"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——"