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is ready, indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalansteryit wants life, it hasnt completed its vital process, its too soon for the graveyard! You cant skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! Thats the easiest solution of the problem! Its seductively clear and you musnt think about it. Thats the great thing, you mustnt think! The whole secret of life in two pages of print! Now he is off, beating the drum! Catch hold of him, do! laughed Porfiry. Can you imagine, he turned to Raskolnikov, six people holding forth like that last night, in one room, with punch as a preliminary! No, brother, you are wrong, environment accounts for a great deal in crime; I can assure you of that. Oh, I know it does, but just tell me: a man of forty violates a child of ten; was it environment drove him to it? Well, strictly speaking, it did, Porfiry observed with noteworthy gravity; a crime of that nature may be very well ascribed to the influence of environment. Razumihin was almost in a frenzy. Oh, if you like, he roared. Ill prove to you that your white eyelashes may very well be ascribed to the Church of Ivan the Greats being two hundred and fifty feet high, and I will prove it clearly, exactly, progressively, and even with a Liberal tendency! I undertake to! Will you bet on it? Done! Lets hear, please, how he will prove it! He is always humbugging, confound him, cried Razumihin, jumping up and gesticulating. Whats the use of talking to you? He does all that on purpose; you dont know him, Rodion! He took their side yesterday, simply to make fools of them. And the things he said yesterday! And they were delighted! He can keep it up for a fortnight together. Last year he persuaded us that he was going into a monastery: he stuck to it for two months. Not long ago he took it into his head to declare he was going to get married, that he had everything ready for the wedding. He ordered new clothes indeed. We all began to congratulate him. There was no bride, nothing, all pure fantasy! Ah, you are wrong! I got the clothes before. It was the new clothes in fact that made me think of taking you in. Are you such a good dissembler? Raskolnikov asked carelessly. You wouldnt have supposed it, eh? Wait a bit, I shall take you in, too. Ha-ha-ha! No, Ill tell you the truth. All these questions about crime, environment, children, recall to my mind an article of yours which interested me at the time. On Crime or something of the sort, I forget the title, I read it with pleasure two months ago in the Periodical Review. My article? In the Periodical Review? Raskolnikov asked in astonishment. I certainly did write an article upon a book six months ago when I left the university, but I sent it to the Weekly Review. But it came out in the Periodical. And the Weekly Review ceased to exist, so thats why it wasnt printed at the time. Thats true; but when it ceased to exist, the Weekly Review was amalgamated with the Periodical, and so your article appeared two months ago in the latter. Didnt you know? Raskolnikov had not known. Why, you might get some money out of them for the article! What a strange person you are! You lead such a solitary life that you know nothing of matters that concern you directly. Its a fact, I assure you. |
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