ely flourishing
state of certain villages of Old Ritualists and Molokanye in which there
is no drunkenness, and in which the community exercises a strong moral
control over the individual members. If the Orthodox Church could
make the peasantry refrain from the inordinate use of strong drink as
effectually as it makes them refrain during a great part of the year
from animal food, and if it could instil into their minds a few simple
moral principles as successfully as it has inspired them with a belief
in the efficacy of the Sacraments, it would certainly confer on them an
inestimable benefit. But this is not to be expected. The great majority
of the parish priests are quite unfit for such a task, and the few who
have aspirations in that direction rarely acquire a perceptible moral
influence over their parishioners. Perhaps more is to be expected from
the schoolmaster than from the priest, but it will be long before the
schools can produce even a partial moral regeneration. Their
first influence, strange as the assertion may seem, is often in a
diametrically opposite direction. When only a few peasants in a village
can read and write they have such facilities for overreaching their
"dark" neighbours that they are apt to employ their knowledge for
dishonest purposes; and thus it occasionally happens that the man who
has the most education is the greatest scoundrel in the Mir. Such facts
are often used by the opponents of popular education, but in reality
they supply a good reason for disseminating primary education as rapidly
as possible. When all the peasants have learned to read and write they
will present a less inviting field for swindling, and the temptations
to dishonesty will be proportionately diminished. Meanwhile, it is only
fair to state that the common assertions about drunkenness being greatly
on the increase are not borne out by the official statistics concerning
the consumption of spirituous liquors.

After drunkenness, the besetting sin which is supposed to explain
the impoverishment of the peasantry is incorrigible laziness. On that
subject I feel inclined to put in a plea of extenuating circumstances in
favour of the muzhik. Certainly he is very slow in his movements--slower
perhaps than the English rustic--and he has a marvellous capacity for
wasting valuable time without any perceptible qualms of conscience; but
he is in this respect, if I may use a favourite phrase of the Social
Scientists, "the produ