"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?"