Pavel Petrovitch turned white. 'That's a different question. It's absolutely unnecessary for me to explain to you now why I sit with folded hands, as you are pleased to express yourself. I wish only to tell you that aristocracy is a principle, and in our days none but immoral or silly people can live without principles. I said that to Arkady the day after he came home, and I repeat it now. Isn't it so, Nikolai?'
Nikolai Petrovitch nodded his head.
'Aristocracy, Liberalism, progress, principles,' Bazarov was saying meanwhile; 'if you think of it, what a lot of foreign ... and useless words! To a Russian they're good for nothing.'
'What is good for something according to you? If we listen to you, we shall find ourselves outside humanity, outside its laws. Come—the logic of history demands ...'
'But what's that logic to us? We call get on without that too.'
'How do you mean?'
'Why, this. You don't need logic, I hope, to put a bit of bread in your mouth when you're hungry. What's the object of these abstractions to us?'
Pavel Petrovitch raised his hands in horror.
'I don't understand you, after that. You insult the Russian people. I don't understand how it's possible not to acknowledge principles, rules! By virtue of what do you act then?'
'I've told you already, uncle, that we don't accept any authorities,' put in Arkady.
'We act by virtue of what we recognise as beneficial,' observed Bazarov. 'At the present time, negation is the most beneficial of all—and we deny——'
'Everything?'
'Everything!'
'What? not only art and poetry ... but even ... horrible to say ...'
'Everything,' repeated Bazarov, with indescribable composure.
Pavel Petrovitch stared at him. He had not expected this; while Arkady fairly blushed with delight.
'Allow me, though,' began Nikolai Petrovitch. 'You deny everything; or, speaking more precisely, you destroy everything.... But one must construct too, you know.'
'That's not our business now.... The ground wants clearing first.'
'The present condition of the people requires it,' added Arkady, with dignity; 'we are bound to carry out these requirements, we have no right to yield to the satisfaction of our personal egoism.'
This last phrase obviously displeased Bazarov; there was a flavour of philosophy, that is to say, romanticism about it, for Bazarov called philosophy, too, romanticism, but he did not think it necessary to correct his young disciple.
'No, no!' cried Pavel Petrovitch, with sudden energy. 'I'm not willing to believe that you, young men, know the Russian people really, that you are the representatives of their requirements, their efforts! No; the Russian people is not what you imagine it. Tradition it holds sacred; it is a patriarchal people; it cannot live without faith ...'
'I'm not going to dispute that,' Bazarov interrupted. 'I'm even ready to agree that in that you're right.'
'But if I am right ...'
'And, all the same, that proves nothing.'
'It just proves nothing,' repeated Arkady, with the confidence of a practised chess-player, who has foreseen an apparently dangerous move on the part of his adversary, and so is not at all taken aback by it.
'How does it prove nothing?' muttered Pavel Petrovitch, astounded. 'You must be going against the people then?'
'And what if we are?' shouted Bazarov. 'The people imagine that, when it thunders, the prophet Ilya's riding across the sky in his chariot. What then? Are we to agree with them? Besides, the people's Russian; but am I not Russian too?'
'No, you are not Russian, after all you have just been saying! I can't acknowledge you as Russian.'
'My grandfather ploughed the land,' answered Bazarov with haughty pride. 'Ask any one of your peasants which of us—you or me—he'd more readily acknowledge as a fellow-countryman. You don't even know how to talk to them.'
'While you talk to him and despise him at the same time.'
'Well, suppose he deserves contempt. You find fault with my attitude, but how do you know that I have got it by chance, that it's not a product of that very national spirit, in the name of which you wage war on it?'
'What an idea! Much use in nihilists!'
'Whether they're of use or not, is not for us to decide. Why, even you suppose you're not a useless person.'
'Gentlemen, gentlemen, no personalities, please!' cried Nikolai Petrovitch, getting up.
Pavel Petrovitch smiled, and laying his hand on his brother's shoulder, forced him to sit down again.
'Don't be uneasy,' he said; 'I shall not forget myself, just through that sense of dignity which is made fun of so mercilessly by our friend—our friend, the doctor. Let me ask,' he resumed, turning again to Bazarov; 'you suppose, possibly, that your doctrine is a novelty? That is quite a mistake. The materialism you advocate has been more than once in vogue already, and has always proved insufficient ...'
'A foreign word again!' broke in Bazarov. He was beginning to feel vicious, and his face assumed a peculiar coarse coppery hue. 'In the first place, we advocate nothing; that's not our way.'
'What do you do, then?'
'I'll tell you what we do. Not long ago we used to say that our officials took bribes, that we had no roads, no commerce, no real justice ...'
'Oh, I see, you are reformers—that's what that's called, I fancy. I too should agree to many of your reforms, but ...'
'Then we suspected that talk, perpetual talk, and nothing but talk, about our social diseases, was not worth while, that it all led to nothing but superficiality and pedantry; we saw that our leading men, so-called advanced people and reformers, are no good; that we busy ourselves over foolery, talk rubbish about art, unconscious creativeness, parliamentarism, trial by jury, and the deuce knows what all; while, all the while, it's a question of getting bread to eat, while we're stifling under the grossest superstition, while all our enterprises come to grief, simply because there aren't honest men enough to carry them on, while the very emancipation our Government's busy upon will hardly come to any good, because peasants are glad to rob even themselves to get drunk at the gin-shop.'
'Yes,' interposed Pavel Petrovitch, 'yes; you were convinced of all this, and decided not to undertake anything seriously, yourselves.'
'We decided not to undertake anything,' repeated Bazarov grimly. He suddenly felt vexed with himself for having, without reason, been so expansive before this gentleman.
'But to confine yourselves to abuse?'
'To confine ourselves to abuse.'
'And that is called nihilism?'
'And that's called nihilism,' Bazarov repeated again, this time with peculiar rudeness.
Pavel Petrovitch puckered up his face a little. 'So that's it!' he observed in a strangely composed voice. 'Nihilism is to cure all our woes, and you, you are our heroes and saviours. But why do you abuse others, those reformers even? Don't you do as much talking as every one else?'
'Whatever faults we have, we do not err in that way,' Bazarov muttered between his teeth.
'What, then? Do you act, or what? Are you preparing for action?'
Bazarov made no answer. Something like a tremor passed over Pavel Petrovitch, but he at once regained control of himself.
'Hm! ... Action, destruction ...' he went on. 'But how destroy without even knowing why?'
'We shall destroy, because we are a force,' observed Arkady.
Pavel Petrovitch looked at his nephew and laughed.
'Yes, a force is not to be called to account,' said Arkady, drawing himself up.
'Unhappy boy!' wailed Pavel Petrovitch, he was positively incapable of maintaining his firm demeanour any longer. 'If you could only realise what it is you are doing for your country. No; it's enough to try the patience of an angel! Force! There's force in the savage Kalmuck, in the Mongolian; but what is it to us? What is precious to us is civilisation; yes, yes, sir, its fruits are precious to us. And don't tell me those fruits are worthless; the poorest
