gations, than to discover all possible
sciences. Perish the whole census if we may but feed an old woman. The
census will be longer and more difficult, but we cannot pass by people in
the poorer quarters and merely note them down without taking any heed of
them and without endeavoring, according to the measure of our strength
and moral sensitiveness, to aid them. This in the first place. In the
second, this is what must be done: All of us, who are to take part in the
census, must refrain from irritation because we are annoyed; let us
understand that this census is very useful for us; that if this is not
cure, it is at least an effort to study the disease, for which we should
be thankful; that we must seize this occasion, and, in connection with
it, we must seek to recover our health, in some small degree. Let all of
us, then, who are connected with the census, endeavor to take advantage
of this solitary opportunity in ten years to purify ourselves somewhat;
let us not strive against, but assist the census, and assist it
especially in this sense, that it may not have merely the harsh character
of the investigation of a hopelessly sick person, but may have the
character of healing and restoration to health. For the occasion is
unique: eighty energetic, cultivated men, having under their orders two
thousand young men of the same stamp, are to make their way over the
whole of Moscow, and not leave a single man in Moscow with whom they have
not entered into personal relations. All the wounds of society, the
wounds of poverty, of vice, of ignorance--all will be laid bare. Is
there not something re-assuring in this? The census-takers will go about
Moscow, they will set down in their lists, without distinction, those
insolent with prosperity, the satisfied, the calm, those who are on the
way to ruin, and those who are ruined, and the curtain will fall. The
census-takers, our sons and brothers, these young men will behold all
this. They will say: "Yes, our life is very terrible and incurable," and
with this admission they will live on like the rest of us, awaiting a
remedy for the evil from this or that extraneous force. But those who
are perishing will go on dying, in their ruin, and those on the road to
ruin will continue in their course. No, let us rather grasp the idea
that science has its task, and that we, on the occasion of this census,
have our task, and let us not allow the curtain once lifted to be
dropped,