Page 537 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘I’ll tell you, then,’ he said with heat, ‘I imagine the
mainspring of all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now
in the local institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that
could conduce to my prosperity, and the roads are not

better and could not be better; my horses carry me well
enough over bad ones. Doctors and dispensaries are no use
to me. An arbitrator of disputes is no use to me. I never
appeal to him, and never shall appeal to him. The schools
are no good to me, but positively harmful, as I told you.
For me the district institutions simply mean the liability to
pay fourpence halfpenny for every three acres, to drive
into the town, sleep with bugs, and listen to all sorts of
idiocy and loathsomeness, and self-interest offers me no
inducement.’
‘Excuse me,’ Sergey Ivanovitch interposed with a smile,
‘self-interest did not induce us to work for the
emancipation of the serfs, but we did work for it.’
‘No!’ Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat;
‘the emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. There
self-interest did come in. One longed to throw off that
yoke that crushed us, all decent people among us. But to
be a town councilor and discuss how many dustmen are
needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the
town in which I don’t live—to serve on a jury and try a

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