VIII
The Temptation of Hamlet
One day at tea, Marya Alekséyevna said that she had a headache; after serving the tea, and locking up the sugarbowl she went away and retired. Viéra and Lopukhóf remained sitting in the tearoom, which adjoined the bedroom where Marya Alekséyevna had gone.
After a few minutes she sent a message by Feódor: “Tell your sister that their talk keeps me from going to sleep; let ’em go somewhere else so as not to bother me. Say it politely, so as not to offend Dmitri Sergéitch; you see what good care he takes of you.” Feódor went and told what his mother wanted.
“Let us go to my room, Dmitri Sergéitch; it is away from mother’s bedroom, and we shall not be disturbed.”
Of course this was what Marya Alekséyevna expected. At the end of a quarter of an hour she crept in her stocking feet up to the door of Viérotchka’s room. The door was ajar; between the door and the jamb was a splendid crack: Marya Alekséyevna applied her eyes to it and strained her ears.
This was the sight that she saw:—
In Viérotchka’s rooms were two windows; between them stood a writing-table. Viérotchka was sitting near one window, knitting a woollen chest-protector for her father, religiously fulfilling Marya Alekséyevna’s command. At the other window, at the other end of the table, Lopukhóf was sitting: he was leaning with one elbow on the table; he had a cigar in his hand; his other hand was thrust in his pocket; the distance between Viérotchka and him was not less than two arshíns (4.6 feet). Viérotchka was looking most of the time at her knitting; Lopukhóf was looking most of the time at his cigar. This was a gratifying state of things.
The conversation that she overheard was as follows:—
“Is it necessary to look at life in this way?” These were the first words that Marya Alekséyevna caught.
“Yes, Viéra Pavlovna, it is necessary.”
“Then cold, practical people must tell the truth, when they say that men are governed only by selfish motives?”
“They tell the truth. What are called the higher feelings, ideal aspirations; all these in the general course of life are absolutely nothing in comparison with the inspiration felt by everyone to do things for his own interest. At bottom, the impulse even for the others is caused by selfishness.”
“Da! are you, for example, of the same sort?”
“What do you suppose, Viéra Pavlovna? Just listen and see what is the essential motive of all my life. The essence of my life, hitherto, has consisted in study and preparation to be a doctor. Excellent! Why did my father send me to school? He used constantly to repeat to me: ‘Study, Mítya; when you have finished your course you will be a tchinovnik; you will be able to support me and your mother, and it will be good for you, too.’ And that was the reason that I studied; without that motive, my father would never have let me study: you see my family was in need of a wage-winner. Da! and I myself, though I am fond of study, would not have spent time on it, would I, if I had not thought that the expenditure would have been paid back with interest? After I got through school, I urged my father to send me to the medical academy instead of making me a tchinovnik. How did that come about? Father and I saw that medical men live much better than civil tchinovniks and the heads of departments, and I could not get any higher rank than that. And that was why I got the means and went to the medical school; it stood for bread and butter. Without this in view I should not have gone to the medical school and should not have stayed in it.”
“But you loved to study while you were at school, and have you not liked medical science?”
“Yes. It is an ornament, and it is also profitable; but success is generally won without this ornament, while without a motive, never! Love for science was only a result arising from a certain state of things; it was not its cause; the cause was just one thing—self-interest” [vuigoda, profit].
“Let us suppose that you are right; yes, you are right! All actions that I can remember can be explained by self-interest. But this theory is cold!”
“Theory must by necessity be cold. The mind must judge of things coldly.”
“But it is merciless.”
“Yes, to fancies that are empty and injurious.”
“But it is prosaic.”
“Science does not care for a poetical form.”
“And so this theory, which I cannot help admitting, brings people into a cold, merciless, and prosaic life?”
“No, Viéra Pavlovna; this theory is cold, but it teaches a man to bring out the warmth. A match is cold, the matchbox on which you scratch the match is also cold; but there is fire in them which gets a man warm food, and warms him also. This theory is merciless; but if it is followed, people will not become the wretched objects of idle charity. The lancet must not bend; otherwise it will be necessary to pity the patient, who will suffer none the less because of your sympathy. This theory is prosaic, but it reveals true motives of life and poetry in the truth of life. Why is Shakespeare the greatest poet? Because he is true to life, and has less illusion than other poets.”
“So am I, also, going to be pitiless, Dmitri Sergéitch,” said Viérotchka, smiling. “Don’t be drawn away by the thought that you have in me an obstinate opponent of your self-interest theory, and that you have converted me to be a new disciple. I myself long ago felt the same thing, especially after I read your book and heard it from you. But I thought that these were my individual ideas, that clever and scientific men thought otherwise, and so I was in doubt. All that we used to read was written in a spirit of contrariety; it was full of adverse criticisms, of sarcastic attacks upon what we used to see in ourselves and others. Nature, life, reason, lead you one direction; books drag you the other: they say, ‘This is mean, contemptible.’ Do you know, I myself saw the absurdity of the arguments which I myself brought up!”
“Yes, so they were absurd, Viéra Pavlovna.”
“Well then,” said she, laughing, “we are making each other wonderful compliments. I say to you, ‘You, Dmitri Sergéitch, please don’t lift your nose so high.’ You say to me, ‘You are ridiculous with your doubts, Viéra Pavlovna.’ ”
“At any rate,” said he, also laughing, “we have no selfish interest in making love to each other, and therefore, we don’t make love.”
“All right, Dmitri Sergéitch; people are egotistical, aren’t they? You were speaking about yourself, and now I want to speak about myself.”
“Of course, men must think about themselves most of all.”
“Very good. Now let us see if you will put this into practice.”
“Let us see.”
“A rich man wants to marry me. I don’t like him. Must I accept his offer?”
“Consider what is for your best advantage.”
“My best advantage! You know that I am very poor. On one side is my dislike of the man; on the other, I should have the upper hand of him, an enviable position in society, money, a crowd of worshippers!”
“Weigh everything; choose what would be most advantageous.”
“And if I choose the husband’s wealth and the crowd of worshippers?”
“I shall say that you have chosen that which seemed more correspondent with your interests.”
“And what ought to be said about myself?”
“If you have acted coolly, after mature deliberation, it will have to be said that you have done wisely, and probably you will not be sorry for it.”
“But would my choice deserve condemnation?”
“People who talk all sorts of nonsense will speak about it as they please; but people who look upon life from a reasonable standpoint will say that you have done as you ought. If you have done so, it will show that such was your individuality, that you could not have acted otherwise, circumstances being as they are; they will say that you have acted under the necessity of things, that properly speaking you could not have had any other choice.”
“And no condemnation whatever for my actions?”
“Who has the right to condemn the results of a fact when the fact itself is in existence? Your individuality in the given circumstances is a fact; your actions are the essential, unavoidable results of this fact, arising from the nature of things. You are not responsible for them, and to condemn them is absurd.”
“Well, I see you stick to your theory. And so I shall not deserve your condemnation, if I accept the rich man’s offer?”
“I should be a fool if I condemned it.”
“And so your permission—I might say, your approval—I might even say, your direct advice—is to do as I have said?”
“There is always one thing to advise—‘reason out what is for your best’; if you do that, you have my approval.”
“Thank you. Now the personal case is decided. Let us return to the first, that is, the general question. We began by saying that a man acts from necessity; his actions are determined by the influences from which they take their rise, the stronger motives always predominating. Our arguments went thus: when an action has vital importance, the stimulus is called self-interest; its interaction in man is the calculation of self-interests, and therefore a man must always act in accordance with the motive of self-interest. Do I express the thread of the thought?”
“Perfectly.”
“You see what a good pupil I am. Now this private question about the actions that have an important bearing upon life is settled. But in the general question there remain some difficulties yet. Your book says that a man acts from necessity; but there are cases when it seems that it depends upon my will to act in this way or in that. For instance, I am playing, and I turn the leaves of the music. I turn them sometimes with my left hand, sometimes with my right hand. Let us suppose that I have turned them now with the right hand; why could I not have done it with my left hand? Does it not depend upon my own will?”
“No, Viéra Pavlovna; when you are turning the leaves, not thinking which hand you use, you turn them with the hand that is most convenient; there is no will about it. If you think, ‘Let me turn them with my right hand,’ you then turn them under the influence of this thought; but this thought itself was not a matter of your will, but was engendered unavoidably by others.”
At this word Marya Alekséyevna ceased to listen. “Nu! they are spending their time over science; that ain’t in my line, it ain’t necessary either. What a wise, intelligent, and I may say noble, young man he is! What reasonable advice he gives Viérotchka! And that shows that he is a learned man: now here I go and tells her the same things; she does not listen, she gets offended; I can’t suit her because I don’t know how to speak scientific enough. But here when he speaks scientific, she listens and sees that it is the truth, and she agrees with it. Da! it is said not in vain, ‘knowledge is light; ignorance, darkness.’ If I had been a well-educated woman, would it have been with me as it is now? I’d have got my husband into favor with the generals; I would have got a place for him in the department of supplies, or somewhere else just as good! Nu! of course I should have done the business myself with the contractors! the idea of his doing it—rubbish! I’d have built a much better house than this. I’d have bought more than a thousand souls [dushi, serfs]. But now I cannot. It is necessary to get a recommendation first in the society of generals; and how can I do that? I can’t speak French, nor any other language of theirs. They’ll say, ‘She hain’t got any manners; all she’s good for is to make an uproar on the hay-market!’ So I am no good! ‘Ignorance is darkness.’ Indeed ‘knowledge is light; ignorance is darkness.’ ”
Now it was just this conversation that Marya Alekséyevna had overheard that brought her to the conviction that Dmitri Sergéitch’s conversation was not only not dangerous for Viérotchka—she had been inclined to think that before—but was even likely to do her good, to lighten her own labors in overcoming Viérotchka’s foolish, inexperienced, girlish, thoughts, and hasten the mystical benediction in the affair with Mikhaïl Ivanuitch.