‘Very good! That’s as you prefer. But take note that your very desire to be exclusively a practical man is itself your sort of system—your theory.’
‘Civilisation you talk about!’ blurted in Pigasov; ‘that’s another admirable notion of yours! Much use in it, this vaunted civilisation! I would not give a brass farthing for your civilisation!’
‘But what a poor sort of argument, African Semenitch!’ observed Darya Mihailovna, inwardly much pleased by the calmness and perfect good-breeding of her new acquaintance. ‘C’est un homme comme il faut,’ she thought, looking with well-disposed scrutiny at Rudin; ‘we must be nice to him!’ Those last words she mentally pronounced in Russian.
‘I will not champion civilisation,’ continued Rudin after a short pause, ‘it does not need my championship. You don’t like it, every one to his own taste. Besides, that would take us too far. Allow me only to remind you of the old saying, “Jupiter, you are angry; therefore you are in the wrong.” I meant to say that all those onslaughts upon systems—general propositions—are especially distressing, because together with these systems men repudiate knowledge in general, and all science and faith in it, and consequently also faith in themselves, in their own powers. But this faith is essential to men; they cannot exist by their sensations alone, they are wrong to fear ideas and not to trust in them. Scepticism is always characterised by barrenness and impotence.’
‘That’s all words!’ muttered Pigasov.
‘Perhaps so. But allow me to point out to you that when we say “that’s all words!” we often wish ourselves to avoid the necessity of saying anything more substantial than mere words.’
‘What?’ said Pigasov, winking his eyes.
‘You understood what I meant,’ retorted Rudin, with involuntary, but instantly repressed impatience. ‘I repeat, if man has no steady principle in which he trusts, no ground on which he can take a firm stand, how can he form a just estimate of the needs, the tendencies and the future of his country? How can he know what he ought to do, if——’
‘I leave you the field,’ ejaculated Pigasov abruptly, and with a bow he turned away without looking at any one.
Rudin stared at him, and smiled slightly, saying nothing.