ery cottage there are images and pictures; every peasant man and woman
sings; many own harmonicas; and all recite stories and verses, and many
read. It is as if those two things which are made for each other--the
lock and the key--had parted company; they have sprung so far apart, that
not even the possibility of uniting them presents itself. Tell the
artist that he should paint without a studio, model, or costumes, and
that he should paint five-kopek pictures, and he will say that that is
tantamount to abandoning his art, as he understands it. Tell the
musician that he should play on the harmonica, and teach the women to
sing songs; say to the poet, to the author, that he ought to cast aside
his poems and romances, and compose song-books, tales, and stories,
comprehensible to the uneducated people,--they will say that you are mad.

The service of the people by science and art will only be performed when
people, dwelling in the midst of the common folk, and, like the common
folk, putting forward no demands, claiming no rights, shall offer to the
common folk their scientific and artistic services; the acceptance or
rejection of which shall depend wholly on the will of the common folk.

It is said that the activity of science and art has aided in the forward
march of mankind,--meaning by this activity, that which is now called by
that name; which is the same as saying that an unskilled banging of oars
on a vessel that is floating with the tide, which merely hinders the
progress of the vessel, is assisting the movement of the ship. It only
retards it. The so-called division of labor, which has become in our day
the condition of activity of men of science and art, was, and has
remained, the chief cause of the tardy forward movement of mankind.

The proofs of this lie in that confession of all men of science, that the
gains of science and art are inaccessible to the laboring masses, in
consequence of the faulty distribution of riches. The irregularity of
this distribution does not decrease in proportion to the progress of
science and art, but only increases. Men of art and science assume an
air of deep pity for this unfortunate circumstance which does not depend
upon them. But this unfortunate circumstance is produced by themselves;
for this irregular distribution of wealth flows solely from the theory of
the division of labor.

Science maintains the division of labor as a unalterable law; it sees
that the distribu