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RUDIN to live without truth than without your cook, Stepan, who is such a master hand at soups! And what do you want with truth, kindly tell me? you can’t trim a bonnet with it!’

‘A joke is not an argument,’ observed Darya Mihailovna, ‘especially when you descend to personal insult.’

‘I don’t know about truth, but I see speaking it does not answer,’ muttered Pigasov, and he turned angrily away.

And Rudin began to speak of pride, and he spoke well. He showed that man without pride is worthless, that pride is the lever by which the earth can be moved from its foundations, but that at the same time he alone deserves the name of man who knows how to control his pride, as the rider does his horse, who offers up his own personality as a sacrifice to the general good.

‘Egoism,’ so he ended, ‘is suicide. The egoist withers like a solitary barren tree; but pride, ambition, as the active effort after perfection, is the source of all that is great. Yes! a man must prune away the stubborn egoism of his personality to give it the right of self-expression.’ 59