one who will wake us up and warm us! It is
high time! Do you remember, Sasha, once when I was talking to you about
him, I blamed him for coldness? I was right, and wrong too, then. The
coldness is in his blood--that is not his fault--and not in his head. He
is not an actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives
at other people's expense, not like a swindler, but like a child....
Yes; no doubt he will die somewhere in poverty and want; but are we to
throw stones at him for that? He never does anything himself precisely,
he has no vital force, no blood; but who has the right to say that he
has not been of use? that his words have not scattered good seeds in
young hearts, to whom nature has not denied, as she has to him, powers
for action, and the faculty of carrying out their own ideas? Indeed,
I myself, to begin with, have gained all that from him.... Sasha knows
what Rudin did for me in my youth. I also maintained, I recollect, that
Rudin's words could not produce an effect on men; but I was speaking
then of men like myself, at my present age, of men who have already
lived and been broken in by life. One false note in a man's eloquence,
and the whole harmony is spoiled for us; but a young man's ear, happily,
is not so over-fine, not so trained. If the substance of what he
hears seems fine to him, what does he care about the intonation! The
intonation he will supply for himself!'

'Bravo, bravo!' cried Bassistoff, 'that is justly spoken! And as regards
Rudin's influence, I swear to you, that man not only knows how to move
you, he lifts you up, he does not let you stand still, he stirs you to
the depths and sets you on fire!'

'You hear?' continued Lezhnyov, turning to Pigasov; 'what further proof
do you want? You attack philosophy; speaking of it, you cannot find
words contemptuous enough. I myself am not excessively devoted to it,
and I know little enough about it; but our principal misfortunes do
not come from philosophy! The Russian will never be infected with
philosophical hair-splittings and nonsense; he has too much common-sense
for that; but we must not let every sincere effort after truth and
knowledge be attacked under the name of philosophy. Rudin's misfortune
is that he does not understand Russia, and that, certainly, is a great
misfortune. Russia can do without every one of us, but not one of us can
do without her. Woe to him who thinks he can, and woe twofold to him
who actually does do wi