Paul Petrovich threw up his hands. After that, I fail to understand you. You insult the Russianpeople. I don't understand how one can fail to admit principles and rules. What is the motive of your conduct?"
"I have already told you, uncle, that we admit no authorities,"
Arcady intervened.
"Our actions are governed by utility," Bazarov said. "In these
days, negation is the most useful thing of all -- and so we deny."
"Everything?"
"Everything," Bazarov repeated with inexpressible calm.
"However, if I may say so," Nicholas Petrovich interjected, "you
deny everything or, to puy it more precisely, you are destroying
everything...But it is necessary to construct as well."
"That is not our affair...First, we must make a clean sweep."
"The present state of the people make it necessary," Arcady
solemnly added. "We must fulfill these demands. We have no right
merely to indulge in the satisfaction of our personal egotism."
This last phrase evidently displeased Bazarov; it smelled of philosophy, that is, of romanticism, for Bazarov identified the two...