“Oh, if you put the question like that, it’s a different matter,” said Prince Andrey. “I’m building a house and laying out a garden, while you are building hospitals. Either occupation may serve to pass the time. But as to what’s right and what’s good—leave that to one who knows all to judge; it’s not for us to decide. Well, you want an argument,” he added; “all right, let us have one.” They got up from the table and sat out on the steps in default of a balcony. “Come, let us argue the matter,” said Prince Andrey. “You talk of schools,” he went on, crooking one finger, “instruction, and so forth, that is, you want to draw him” （he pointed to a peasant who passed by them taking off his cap）, “out of his animal condition and to give him spiritual needs, but it seems to me that the only possible happiness is animal happiness, and you want to deprive him of it. I envy him, while you are trying to make him into me, without giving him my circumstances. Another thing you speak of is lightening his toil. But to my notions, physical labour is as much a necessity for him, as much a condition of his existence, as intellectual work is for me and for you. You can’t help thinking. I go to bed at three o’clock, thoughts come into my mind, and I can’t go to sleep; I turn over, and can’t sleep till morning, because I’m thinking, and I can’t help thinking, just as he can’t help ploughing and mowing. If he didn’t, he would go to the tavern, or become ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical labour, but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical inactivity, he would grow fat and die. The third thing—what was it you talked about？”
Prince Andrey crooked his third finger.
“Oh, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit and dies, but you have him bled and cure him. He will drag about an invalid for ten years, a burden to every one. It would be ever so much ******r and more comfortable for him to die. Others are born, and there are always plenty. If you grudge losing a labourer—that’s how I look at him—but you want to cure him from love for him. But he has no need of that. And besides, what a notion that medicine has ever cured any one！ Killed them—yes！” he said, scowling and turning away from Pierre.
Prince Andrey gave such a clear and precise utterance to his ideas that it was evident he had thought more than once of this already, and he talked rapidly and eagerly, as a man does who has long been silent. His eyes grew keener, the more pessimistic were the views he expressed.
“Oh, this is awful, awful！” said Pierre. “I don’t understand how one can live with such ideas. I have had moments of thinking like that; it was not long ago at Moscow and on a journey, but then I become so abject that I don’t live at all, everything’s hateful to me … myself, most of all. Then I don’t eat, I don’t wash … how can you go on？ …”
“Why not wash, that’s not clean,” said Prince Andrey; “on the contrary, one has to try and make one’s life more agreeable as far as one can. I’m alive, and it’s not my fault that I am, and so I have to try without hurting others to get on as well as I can till death.”
“But what impulse have you to live with such ideas？ You would sit still without stirring, taking no part in anything.…”