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- 142 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
"That's all true," Zossimov hastened to interpose.
"Isn't it so?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on, glancing affably at
Zossimov. "You must admit," he went on, addressing Razumi-
hin with a shade of triumph and superciliousness — he almost
added "young man" — "that there is an advance, or, as they
say now, progress in the name of science and economic
truth . . ."
"A commonplace."
"No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were
told, 'love thy neighbour,' what came of it?" Pyotr Petrovitch
went on, perhaps with excessive haste. "It came to my tearing
my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were
left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, 'catch several
hares and you won't catch one.' Science now tells us, love your-
self before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-
interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs prop-
erly and yovu: coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that
the better private affairs are organised in society — the more
whole coats, so to say — the firmer are its foundations and the
jetter is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in ac-
quiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring
so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour's
getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private,
personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance.
The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reach-
ing us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet
it would seem to want very little wit to perceive it . . ."
"Excuse me, I've very little wit myself," Razumihin cut in
sharply, "and so let us drop it. I began this discussion with an
object, but I've grown so sick during the last three years of this
chattering to amuse oneself, of this incessant flow of common-
places, always the same, that, by Jove, I blush even when other
people talk like that. You are in a hurry, no doubt, to exhibit
your acquirements; and I don't blame you, that's quite pardon-
able. Ionly wanted to find out what sort of man you are, for
so many imscrupuious people have got hold of the progressive
cause of late and have so distorted in their own interests every-
thing they touched, that the whole cause has been dragged in
the mire. That's enough!"
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