g, if in the vast majority of cases he is coarse
and stupid and deeply unhappy? We must stop admiring one another. We
must work, nothing more.

GAEV. You'll die, all the same.

TROFIMOV. Who knows? And what does it mean--you'll die? Perhaps a man
has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five known to us are
destroyed and the remaining ninety-five are left alive.

LUBOV. How clever of you, Peter!

LOPAKHIN. [Ironically] Oh, awfully!

TROFIMOV. The human race progresses, perfecting its powers.
Everything that is unattainable now will some day be near at hand and
comprehensible, but we must work, we must help with all our strength
those who seek to know what fate will bring. Meanwhile in Russia only
a very few of us work. The vast majority of those intellectuals whom I
know seek for nothing, do nothing, and are at present incapable of hard
work. They call themselves intellectuals, but they use "thou" and "thee"
to their servants, they treat the peasants like animals, they learn
badly, they read nothing seriously, they do absolutely nothing, about
science they only talk, about art they understand little. They are
all serious, they all have severe faces, they all talk about important
things. They philosophize, and at the same time, the vast majority
of us, ninety-nine out of a hundred, live like savages, fighting and
cursing at the slightest opportunity, eating filthily, sleeping in the
dirt, in stuffiness, with fleas, stinks, smells, moral filth, and so
on... And it's obvious that all our nice talk is only carried on to
distract ourselves and others. Tell me, where are those creches we hear
so much of? and where are those reading-rooms? People only write novels
about them; they don't really exist. Only dirt, vulgarity, and Asiatic
plagues really exist.... I'm afraid, and I don't at all like serious
faces; I don't like serious conversations. Let's be quiet sooner.

LOPAKHIN. You know, I get up at five every morning, I work from
morning till evening, I am always dealing with money--my own and other
people's--and I see what people are like. You've only got to begin to
do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are.
Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge
forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here,
ought really to be giants."

LUBOV. You want giants, do you?... They're only good in stories, and
even there they frighten one. [EPIKHODOV en