'Very good! That's as you prefer. But take note that your very desire
to be exclusively a practical man is itself your sort of system--your
theory.'

'Civilisation you talk about!' blurted in Pigasov; 'that's another
admirable notion of yours! Much use in it, this vaunted civilisation!
I would not give a brass farthing for your civilisation!'

'But what a poor sort of argument, African Semenitch!' observed Darya
Mihailovna, inwardly much pleased by the calmness and perfect
good-breeding of her new acquaintance. '_Cest un homme comme il faut_,'
she thought, looking with well-disposed scrutiny at Rudin; 'we must
be nice to him!' Those last words she mentally pronounced in Russian.

'I will not champion civilisation,' continued Rudin after a short
pause, 'it does not need my championship. You don't like it, every one
to his own taste. Besides, that would take us too far. Allow me only
to remind you of the old saying, "Jupiter, you are angry; therefore
you are in the wrong." I meant to say that all those onslaughts upon
systems--general propositions--are especially distressing, because
together with these systems men repudiate knowledge in general, and
all science and faith in it, and consequently also faith in
themselves, in their own powers. But this faith is essential to men;
they cannot exist by their sensations alone they are wrong to fear
ideas and not to trust in them. Scepticism is always characterised by
barrenness and impotence.'

'That's all words!' muttered Pigasov.

'Perhaps so. But allow me to point out to you that when we say "that's