessity of giving from their superfluity to those who are in extreme poverty. And not only do they feel the need of giving away their superfluity till they have only as much left as each one (say as the average man) ought to have, but there being no possible definition of this "average"—no way of measuring the amount which each one should have—there is no possibility of stopping, for crying want is always around them, and they have a surplus compared with this destitution.

It seems necessary to keep a glass of milk; but Matrena has two unweaned babes, who can find no milk in their mother’s breast, and a two-year-old child which is on the verge of starvation. They might keep a pillow and a blanket, so as to sleep as usual after a busy day, but a sick man is lying on a coat full of lice, and is half-frozen at night, being covered only with bark-matting. They