Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

What to Do? Thoughts Evoked By the Census of Moscow by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
page 89 of 147 (60%)
him, and explained my views to him, and associated with him, our
relations became a torment, and I perceived that the man despised me.
And I felt that he was in the right.

If I go out into the street, and he, standing in that street, begs of
me among the number of the other passers-by, people who walk and ride
past him, and I give him money, I then am to him a passer-by, and a
good, kind passer-by, who bestows on him that thread from which a
shirt is made for the naked man; he expects nothing more than the
thread, and if I give it he thanks me sincerely. But if I stop him,
and talk with him as man with man, I thereby show him that I desire
to be something more than a mere passer-by. If, as often happens, he
weeps while relating to me his woes, then he sees in me no longer a
passer-by, but that which I desire that he should see: a good man.
But if I am a good man, my goodness cannot pause at a twenty-kopek
piece, nor at ten rubles, nor at ten thousand; it is impossible to be
a little bit of a good man. Let us suppose that I have given him a
great deal, that I have fitted him out, dressed him, set him on his
feet so that the can live without outside assistance; but for some
reason or other, though misfortune or his own weakness or vices, he
is again without that coat, that linen, and that money which I have
given him; he is again cold and hungry, and he has come again to me,-
-how can I refuse him? [For if the cause of my action consisted in
the attainment of a definite, material end, on giving him so many
rubles or such and such a coat I might be at ease after having
bestowed them. But the cause of my action is not this: the cause
is, that I want to be a good man, that is to say, I want to see
myself in every other man. Every man understands goodness thus, and
in no other manner.] {15} And therefore, if he should drink away
every thing that you had given him twenty times, and if he should
DigitalOcean Referral Badge