"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."