Sanine

"There I don't agree with you," retorted Goschienko.

"But I do," cried Novikoff hotly.

Once more all was confusion and senseless uproar, during which it was

impossible to hear either the beginning or the end of any utterance.

Reduced to silence by this war of words, Soloveitchik sat in a corner

and listened. At first the expression on his face was one of intense,

almost childish interest, but after a while his doubt and distress were

shown by lines at the corners of his mouth and of his eyes.

Sanine drank, smoked, and said nothing. He looked thoroughly bored, and

when amid the general clamour some of the voices became unduly violent,

he got up, and extinguishing his cigarette, said: "I say, do you know, this is getting uncommonly boring!"

"Yes, indeed!" cried Dubova.

"Sheer vanity and vexation of spirit!" said Ivanoff, who had been

waiting for a fitting moment to drag in this favourite phrase of his.

"In what way?" asked the Polytechnic student, angrily.

Sanine took no notice of him, but, turning to Yourii, said: "Do you really believe that you can get a conception of life from any

book?"

"Most certainly I do," replied Yourii, in a tone of surprise.

"Then you are wrong," said Sanine. "If this were really so, one could

mould the whole of humanity according to one type by giving people

works to read of one tendency. A conception of life is only obtained

from life itself, in its entirety, of which literature and human

thought are but an infinitesimal part. No theory of life can help one

to such a conception, for this depends upon the mood or frame of mind

of each individual, which is consequently apt to vary so long as man

lives. Thus, it is impossible to form such a hard and fast conception

of life as you seem anxious to ..."

"How do you mean--'impossible'?" cried Yourii angrily.

Sanine again looked bored, as he answered: "Of course it's impossible. If a conception of life were the outcome of

a complete, definite theory, then the progress of human thought would

soon be arrested; in fact it would cease. But such a thing is

inadmissible. Every moment of life speaks its new word, its new message

to us, and, to this we must listen and understand it, without first of

all fixing limits for ourselves. After all, what's the good of

discussing it? Think what you like. I would merely ask why you, who

have read hundreds of books from Ecclesiastes to Marx, have not yet

been able to form any definite conception of life?"