‘Then what, in your opinion, is the human way in which one should treat children?’ I asked.
‘How? Love them humanly.’
‘Well, don’t mothers love their children?’
‘Not like human beings, they hardly ever do that, and therefore they do not even love them in dog-fashion. Just notice: a hen, a goose, a she-wolf, are always unattainable models of animal love for our women. Few women would at the risk of their lives rush at an elephant to take their baby from him, but no hen, and no she-crow even, would fail to fly at a dog; and each of them would sacrifice itself for its children, while few women would do so. Notice that a human mother can refrain from physical love of her children while an animal cannot do so. Well, is that because a woman is inferior to an animal? No, but because she is superior (though “superior” is incorrect; she is not “superior”, but is a different creature). She has other obligations – human ones; she can refrain from animal love and can transfer her love to the child’s soul. That is becoming to a human mother, and that is what never is done in our society. We read of the heroism of mothers who sacrifice their children for the sake of something higher, and it seems to us that these cases are merely stories of ancient times, which have no relation to us. But yet I think that if a mother has nothing for the sake of which she can sacrifice her animal feelings for her child, and if she transfers the spiritual force, which has been left unapplied, to attempting the impossible – the physical preservation of her child – in which attempt the doctors will assist her, it will be much worse for her, and she will suffer, as she actually does suffer! So it was with my wife. Whether there was one child or five – it was always the same. It was even a little better when we had five of them. Our whole life was continually poisoned by fear on the children’s account – fear of their real or imaginary illnesses – and even by their very presence. I at any rate, during my whole married life, always felt that my life and all my interests continually hung by a hair, and depended on the children’s health and condition and lessons. Children are of course an important matter, but then we all have to live! In our times the grown-ups are not allowed to live. They have no proper life: the life of the whole family hangs every second by a hair; and family life, life for the married couple, is lacking. No matter what important affair you may have, if you suddenly hear that Vásya has vomited, or Lisa’s motion shows signs of blood, everything has instantly to be left, forgotten, thrown away. Everything else is insignificant.… The only important things are the doctors, the enemas, the temperatures: not to mention the fact that you can never begin a conversation without it happening at the most interesting part that Pétya runs in with a troubled face to ask whether he is to eat an apple or which jacket he is to put on, or without the nurse bringing in a shrieking baby. There is no regular firm family life. How you are to live, where to live, and therefore what your occupation is to be, all depends on the children’s health; while their health does not depend on anyone, but, thanks to the doctors who say that they can preserve their health, your whole life may be disturbed at any moment. There is no life; it is a constant peril.’
51 Add: But besides this, the children were for her also a means of forgetting herself – an intoxication. I often noticed that when she was upset about anything she felt better if one of the children fell ill and she could revert to that state of intoxication. But it was an involuntary intoxication; there was nothing evil about it.
52 Add: Of course the doctors confirmed all this with an air of importance and encouraged her in the belief. She would have been glad not to be afraid, but the doctor dropped a word or two about “blood-poisoning”, “scarlatina”, or (God forbid) “dysentery” – and it was all up! Nor could it be otherwise. You see, if among us women had, as in olden times, a belief that “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away”, that a young child’s angel-soul goes to God and it is better for him – the dead child – to die in innocence than to die later on in sin, and so forth, which is what people did believe, you know – if they had any faith of that sort, they could bear the children’s illnesses more quietly; but now there is nothing of that sort left – not a trace of it. There is no belief of that kind. But one must have faith in something, and they have faith – a senseless faith – in medicine – and not even in medicine but in doctors. One woman in I. I., and another in P. P.; and like religious believers they do not see the absurdity of their faith but believe quia absurdum. You know, if they did not believe irrationally, they would see the absurdity of what those brigands prescribe – the whole of it. Scarlatina is an infectious disease; on account of it, in a large town, half the family has to move into an hotel (they twice made us move in that way). But, you see, everyone in a town is a centre of innumerable diameters which carry the threads of all kinds of infection, and there is no possibility of avoiding them: the baker, the tailor, the laundress, and the cabman. So that for everyone who moves out of his own house to another place to escape an infection he knows of, I will undertake to find, in that other place, another infection – if not the very same infection – as near at hand. But that is not enough. We all know of rich people who after diphtheria have had everything in their house destroyed, and in that house when freshly done up, have themselves fallen ill; and we all know of dozens of people who have remained with the sick ones and have not been infected. And so it is with everything; one only need keep one’s ears open. One woman tells another that her doctor is a good one. The other replies: “What are you saying? Why, he killed so-and-so.” And vice versa. Well, bring a country doctor to a lady and she won’t trust him; but bring another doctor in a carriage, who knows precisely as much and who treats his patients on the basis of the same books and the same experiments, and tell her that he must be paid £10 for each visit, and she will believe in him. The root of the matter is that our women are savages. They have no faith in God, and so some of them believe in an evil eye cast by wicked people and others in Doctor I. P. because he charges high fees. If they had faith they would know that scarlatina and so forth is not at all so terrible, for it cannot injure what one can and should love – namely, the soul, and that sickness and death which none of us can avoid may occur. But as there is no faith in God they only love physically and all their energy is directed towards preserving life, which cannot be done, and which only the doctors assure fools, and especially she-fools, that they can save. And so they have to be called in. Therefore having children, far from improving our relations to one another, did not unite us but on the contrary divided us.