Here
is a bachelor grown old, the owner of thousands of acres, who has lived
a life of idleness, greed, and over-indulgence, who reads The New
Times, and is astonished that the government can be so unwise as to
permit Jews to enter the university. There is his guest, formerly the
governor of a province, now a senator with a big salary, who reads with
satisfaction that a congress of lawyers has passed a resolution in favor
of capital punishment. Their political enemy, N. P., reads a liberal
paper, and cannot understand the blindness of the government in allowing
the union of Russian men to exist.
Their hideous, lazy lives are supported by the degrading, excessive
labour of these slaves, not to mention the labour of millions of other
slaves, toiling in factories to produce samovars, silver, carriages,
machines, and the like for their use. They live among these horrors,
seeing them and yet not seeing them, although often kind at heart--old
men and women, young men and maidens, mothers and children--poor
children who are being vitiated and trained into moral blindness.
Here is a kind, gentle mother
of a little girl reading a story to her about Fox, a dog that lamed some
rabbits. And here is this little girl. During her walks she sees other
children, barefooted, hungry, hunting for green apples that have fallen
from the trees; and, so accustomed is she to the sight, that these
children do not seem to her to be children such as she is, but only part
of the usual surroundings-- the familiar landscape.
Why is this?
- A short extract from Leo Tolstoy's short story: There are no guilty people