'Hush, Yevgeny ... if one listened to you to-day one would be driven to agreeing with those who reproach us for want of principles.'
'You talk like your uncle. There are no general principles—you've not made out that even yet! There are feelings. Everything depends on them.'
'How so?'
'Why, I, for instance, take up a negative attitude, by virtue of my sensations; I like to deny—my brain's made on that plan, and that's all about it! Why do I like chemistry? Why do you like apples?—by virtue of our sensations. It's all the same thing. Deeper than that men will never penetrate. Not every one will tell you that, and, in fact, I shan't tell you so another time.'
'What? and is honesty a matter of the senses?'
'I should rather think so.'
'Yevgeny!' Arkady was beginning in a dejected voice ...
'Well? What? Isn't it to your taste?' broke in Bazarov. 'No, brother. If you've made up your mind to mow down everything, don't spare your own legs. But we've talked enough metaphysics. "Nature breathes the silence of sleep," said Pushkin.'
'He never said anything of the sort,' protested Arkady.
'Well, if he didn't, as a poet he might have—and ought to have said it. By the way, he must have been a military man.'