"I said 'petty aristocrat,'" replied Bazarov as he lazily sipped his tea.
"Quite so. Then I take it that you hold the same opinion of aristocrats as of 'petty aristocrats'? Well, I may remark that your opinion is not mine. And to that I would add that, while I myself possess a reputation for Liberal and progressive views, I possess that reputation for the very reason that I can respect real aristocrats. For instance, my dear sir" (the latter term was so heatedly uttered that Bazarov raised his eyebrows), "for instance, my dear sir, take the aristocracy of England. While yielding upon their rights not an iota, they yet know how to respect the rights of others. While demanding fulfilment of obligations due to themselves, they yet fulfil their own obligations. And for those reasons it is to her aristocratic caste that England stands indebted for her freedom. It is because the English aristocratic caste itself supports that freedom."
"A tale which we have heard many times before!" commented Bazarov. "But what are you seeking to prove?"
"I am seeking to prove this," replied Paul Petrovitch. "That without a certain sense of personal dignity, without a sense of self-respect (both of which senses are inborn in the true aristocrat), the social edifice, the bien public, cannot rest upon a durable basis. It is personality that matters, my dear sir: and the human personality requires to be as firm as a rock, in that there rests upon it the entire structure of society. For example, I know that you ridicule my customs, my dress, my fastidious tastes. Yet do those very things proceed from that sense of duty—yes, of duty, I repeat—to which I have just alluded. In other words, I may live in the depths of the country, yet I do not let myself go. For I respect in myself the man."
"Allow me, Paul Petrovitch," said Bazarov. "You say that you respect yourself. Very good. Yet you can sit there with your hands folded! How will that benefit the bien public, seeing that inaction would scarcely seem to argue self-respect?"
Paul Petrovitch blanched a little.
"That is another question altogether," he said. "However, I do not feel called upon to explain the reason why I sit with my hands folded (according to your own estimable term). It will suffice merely to remark that in the aristocratic idea there is contained a principle, and that nowadays men who live without principles are as destitute of morality as they are of moral substance. The same thing did I say to Arkady on the day after his arrival, and I say it now to you. You agree with me, Nikolai, do you not?"
Nikolai Petrovitch nodded assent, while Bazarov exclaimed:
"The aristocratic idea, forsooth! Liberalism, progress, principles! Why, have you ever considered the vanity of those terms? The Russian of to-day does not need them."
"Then what, in your opinion, does he need? To listen to you, one would suppose that we stood wholly divorced from humanity and humanity's laws; whereas, pardon me, the logic of history demands——"
"What has that logic to do with us? We can get on quite well without it."
"How can we do so?"
"Even as I have said. When you want to put a piece of bread into your mouth do you need logic for the purpose? What have these abstractions to do with ourselves?"
Paul Petrovitch waved his hand in disgust.
"I cannot understand you," he said. "You seem to me to be insulting the Russian people. How you or any one else can decline to recognise principles and precepts is a thing which passes my comprehension. For what other basis for action in life have we got?"
Arkady put in a word.
"Both I and Bazarov have told you," he said, "that we recognise no authority of any sort."
"Rather, that we recognise no basis for action save the useful," corrected Bazarov. "At present the course most useful is denial. Therefore we deny."
"Deny everything?"
"Deny everything."
"What? Both poetry and art and—I find it hard to express it?——"
"I repeat, everything," said Bazarov with an ineffable expression of insouciance.
Paul Petrovitch stared. He had not quite expected this. For his part, Arkady reddened with pleasure.
"Allow me," interposed Nikolai Petrovitch. "You say that you deny everything—rather, that you would consign everything to destruction. But also you ought to construct."
"That is not our business," said Bazarov. "First must the site be cleared."
"Yes; for the present condition of the people demands it," affirmed Arkady. "And that demand we are bound to fulfil, seeing that no one has the right merely to devote himself to the satisfaction of his own personal egotism."
With this last Bazarov did not seem altogether pleased, since the phrase smacked too much of philosophy—rather, of "Romanticism," as Bazarov termed that science; but he did not trouble to confute his pupil.
"No, no!" Paul Petrovitch exclaimed with sudden heat. "I cannot believe that gentlemen of your type possess sufficient knowledge of the people to be rightful representatives of its demands and aspirations. For the Russian people is not what you think it to be. It holds traditions sacred, and is patriarchal, and cannot live without faith."
"I will not dispute that," observed Bazarov. "Nay, I will even agree that you are right."
"And, granting that I am right——"
"You have proved nothing."
"Yes, proved nothing," echoed Arkady with the assurance of a chess-player who, having foreseen a dangerous move on the part of his opponent, awaits the attack with expert composure.
"But how have I proved nothing?" muttered Paul Petrovitch, rather taken aback. "Do you mean to say that you are opposed to, not in favour of, the people?"
"Good gracious! Do not the common folk believe, when it thunders, that the Prophet Elijah is going up to Heaven in his chariot? You and I do not agree with that? The point is that the people is Russian, and that I am the same."
"Not after what you have just said! Henceforth must I decline to recognise you as any countryman of mine."
With a sort of indolent hauteur Bazarov replied:
"With his own hand did my grandfather guide the plough. Ask, therefore, of your favourite peasant which of us two—you or myself—he rates most truly as his countryman. Why, you do not know even how to speak to him!"
"And you, while speaking to him, despise him."
"Should he merit contempt, yes. Reprobate, therefore, my views as much as you like, but who told you that they have come to me fortuitously rather than been derived from the very national spirit of which you are so ardent an upholder?"
"Phaugh! We need you Nihilists, do we not?"
"Not ours is it to decide the need or otherwise, seeing that even a man like yourself considers that he has a use."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" interposed Nikolai Petrovitch as he rose to his feet. "I beg of you to indulge in no personalities!"
Paul Petrovitch smiled. Then, laying his hand upon his brother's shoulder, he forced him to resume his seat.
"Do not be alarmed," he said. "That very sense of dignity at which this gentleman pokes such bitter fun will keep me from forgetting myself."
And he turned to Bazarov again.
"Do you suppose your doctrine to be a new one?" he continued. "If so, you are wasting your time. More than once has the Materialism which you preach been mooted; and each time it has been proved bankrupt."
"Another foreign term!" muttered Bazarov. He was now beginning to lose his temper, and his face had turned a dull, copperish tint. "In the first place, we Nihilists preach nothing at all. For to preach is not our custom."
"What,