Book: Sunday. Page 4

For a moment he stopped. Then there was the possibility of a struggle. Though weak, but still audible was the voice of the true luuve to her, who told him about her, about her feelings, about her life. Another voice said, ' lo, miss their pleasure, their happiness. And this second voice completely stifled the first.

At first Nekhludoff struggled, but the fight was too hard because all the things that he, believing himself considered good considered cronym other, and, on the contrary, the FAC that trusting himself, he believed bad, was considered good all around it. And the upshot was that Nekhludoff salsa ceased to believe in yourself, and believe others. And the first time that the renunciation was unpleasant, but it lasted an unpleasant feeling for a short time, and very soon Nekhludoff, at the same time began to smoke and drink wine, did not experience this unpleasant feeling and even felt great relief.

Learning closer to the prison and steps, Nekhludoff saw that all those vices which developed among the convicts: drunkenness, play, cruelty, and all those terrible crimes committed by astronomy, and the cannibalism - not the essence of randomness or phenomena of degeneration, criminal type, ugliness, as it is in the hands of governments talking about stupid scientists and there are the inevitable consequence of the incomprehensible delusion that men may punish others. Nekhludoff saw that cannibalism doesn't begin in the forest, and in the ministries, committees and departments and is only in the forest; his son-in-law, for example, and all the judges and officials, from the usher to the Minister, there was nothing to do with justice or the good of the people, which they spoke, and how everyone was only those rubles that they paid for something that they did all the things, what turns out this corruption and suffering. It was quite obvious.

What most surprised him, that was what still was not done accidentally, not by mistake, not once, and that all this was done constantly, in the course of hundreds of years, with the only difference that before it was a ragged cut noses and ears, then stamped on the rods, and now watches and movable steam and not on carts.
The argument that what troubled him, was how he said officials from the imperfections of the device of places of detention and exile and that they can be corrected by arranging a new style of prison - did not satisfy Nekhludoff, because he felt that what troubled him, was not from a more or less satisfactory devices of places of detention. He read about the improved prisons with electric bells, about executions by electricity, recommended by Cardom, and enhanced violence even more resented it.
Revolted Nekhludoff most importantly, that the courts and ministries were the people receiving a large collected people's salaries because they are coping in the books written by the same officials with the same motives that drove the actions of people that violates written laws, under the articles and these articles were sent to people somewhere in a place where they have seen them and where these people are at the mercy of cruel, hardened inspectors, guards, escort millions were dying spiritually and bodily.

Only under special cultivation of Vice, like it is done in these institutions, it was possible to bring the Russian people to the state to which he was brought in bums that anticipated the latest teachings of Nietzsche and believes all is possible and nothing is forbidden and spread this teaching first among the convicts and then among all the people.
The only explanation of everything accomplished was the prevention, deterrence, correction, and a natural retaliation, as it is written in the books. But in reality there was no semblance of neither the one nor the other, nor the third, nor the fourth. Instead of restraint it was only the spread of crime. Instead of intimidation, it was the encouragement of criminals, many of whom, as tramps, voluntarily went to jail. Instead it was the systematic contamination of all vices. The need of retaliation, not only did not soften the government's punishment but was raised in the people where it was not.
"So why are they doing it?" he questioned himself and he found no answer.

In prisons - Tyumen, Ekaterinburg, Tomsk and at the stages Nekhludoff saw the goal seemed to have set itself the society successfully achieved. The people are simple, ordinary, with the requirements of the Russian public, peasant, Christian morality, leaving these concepts and assimilate new, cautious, including, most importantly, that all the reproach and violence against human personality, every destruction is allowed when it is beneficial. People who had lived in prison, his entire being knew that, judging by what is happening above them, all those moral laws of respect and compassion for the person who proposedida and the Church and the moral teachers, in fact reversed, and that therefore they should not stay on them. Nekhludoff saw that he knew all the prisoners: on the Fedorov, on Makar, and even on Taras, who, after spending two months on the steps, struck Nekhludoff by the immorality of their judgments. Dear Nekhludoff learned how tramps, escaping into the forest, talk with you friends and then killing them, eating their meat. He saw a living man who was accused and confessed to it. And worse of all was that the cases of cannibalism were not rare, and constantly repeated.

It was all as though deliberately fictional companies to work condensed to the last degree of this depravity and Vice, which it was impossible to achieve under any other circumstances, in order then to spread in the widest size of these condensed vices and debauchery, among all the people. "Exactly as if the specified task as the best, surest way to corrupt as many people as possible," thought Nekhludoff, delving into what was done in prison and stages. Hundreds of thousands of people annually were brought to the highest pitch of depravity, and when they were completely corrupted, they were released into the wild, so that they carried that they have assimilated in prisons, corruption among the whole people.

The fact that during those three months saw Nekhludoff, seemed to him the following view: living in the will of the people through the court and the administration were selected the most nervous, hot, excitable, gifted and strong and less than others, cunning and cautious people, and these people, no more guilty or dangerous to society than those who remained in the wild in the first, locked in prison, steps, prison, where they kept for months and years in complete idleness, material security, and the removal from nature, family, work, that is, out of all of the terms natural and moral life of man. This is the first. Secondly, these people in these institutions were subjected to any kind of unnecessary humiliation - chains, shaved heads, shameful clothing-that is, deprived of the main engine the good life of weak people care about the opinion of human, the shame, the consciousness of human dignity. Thirdly, being exposed to constant danger of life - not to mention the exceptional cases of sunstroke, drowning, fires, from continuing the detention of infectious disease, exhaustion, beatings, these people were constantly in that position where with a good, moral person out of a sense of self-preservation makes and excuse for others to commit the most terrible cruelty acts. Fourthly, these people were forcibly joined with an exceptionally depraved life (and particularly of these same institutions), the Libertines, murderers and villains who have acted as leaven on the dough at all still not quite used corrupt means people. And fifthly, finally, to all the people subjected to these influences, was inspired in the most compelling way, through all kinds of inhuman acts on themselves through the torture of children, women, the elderly, whipping, cross-section, with rods, with whips, wydawania bonuses for those who will present, dead or alive, the fleeing fugitive, the separation of husbands from wives and connections of cohabitation with foreign wives of other men, to kill, hanging was inspired in the most convincing way, that all sorts of violence, cruelty, atrocities are not only not prohibited, but permitted by the government when it is advantageous for him, but because the more is allowed to those who are in captivity, poverty and disasters.

To know that somewhere far away some people torture others, exposing them to all kinds of wickedness, inhuman humiliation and suffering, or for three months incessantly to see this corruption and the torment of others is quite another. And Nekhludoff felt it. He continued in these three months he asked himself: "do I crazy that I see what others don't see, or crazy those who produce what I see?" But people (and there were so many) made the fact that he was so surprised and horrified, with such a calm confidence that is not only so, but that is what they are doing is very important and useful, - that it was hard to admit all these people crazy; crazy he himself could not recognize because he was conscious of the clarity of his thoughts. And therefore was constantly in disbelief.

... military live always in an atmosphere of public opinion that not just conceals from them the crime committed by them deeds, but these deeds deeds...

As gruesome as it was senseless suffering inflicted on so-called criminal, yet over them were made before and after his conviction, some semblance of the rule of law; but in matters political, was not even that semblance, as Nekhludoff saw on Chusovoi and then on many of his new acquaintances. These people acted like they do when catching fish with a Seine: pull ashore everything that comes, and then take those big fish that are needed, without worrying about the small fry that die zasyhaya on the shore. So, capturing hundreds of these, obviously are not only not guilty, but not likely to be harmful to the government of the people, kept them, sometimes for years in prisons where they were infected with tuberculosis, went crazy or killed themselves; and kept them only because there was no reason to release them, while being on hand in prison, they would need to clarify some issue in the investigation. The fate of all these, often even from the government point of view, of innocent people depended on the arbitrariness of the leisure, mood, gendarme, police officer, spy, Prosecutor, coroner, Governor, Minister. Bored of such official, or who wants to be different - and making the arrests, and, depending on mood or his superiors, keeps in prison or released. And the higher the head, too, depending on the fact whether it has to differ, or what he is dealing with the Minister, or refers to the edge of the world, or holds in solitary confinement, or sentenced to exile, to prison, to death, or produces, when asked to do so by any lady.

During the trial, he decided that judges have no right to judge him and expressed it. When judges disagreed with him and continued to judge him, he decided that he would not answer, and remained silent to all their questions. He was exiled to Arkhangelsk province. There he formed a religious doctrine that defines his entire activity. The religious doctrine is, that all the world is alive, which dead, is not that all objects that we regard as dead, inorganic, are only part of the huge organic body which we cannot embrace, and that therefore the task of man, the particles of the large body is to maintain life of this organism, and all living parts of it. And because it is considered a crime to destroy: was against war, executions, and any killing not only humans but also animals. In relation to the marriage he had also a theory, which consisted in the fact that people have only the lower function of man, the highest is in the service of already existing living things. He found confirmation of this idea in the existence of phagocytes in the blood. Unmarried people, in his opinion, were the same phagocytes, the purpose of which was to help the weak, the sick parts of the body. He's lived with ever since I decided that, although before, a young man, indulged in debauchery. He pleaded now, as Marya Pavlovna, the world phagocytes.

It is very easy and without effort understand the motives that led these people, and as a man of the people, completely sympathised with them. She realized that these people were for the people against the lords; and that these people were themselves the Lord and sacrificed their advantages, freedom and life for the people, made her particularly appreciate these people and admire them.