es on!--circumstances force
the Russian author to remind his compatriots of certain indisputable,
elementary truths.

It is a very hard duty:--it is painfully awkward to speak to grown-up
and literate people in this manner:

"Ladies and gentlemen! We must be humane; humaneness is not only
beautiful, but also advantageous to us. We must be just; justice is
the foundation of culture. We must make our own the ideas of law and
civil liberty: the usefulness of such an assimilation is clearly
demonstrated by the high degree of civilisation reached by the
Western countries, for instance, by England.

"We must develop in ourselves a moral tidiness, and an aversion to all
the manifestations of the brute principle in man, such as the wolfish,
degrading hatred for people of other races. The hatred of the Jew is a
beastlike, brute phenomenon; we must combat it in the interests of the
quicker growth of social sentiments and social culture.

"The Jews are human beings, just like others, and, like all human
beings, the Jews must be free.

"A man who meets all the duties of a citizen, thereby deserves to be
given all the rights of citizenship.

"Every human being has an inalienable right to apply his energy in all
the branches of industry and all the departments of culture, and the
broader the scope of his personal and social activities, the more does
his country gain in power and beauty."

There are a number of other equally elementary truths which should
have long since sunk into the flesh and blood of Russian society, but
which have not as yet done so.

I repeat--it is a hard thing to assume the role of a preacher of
social proprieties and to keep reiterating to people: "It is not good,
it is unworthy of you to live such a dirty, careless, savage
life--wash yourselves!"

And in spite of all your love for men, in spite of your pity for them,
you are sometimes congealed in cold despair and you think with
animosity: "Where then is that celebrated, broad, beautiful Russian
soul? So much was and is being said about it, but wherein does its
breadth, might and beauty actively manifest itself? And is not our
soul broad because it is amorphous? And it is probably owing to its
amorphousness that we yield so readily to external pressure, which
disfigures us so rapidly and radically."

We are good-natured, as we ourselves express it. But when you look
closer at our good-naturedness, you find that it shows a strange
resemblance to