dle, and throwing milk into each other's faces. Their mother, catching them in the act, scolded them in their uncle's presence, and sought to make them understand how much work was involved in what they were destroying, that the labor was performed for their benefit; that, if they broke the cups, they could n't have anything to drink from; and if they wasted their milk, they would n't have any more, and would starve to death.
Levin was struck by the indifference and skepticism with which the children heard their mother's words. They were only sorry to have their interesting sport interrupted, and they did not believe a word of what she said. They did not believe, because they did not know the value of what they were playing with, and did not understand that they were destroying their own means of subsistence.
"That is all very well," they thought; "but there is nothing interesting or worth while in it, because it is always the same, and always will be. And it is monotonous. We don't have to think about it, it is done for us; but we do like to do something new and original; and here we were making jam in a cup over the candle, and squirting the milk into each others' faces. It is fun. It is new, and not half so stupid as to drink milk out of a cup."
"Is it not thus that we act, is it not the way I have acted, in trying to penetrate by reasoning the secrets of nature and the problem of human life? Is it not the same that all the philosophers have done with their theories which lead, by a course of reasoning strange and unnatural to man, to the knowledge of what he long has known, and known so surely that without it he could not live? Do we not see clearly, in the development of the theory of each, that the real meaning of human existence is as indubitably known as it is known to Feodor, the muzhik; and do they see any more clearly than he does the principal meaning of life? Do they not all come back to this, even though it be by a route which is often equivocal? If we were to leave the children to get their own living, make their own utensils, do the
