gineer without interest, with the condescending
indifference with which cadets in the senior classes listen to an
effusive and good-natured old attendant. It seemed as though there
were nothing new to him in what the engineer said, and that if he
had not himself been too lazy to talk, he would have said something
newer and cleverer. Meanwhile Ananyev would not desist. He had by
now laid aside his good-humoured, jocose tone and spoke seriously,
even with a fervour which was quite out of keeping with his expression
of calmness. Apparently he had no distaste for abstract subjects,
was fond of them, indeed, but had neither skill nor practice in the
handling of them. And this lack of practice was so pronounced in
his talk that I did not always grasp his meaning at once.

"I hate those ideas with all my heart!" he said, "I was infected
by them myself in my youth, I have not quite got rid of them even
now, and I tell you--perhaps because I am stupid and such thoughts
were not the right food for my mind--they did me nothing but harm.
That's easy to understand! Thoughts of the aimlessness of life, of
the insignificance and transitoriness of the visible world, Solomon's
'vanity of vanities' have been, and are to this day, the highest
and final stage in the realm of thought. The thinker reaches that
stage and--comes to a halt! There is nowhere further to go. The
activity of the normal brain is completed with this, and that is
natural and in the order of things. Our misfortune is that we begin
thinking at that end. What normal people end with we begin with.
From the first start, as soon as the brain begins working independently,
we mount to the very topmost, final step and refuse to know anything
about the steps below."

"What harm is there in that?" said the student.

"But you must understand that it's abnormal," shouted Ananyev,
looking at him almost wrathfully. "If we find means of mounting to
the topmost step without the help of the lower ones, then the whole
long ladder, that is the whole of life, with its colours, sounds,
and thoughts, loses all meaning for us. That at your age such
reflections are harmful and absurd, you can see from every step of
your rational independent life. Let us suppose you sit down this
minute to read Darwin or Shakespeare, you have scarcely read a page
before the poison shows itself; and your long life, and Shakespeare,
and Darwin, seem to you nonsense, absurdity, because you know you
will die,