"Perfectly true!" chimed in Vassenka Veslovsky. "Perfectly!

Oblonsky, of course, goes out of _bonhomie_, but other people say:

'Well, Oblonsky stays with them.'..."

"Not a bit of it." Levin could hear that Oblonsky was smiling as

he spoke. "I simply don't consider him more dishonest than any

other wealthy merchant or nobleman. They've all made their money

alike--by their work and their intelligence."

"Oh, by what work? Do you call it work to get hold of

concessions and speculate with them?"

"Of course it's work. Work in this sense, that if it were not

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for him and others like him, there would have been no railways."

"But that's not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned

profession."

"Granted, but it's work in the sense that his activity produces a

result--the railways. But of course you think the railways

useless."

"No, that's another question; I am prepared to admit that

they're useful. But all profit that is out of proportion to the

labor expended is dishonest."

"But who is to define what is proportionate?"

"Making profit by dishonest means, by trickery," said Levin,

conscious that he could not draw a distinct line between honesty

and dishonesty. "Such as banking, for instance," he went on.

"It's an evil--the amassing of huge fortunes without labor, just

the same thing as with the spirit monopolies, it's only the form

that's changed. _Le roi est mort, vive le roi_. No sooner were

the spirit monopolies abolished than the railways came up, and

banking companies; that, too, is profit without work."

"Yes, that may all be very true and clever.... Lie down, Krak!"

Stepan Arkadyevitch called to his dog, who was scratching and

turning over all the hay. He was obviously convinced of the

correctness of his position, and so talked serenely and without

haste. "But you have not drawn the line between honest and

dishonest work. That I receive a bigger salary than my chief

clerk, though he knows more about the work than I do--that's

dishonest, I suppose?"

"I can't say."

"Well, but I can tell you: your receiving some five thousand,

let's say, for your work on the land, while our host, the peasant

here, however hard he works, can never get more than fifty

roubles, is just as dishonest as my earning more than my chief

clerk, and Malthus getting more than a station-master. No, quite

the contrary; I see that society takes up a sort of antagonistic

attitude to these people, which is utterly baseless, and I fancy

there's envy at the bottom of it...."




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