"The summer is over," said Masha. "Now you and I can balance our
accounts. We have done a lot of work, a lot of thinking; we are the
better for it--all honour and glory to us--we have succeeded
in self-improvement; but have our successes had any perceptible
influence on the life around us, have they brought any benefit to
anyone whatever? No. Ignorance, physical uncleanliness, drunkenness,
an appallingly high infant mortality, everything remains as it was,
and no one is the better for your having ploughed and sown, and my
having wasted money and read books. Obviously we have been working
only for ourselves and have had advanced ideas only for ourselves."
Such reasonings perplexed me, and I did not know what to think.

"We have been sincere from beginning to end," said I, "and if anyone
is sincere he is right."

"Who disputes it? We were right, but we haven't succeeded in properly
accomplishing what we were right in. To begin with, our external
methods themselves--aren't they mistaken? You want to be of use
to men, but by the very fact of your buying an estate, from the
very start you cut yourself off from any possibility of doing
anything useful for them. Then if you work, dress, eat like a peasant
you sanctify, as it were, by your authority, their heavy, clumsy
dress, their horrible huts, their stupid beards. . . . On the other
hand, if we suppose that you work for long, long years, your whole
life, that in the end some practical results are obtained, yet what
are they, your results, what can they do against such elemental
forces as wholesale ignorance, hunger, cold, degeneration? A drop
in the ocean! Other methods of struggle are needed, strong, bold,
rapid! If one really wants to be of use one must get out of the
narrow circle of ordinary social work, and try to act direct upon