diversion. We have totally forgotten that what we need to do is not
to study and depict them, but to serve them. To such a degree have
we lost sight of this duty which we have taken upon us, that we have
not even noticed that what we have undertaken to perform in the
realm of science and art has been accomplished not by us, but by
others, and that our place has turned out to be occupied.

It proves that while we have been disputing, one about the
spontaneous origin of organisms, another as to what else there is in
protoplasm, and so on, the common people have been in need of
spiritual food; and the unsuccessful and rejected of art and
science, in obedience to the mandate of adventurers who have in view
the sole aim of profit, have begun to furnish the people with this
spiritual food, and still so furnish them. For the last forty years
in Europe, and for the last ten years with us here in Russia,
millions of books and pictures and song-books have been distributed,
and stalls have been opened, and the people gaze and sing and
receive spiritual nourishment, but not from us who have undertaken
to provide it; while we, justifying our idleness by that spiritual
food which we are supposed to furnish, sit by and wink at it.

But it is impossible for us to wink at it, for our last
justification is slipping from beneath our feet. We have become
specialized. We have our particular functional activity. We are
the brains of the people. They support us, and we have undertaken
to teach them. It is only under this pretence that we have excused
ourselves from work. But what have we taught them, and what are we
now teaching them? They have waited for years--for tens, for
hundreds of years. And we keep on diverting our minds with chatter,
and we instruct each other, and we console ourselves, and we have