iciently sharp, so
that I can cut what I choose. I have learned very little that is new. My
thoughts are all exactly the same, but they were duller then, and they
all scattered and would not unite on any thing; there was no edge to
them; they would not concentrate on one point, on the simplest and
clearest decision, as they have now concentrated themselves.

CHAPTER XIII.

I remember that during the entire period of my unsuccessful efforts at
helping the inhabitants of the city, I presented to myself the aspect of
a man who should attempt to drag another man out of a swamp while he
himself was standing on the same unstable ground. Every attempt of mine
had made me conscious of the untrustworthy character of the soil on which
I stood. I felt that I was in the swamp myself, but this consciousness
did not cause me to look more narrowly at my own feet, in order to learn
upon what I was standing; I kept on seeking some external means, outside
myself, of helping the existing evil.

I then felt that my life was bad, and that it was impossible to live in
that manner. But from the fact that my life was bad, and that it was
impossible to live in that manner, I did not draw the very simple and
clear deduction that it was necessary to amend my life and to live
better, but I knew the terrible deduction that in order to live well
myself, I must needs reform the lives of others; and so I began to reform
the lives of others. I lived in the city, and I wished to reform the
lives of those who lived in the city; but I soon became convinced that
this I could not by any possibility accomplish, and I began to meditate
on the inherent characteristics of city life and city poverty.

"What are city life and city poverty? Why, when I am living in the city,
cannot I help the city poor?"

I asked myself. I answered myself that I could not do any thing for
them, in the first place, because there were too many of them here in one
spot; in the second place, because all the poor people here were entirely
different from the country poor. Why were there so many of them here?
and in what did their peculiarity, as opposed to the country poor,
consist? There was one and the same answer to both questions. There
were a great many of them here, because here all those people who have no
means of subsistence in the country collect around the rich; and their
peculiarity lies in this, that they are not people who have come from the
country t