“It proves this, that they distorted me from my childhood.”
“Well, it’s for you to straighten yourself! What’s the good of being a man, a male animal? And however that may be, is it possible, is it permissible, to reduce a personal, so to speak, fact to a general law, to an infallible principle?”
“How a principle?” interrupted Lavretsky; “I don’t admit—”
“No, it is your principle, your principle,” Mihalevitch interrupted in his turn.
“You are an egoist, that’s what it is!” he was thundering an hour later: “you wanted personal happiness, you wanted enjoyment in life, you wanted to live only for yourself.”
“What do you mean by personal happiness?”
“And everything deceived you; everything crumbled away under your feet.”
“What do you mean by personal happiness, I ask you?”
“And it was bound to crumble away. Either you sought support where it could not be found, or you built your house on shifting sands, or—”
“Speak more plainly, or I can’t understand you.”