What to Do? Thoughts Evoked by the Census of Moscow

eed themselves from toil is now founded on experimental,

cieties, there exists but one indubitable meth

s of humanity. Humanity, or human communities, are the organisms already prepared, or still in

dance, and others in want, this arises not from the will of God, not because the empire is a form of manifestation of personality, but because in societies,

ounded the prevailing j

olin. There have been many and varied expressions of human wisdom, and these phenomena were known to the men of the nineteenth century. The wisdom of Rousseau and of Lessing, and Spinoza and Bruno, and all the wisdom of antiquity; but no one man's wisdom overrode the crowd. It was impossible to say even this,-that Hegel's success was the result of the symmetry of this theory. There were other e

was not acquainted with Hegal had no right to speak. Any one who desired to understand the truth studied Hegel. Every thing rested on him. And all at once the forties passed, and there was nothing left of him. There was not even a hint of him, any more than if he

seemed to them muddy and contradictory there on the heights of philosophy was all as clear as the day. But that time has gone by. That theory is worn out: a new theory has presented itself in its stead. The old one has become useless

sical period; but now there exists positive, critical science, which does not deceive, since it is all founded on induction and exper

ion on the part of the crowd of so-called cultivated people, spoke the Hegelians. And neither were our Herzens, our Stankevitches, or our Byelinskys fools. But whence arose that marvellous manifestation, that sensible people sh

author which followed it; but it turned out quite otherwise. The hack-writer who penned this treatise instantly becomes a scientific authority, and maintains himself upon that height for nearly half a century. Malthus! The Malthusian theory,-the law of the increase of the population in geometrical, and of the means of subsistence in arithmetical proportion, and the wise and natural means of restricting the population,-all these have become scientific, indubitable truths, which have not been confirmed, but which have been employed as axioms, for the erection of false theories. In this manner have learn

does not depend upon men; and, if any one is to blame in this matter, it is the hungry laboring classes themselves. Why are they such fools as to give birth to children, when they know that there will be nothing for the children to eat? And so this deduction, which is valuable for the herd of idle people, has had this result: that all learned men overl

d towards that which it preaches? At first it seems strange, that the theory of evolution can in any manner justify people in their evil wa

y appears to

an doctrine. Hegelianism was, apparently, occupied only with its logical constructions, and bore no relation to the life of mankind. Precisely t

cts alone: it investigates facts. But what fa

impossible to investigate facts alone, because the facts which are subject to our investigation are innumerable (in the definite sense of that word),-innumerable. Before

n with all prevailing and guiding doctrines. The foundations of every doctrine are always stated in a theory, and the so-called learned men merely invent further deductions from the foundations once stated

rganism; they magnify the power of one capacity, and weaken another, and unite in one organ, in order the better to supply the requirements of the whole organism. And exactly in the same manner as with gregarious animals,-ants or bees,-the separate individuals divide the labor among them. T

s only necessary to draw the deductions from all these laws, in order to immediately perceive that these laws incline in the same direction as the law of Malthus. These laws all point to one thing; namely, to the recognition of that division of labor which exists in human communities, as

resulted in a philosophical manner, and therefore wrongly. But with science,

nity, and that therefore there cannot arise any question as to whether it is just that I, in employing the labor of others, am doing only that which is agreeable to me, as there can arise no question as to the division of labor between the brain cells and the muscular ce

at the justification for men's id