THE FIRST STEP G7
he wislies to appear in a good liiflit, he exhihits them.
Thus it was half a century aj^o. I was contemporary with such men, I knew O^-.iryof and Ilerzen them- selves, and others of that stiimp, and men educated in the same traditions. There was a remarkahle ahsence of consistency in the lives of all these men. Together with a sincere and ardent wish for i^ood, there was an utter looseness of personal desire, which, they thought, could not liinder the living of a good life, nor the per- formance of good, and even great, deeds. They put unkneaded loaves into a cold oven, and helit'ved that hread woulfl he haked. And then, when with advancing years they Ijegan to remark that the hread did not hake — i.e., that no good came of their lives — they .saw in this something peculiarly tragic.
And the tragedy of such lives is indeed terrihle. And this same tragedy apparent in the lives of Her/en, Ogaryiif, and others of their time, exi^its to-day in the lives of very many so-called educated people who hold the same views. A man desires to lead a good life, but the consecutiveness which is indispensable for this is lost in the society in which he lives. As tifty years ago Ogaryi'-f, Her/.en, and others, so also the majority of men of the present day are persuaded that to lead an effeminate life, to eat sweet and fat dishes, to delight one's self in every way and s^itisfy all one's desires, does not hinder one from living a good life, liut as it is evident that a good life in their ca.se does not result, they give themselves up to pessimism, and say, * Such is tiie tragedy of human life.'
^^'hat is also strange in the case is that these people know that the distribution of pleasures among men is unequal, and regard this inequality as an evil, and wish to correct it, yet do not cease to strive to augment their own pleasures — i.e., to augment inecjuality in the dis- tribution of pleasures. In acting thus, these people are like men who being the first to enter an orchard hasten to gather all the fruit they can lay their hands on, and vet wish to organize a more equal distribution of the
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