“Yes, I ought to have said to him:  You say that our husbandry does not answer because the peasant hates improvements, and that they must be forced on him by authority.  If no system of husbandry answered at all without these improvements, you would be quite right.  But the only system that does answer is where laborer is working in accordance with his habits, just as on the old peasant’s land half-way here.  Your and our general dissatisfaction with the system shows that either we are to blame or the laborers.  We have gone our way—­the European way—­a long while, without asking ourselves about the qualities of our labor force.  Let us try to look upon the labor force not as an abstract force, but as the Russian peasant with his instincts, and we shall arrange our system of culture in accordance with that.  Imagine, I ought to have said to him, that you have the same system as the old peasant has, that you have found means of making your laborers take an interest in the success of the work, and have found the happy mean in the way of improvements which they will admit, and you will, without exhausting the soil, get twice or three times the yield you got before.  Divide it in halves, give half as the share of labor, the surplus left you will be greater, and the share of labor will be greater too.  And to do this one must lower the standard of husbandry and interest the laborers in its success.  How to do this?—­that’s a matter of detail; but undoubtedly it can be done.”

This idea threw Levin into a great excitement.  He did not sleep half the night, thinking over in detail the putting of his idea into practice.  He had not intended to go away next day, but he now determined to go home early in the morning.  Besides, the sister-in-law with her low-necked bodice aroused in him a feeling akin to shame and remorse for some utterly base action.  Most important of all—­he must get back without delay:  he would have to make haste to put his new project to the peasants before the sowing of the winter wheat, so that the sowing might be undertaken on a new basis.  He had made up his mind to revolutionize his whole system.

Chapter 29

The carrying out of Levin’s plan presented many difficulties; but he struggled on, doing his utmost, and attained a result which, though not what he desired, was enough to enable him, without self-deception, to believe that the attempt was worth the trouble.  One of the chief difficulties was that the process of cultivating the land was in full swing, that it was impossible to stop everything and begin it all again from the beginning, and the machine had to be mended while in motion.