t Zossimov.
"You must admit," he went on, addressing Razumihin with a shade of
triumph and superciliousness--he almost added "young man"--"that there
is an advance, or, as they say now, progress in the name of science and
economic truth..."

"A commonplace."

"No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, 'love
thy neighbour,' what came of it?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with
excessive haste. "It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my
neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has
it, 'Catch several hares and you won't catch one.' Science now tells
us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on
self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly
and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private
affairs are organised in society--the more whole coats, so to say--the
firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare
organised too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for
myself, I am acquiring, so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to
pass my neighbour's getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not
from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general
advance. The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time
reaching us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it
would seem to want very little wit to perceive it..."

"Excuse me, I've very little wit myself," Razumihin cut in sharply,
"and so let us drop it. I began this discussion with an object, but I've
grown so sick during the last three years of this chattering to amuse
oneself, of this incessant flow of commonplaces, always the same, that,
by Jove, I blush even when other people talk like that. You are in a
hurry, no doubt, to exhibit your acquirements; and I don't blame you,
that's quite pardonable. I only wanted to find out what sort of man you
are, for so many unscrupulous people have got hold of the progressive
cause of late and have so distorted in their own interests everything
they touched, that the whole cause has been dragged in the mire. That's
enough!"

"Excuse me, sir," said Luzhin, affronted, and speaking with excessive
dignity. "Do you mean to suggest so unceremoniously that I too..."

"Oh, my dear sir... how could I?... Come, that's enough," Razumihin
concluded, and he turned abruptly to Zossimov to continue their previous
conversation.

Py