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."
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