Fathers and Sons
never said much in the presence of "the old Kirsanovs," and to-night
was feeling out of spirits, and drank his tea in absolute silence.
However, Paul Petrovitch was so charged with impatience that his wish
was bound to attain fulfilment.
It happened that the conversation became turned upon a neighbouring
landowner.
"He is just a petty aristocrat," Bazarov drily remarked (it seemed that
he and the landowner had met in St. Petersburg).
"Allow me," put in Paul Petrovitch, his lips quivering. "In your view,
do the terms 'good-for-nothing' and 'aristocrat' connote the same
thing?"
"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, then, is your custom?"
"To proclaim facts such as that our civil servants accept bribes, that
we lack highways, commerce, and a single upright judge, and that----"
"Of course, of course! In other words, you and yours are to act as our
'censors' (I believe that to be the correct term?). Well, I agree with
many of your censures, but----"
"Other tenets which we hold are that to chatter, and to do nothing but
chatter, concerning our differences is not worth the trouble, seeing
that it is a pursuit which merely leads to pettiness and doctrinairism;
that beyond question are our so-called leaders and censors not worth
their salt, seeing that they engage in sheer futilities, and waste
their breath on discussions on art and still life and Parliamentarism
and legal points and the devil only knows what, when all the time it is
the bread of subsistence alone that matters, and we are being stifled
with gross superstition, and all our commercial enterprises are failing
for want of honest directors, and the freedom of which the Government
is for ever prating is destined never to become a reality, for the
reason that, so long as the Russian peasant is allowed to go and drink
himself to death in a dram-shop, he is ready to submit to any sort of
despoilment."
"You have decided, then, you feel conscious, that your true _métier_ is
to apply yourselves seriously to nothing?"
"Even so," came the sullen reply, for Bazarov had suddenly become vexed
with himself for having exposed his mind with such completeness to this
_barin_.
"You have decided merely to deny everything?"
"We have decided merely to deny everything."
"And that you call Nihilism?"
"That we call Nihilism." In Bazarov's repetition of Paul Petrovitch's
words there echoed, this time, a note of pride.
Paul Petrovitch knit his brows.
"So, so!" he said in a voice that was curiously calm. "Nihilism
is designed to combat our every ill, and you alone are to act as
our saviours and our heroes! Well, well! But in what consider you
yourselves and your censorious friends to excel the rest of us? For you
chatter as much as does every one else."
"No, no!" muttered Bazarov. "At least we are not guilty of _that_,
however we may err in other ways."
"You do things, then? At all events, you are preparing to do things?"
Bazarov did not reply, although, in his excitement, Paul Petrovitch had
started up and then quickly recovered his self-command.
"H'm!" continued Paul Petrovitch. "With you to act is to demolish.
But how is such demolition to benefit when you do not even know its
purpose?"
"We demolish because we are a force," interposed Arkady.
Paul Petrovitch stared--then smiled.
"And a force need render account to no one," added Arkady with a
self-conscious straightening of his form.
"Fool!" gasped Paul Petrovitch. Evidently he could contain himself
no longer. "Have you ever considered _what_ you are maintaining with
your miserable creed? Even an angel would lose patience! 'A force,'
forsooth! You might as well say that the wild Kalmuck, or the barbaric
Mongol, represents a force. What boots such a force? Civilisation and
its fruits are what we value. And do not tell me that those fruits
are to be overlooked, seeing that even the meanest _barbouilleur_,[3]
the meanest piano-player who ever earned five kopecks a night, is of
more use to society than you. For men of that kind at least stand for
culture rather than for some rude, Mongolian propelling-power. Yes, you
may look upon yourselves as 'the coming race,' yet you are fit but to