born free-thinkers who grow up without even having heard of principles of morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages.

Well, he’s of that class. He’s the son, it appears, of some Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he’s no fool, to educate himself. And he turned to what seemed to him the very source of culture — the magazines. In old times, you see, a man who wanted to educate himself — a Frenchman, for instance — would have set to work to study all the classics and theologians and tragedians and historiaris and philosophers, and, you know, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he