fresh links to it--that's my view of it."

She raised her eyes to me and smiled ironically, and I went on
trying to formulate my leading idea.

"What matters is not that Anna died in childbirth, but that all
these Annas, Mavras, Pelageas, toil from early morning till dark,
fall ill from working beyond their strength, all their lives tremble
for their sick and hungry children, all their lives are being
doctored, and in dread of death and disease, fade and grow old
early, and die in filth and stench. Their children begin the same
story over again as soon as they grow up, and so it goes on for
hundreds of years and milliards of men live worse than beasts--
in continual terror, for a mere crust of bread. The whole horror
of their position lies in their never having time to think of their
souls, of their image and semblance. Cold, hunger, animal terror,
a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block for them every way
to spiritual activity--that is, to what distinguishes man from
the brutes and what is the only thing which makes life worth living.
You go to their help with hospitals and schools, but you don't free
them from their fetters by that; on the contrary, you bind them in
closer bonds, as, by introducing new prejudices, you increase the
number of their wants, to say nothing of the fact that they've got
to pay the Zemstvo for drugs and books, and so toil harder than
ever."

"I am not going to argue with you," said Lida, putting down the
paper. "I've heard all that before. I will only say one thing: one
cannot sit with one's hands in one's lap. It's true that we are not
saving humanity, and perhaps we make a great many mistakes; but we
do what we can, and we are right. The highest and holiest task for
a civilised being is to serve his neighbours, and we try to serve
them as best we can. You don't like it, but one can't please every
one."

"That's true, Lida," said her mother--"that's true."

In Lida's presence she was always a little timid, and looked at her
nervously as she talked, afraid of saying something superfluous or
inopportune. And she never contradicted her, but always assented:
"That's true, Lida--that's true."

"Teaching the peasants to read and write, books of wretched precepts
and rhymes, and medical relief centres, cannot diminish either
ignorance or the death-rate, just as the light from your windows
cannot light up this huge garden," said I. "You give nothing. By
meddling in these people's l