Purity Of The Agrarian Life

            "They're thinking of turning the peasant into an educated man. Why, first of all they should make him a good and prosperous farmer and then he'll learn all that is necessary for him to know. You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. The things these scribblers write! Some greenhorn publishes a book and everyone is anxious to read it. This is the sort of thing they are saying now: 'The peasant leads too simple a life. He must be introduced to articles of luxury and be made to realize the need to possess things he can't afford...' They don't seem to realize that it is because of these luxuries that they themselves have become trash and not men, have contracted goodness knows what diseases, and that there isn't an eighteen-year-old boy who has not experienced everything: his teeth have dropped out and he is already bald as a billiard ball- and so they want the peasants too to be infected. Why, thank God, there's still at least one healthy class of society left which knows nothing of these sophisticated fads! We ought to thank God for that. Yes, the man who tills the land is more worthy of respect than any. Why then interfere with him? The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil."
            "So, you think sir, that agriculture is the most profitable occupation?" asked Chichikov.
            "It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable. 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,' it is written. It's no use being too clever about it. The experience of ages has shown that a man who works on the land is purer, nobler, higher, and more moral... Agriculture should be at the basis of everything. That's my idea."