And I willingly
believed this. And before I had time to look about me, instead of the
feeling of self-reproach and regret, which I had at first experienced,
there came a sense of satisfaction with my own kindliness, and a desire
to exhibit it to people.

"It really must be," I said to myself, "that I am not especially
responsible for this by the luxury of my life, but that it is the
indispensable conditions of existence that are to blame. In truth, a
change in my mode of life cannot rectify the evil which I have seen: by
altering my manner of life, I shall only make myself and those about me
unhappy, and the other miseries will remain the same as ever. And
therefore my problem lies not in a change of my own life, as it had first
seemed to me, but in aiding, so far as in me lies, in the amelioration of
the situation of those unfortunate beings who have called forth my
compassion. The whole point lies here,--that I am a very kind, amiable
man, and that I wish to do good to my neighbors." And I began to think
out a plan of beneficent activity, in which I might exhibit my
benevolence. I must confess, however, that while devising this plan of
beneficent activity, I felt all the time, in the depths of my soul, that
that was not the thing; but, as often happens, activity of judgment and
imagination drowned that voice of conscience within me. At that
juncture, the census came up. This struck me as a means for instituting
that benevolence in which I proposed to exhibit my charitable
disposition. I knew of many charitable institutions and societies which
were in existence in Moscow, but all their activity seemed to me both
wrongly directed and insignificant in comparison with what I intended to
do. And I devised the following scheme: to arouse the sympathy of the
wealthy for the poverty of the city, to collect money, to get people
together who were desirous of assisting in this matter, and to visit all
the refuges of poverty in company with the census, and, in addition to
the work of the census, to enter into communion with the unfortunate, to
learn the particulars of their necessities, and to assist them with
money, with work, by sending them away from Moscow, by placing their
children in school, and the old people in hospitals and asylums. And not
only that, I thought, but these people who undertake this can be formed
into a permanent society, which, by dividing the quarters of Moscow among
its members, will be abl