ions that I might cease to do evil. But my whole life is
evil. I may give away a hundred thousand rubles, and still I shall not
be in a position to do good because I shall still have five hundred
thousand left. Only when I have nothing shall I be in a position to do
the least particle of good, even as much as the prostitute did which she
nursed the sick women and her child for three days. And that seemed so
little to me! And I dared to think of good myself! That which, on the
first occasion, told me, at the sight of the cold and hungry in the
Lyapinsky house, that I was to blame for this, and that to live as I live
is impossible, and impossible, and impossible,--that alone was true.

What, then, was I to do?

CHAPTER XVI.

It was hard for me to come to this confession, but when I had come to it
I was shocked at the error in which I had been living. I stood up to my
ears in the mud, and yet I wanted to drag others out of this mud.

What is it that I wish in reality? I wish to do good to others. I wish
to do it so that other people may not be cold and hungry, so that others
may live as it is natural for people to live.

[I wish this, and I see that in consequence of the violence, extortions,
and various tricks in which I take part, people who toil are deprived of
necessaries, and people who do not toil, in whose ranks I also belong,
enjoy in superabundance the toil of other people.

I see that this enjoyment of the labors of others is so arranged, that
the more rascally and complicated the trickery which is employed by the
man himself, or which has been employed by the person from whom he
obtained his inheritance, the more does he enjoy of the labors of others,
and the less does he contribute of his own labor.

First come the Shtiglitzy, Dervizy, Morozovy, the Demidoffs, the
Yusapoffs; then great bankers, merchants, officials, landed proprietors,
among whom I also belong; then the poor--very small traders, dramshop-
keepers, usurers, district judges, overseers, teachers, sacristans,
clerks; then house-porters, lackeys, coachmen, watch-carriers,
cab-drivers, peddlers; and last of all, the laboring
classes--factory-hands and peasants, whose numbers bear the relation to
the first named of ten to one. I see that the life of nine-tenths of the
working classes demands, by reason of its nature, application and toil,
as does every natural life; but that, in consequence of the sharp
practices which take from