Page 727 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

thought—a thing that very rarely happens—and a thought
to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding
some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had
grown up out of the conditions of his life, which he had

brooded over in the solitude of his village, and had
considered in every aspect.
‘The point is, don’t you see, that progress of every sort
is only made by the use of authority,’ he said, evidently
wishing to show he was not without culture. ‘Take the
reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of Alexander. Take
European history. And progress in agriculture more than
anything else—the potato, for instance, that was
introduced among us by force. The wooden plough too
wasn’t always used. It was introduced maybe in the days
before the Empire, but it was probably brought in by
force. Now, in our own day, we landowners in the serf
times used various improvements in our husbandry: drying
machines and thrashing machines, and carting manure and
all the modern implements—all that we brought into use
by our authority, and the peasants opposed it at first, and
ended by imitating us. Now by the abolition of serfdom
we have been deprived of our authority; and so our
husbandry, where it had been raised to a high level, is

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