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, but let us profit by the opportunity in order to
remove the immense evil of the separation existing between us and the
poor, and to establish intercourse and the work of redressing the
evil of unhappiness and ignorance, and our still greater misfortune,-
-the indifference and aimlessness of our life.

I already hear the customary remark: "All this is very fine, these
are sounding phrases; but do you tell us what to do and how to do
it?" Before I say what is to be done, it is indispensable that I
should say what is not to be done. It is indispensable, first of
all, in my opinion, in order that something practical may come of
this activity, that no society should be formed, that there should be
no publicity, that there should be no collection of money by balls,
bazaars or theatres; that there should be no announcement that Prince