`I don't need to ask,' said Sergei Ivanovich, `we have seen and are seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who give up everything to serve a just cause, come from every part of Russia, and directly and clearly express their thought and aim. They bring their coppers, or go themselves and say directly what's what. What does it mean?'

`It means, to my thinking,' said Levin, who was beginning to get warm, `that among eighty millions of people there can always be found not hundreds, as now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste, ne'er-do-wells, who are always ready to go anywhere - to Pugachiov's bands, to Khiva, to Servia...'

`I tell you that it's not a case of hundreds or of ne'er-do-wells, but the best representatives of the people!' said Sergei Ivanovich, with as much irritation as if he were defending the last penny of his fortune. `And what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people directly expressing their will.'

`That word ``people' is so vague,' said Levin. `Parish clerks, schoolmasters, and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it's all about. The rest of the eighty millions, like Mikhailich, far from expressing their will, haven't the faintest idea what there is for them to express their will about. What right have we to say that this is the people's will?'