Page 739 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘To educate the people three things are needed:
schools, and schools, and schools.
‘But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage
of material development: what help are schools for that?’

‘Do you know, you remind me of the story of the
advice given to the sick man—You should try purgative
medicine. Taken: worse. Try leeches. Tried them: worse.
Well, then, there’s nothing left but to pray to God. Tried
it: worse. That’s just how it is with us. I say political
economy; you say—worse. I say socialism: worse.
Education: worse.’
‘But how do schools help matters?’
‘They give the peasant fresh wants.’
‘Well, that’s a thing I’ve never understood,’ Levin
replied with heat. ‘In what way are schools going to help
the people to improve their material position? You say
schools, education, will give them fresh wants. So much
the worse, since they won’t be capable of satisfying them.
And in what way a knowledge of addition and subtraction
and the catechism is going to improve their material
condition, I never could make out. The day before
yesterday, I met a peasant woman in the evening with a
little baby, and asked her where she was going. She said
she was going to the wise woman; her boy had screaming

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