'Slavophils' and '\'\'estemers' used to meet in his house in l\1oscow. (A.S.)
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about Pan-Slavism and getting angry with Khomyakov, vvho never lost his temper about anything. The rooms had been altered, but the front entrance, the vestibule, the stairs, the hall were all left as before, and so was the little study.
The Chemist's housekeeping was even less complicated, especially when his mother had gone away for the summer to their estate near Moscow and with her the cook. His valet used to appear at four o'clock with a coffee-pot, pour into it a little strong broth and, taking advantage of the chemical furnace,
\vould set it there to warm, along with various poisons. Then he would bring bread and half a hazel-hen from an eating-house, and that made up the whole dinner. When it was over the valet would wash the coffee-pot and it would return to its natural duties. In the evening the valet would appear again, take from the sofa a heap of books, and a tiger-skin that had come down to the Chemist from his father, spread a sheet and bring pillows and a blanket, and the study was as easily transformed into a bedroom as it had been into a kitchen and a dining-room.
From the very beginning of our acquaintance the Chemist saw that I was interested in earnest, and began to try to persuade me to give up the 'empty' study of literature and the 'dangerous and quite useless pursuit of politics,' and take to natural science. He gave me Cuvier's speech on geological revolutions and Candolle's Plant 11/orphologr. Seeing that these were not thrown away upon me he offered me the use of his Pxcellent collections, apparatus, herbariums, and even his guidance. He was very interesting on his own ground, extremely learned, witty and even amiable; but for this one had to go no further than the a pes; from the rocks to the orang-utan everything interested him, but he did not care to be drawn beyond them, particularly into philosophy, which he regarded as twaddle. He wa s neither a conservative nor a reactionary: he simply did not believe in people, that is, he believed that egoism is the sole source of all actions, and thought that it was restrained merely by the senselessness of some and the ignorance of others.
I was revolted by his materialism. The superficial Voltairianism of our fathers, \vhich they were half afraid of, was not in the least like the Chemist's materialism. His outlook was calm, consistent, comp!Pte. flp reminded me of the celebrated answer madP by Lalande!' to Napoleon. 'Kant accepts the hypothesis of
!I Lalande. Jos<"ph-.h;rome de ( 1 n2- 1 807 ) . a French astronoml'r. ( Tr. ) This n•mark is usually alt ribu red to l'il'rTe Simon. 1\larquis de Laplac!'
( 1 H9- J 827 ) . ( R. )
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God,' Bonaparte said to him. 'Sire,' replied the astronomer, 'in my studies I have never had occasion to make use of that hypothesis.'
The Chemist's atheism went far beyond the sphere of theology.
He considered Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire10 a mystic and Oken1 1
simply deranged. He · closed the works of the natural philosophers with the same contempt with which my father had put aside Karamzin's Historr. 'They themselves invented first causes and spiritual forces, and then are surprised that they can neither find them nor understand them,' he said. This was a second edition of my father, in a different age and differently educated.
His views became still more comfortless on all the problems of life. He thought that there was as little responsibility for good and evil in man as in the beasts; that it was all a matter of organisation, circumstances, and condition of the nervous system in general, of which he said more was expected than it was capable of giving. He did not like family life, spoke with horror of marriage, and naively acknowledged that in tlw thirty years of his life he had ne,·er loved one woman. However, there remained one current of '"armth in this frigid man and it could be seen in his attitude to his old mother ; they had suffered a great deal together at the hands of his father, and their troubles had welded them firmly together; he touchingly surrounded her solitary and infirm old age, so far as he could, with tranquillity and attention.
He never advocated his theories, except those that concerned chemistry; they came out casually, evoked by me. He even showed reluctance in answering my romantic and philosophic objections; his answers were brief, and he made them with a smile and with the considerateness with which a big. old mastiff plays with a puppy, allowing him to tousle him and only gently pushing him away with his paw. But it was just that which provoked me most, and I would return to the charge \vithout weariness-never gaining an inch of ground, however. Later on, twelve years afterwards, that is, I frequently recalled the Chemist's, just as I recallPd my fathpr's, observations. Of course, he had been right in three-quarters of everything that I had objected to; 1 o Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire ( 1 772- 1 8·14) , French naturalist and author of many books on zoology and biology, in "·hich, in opposition to Cm·i<'r, he ad,·anced the theory of the variation of species under the influence of environment. ( Tr. )
I I Oken, Lorenz ( 1 779-1 85 1 ) . a German naturalist, who aimed at deducing a system of natural philosophy from !1 priori propositions, and incidentally threw off some ,-aluable and suggestive ideas. ( Tr.)
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but I had been right too, you know. There are truths (we have spoken of this already) which like political rights are not given to those under a certain age.
The Chemist's influence made me choose the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics; perhaps I should have done still better to enter the Medical Faculty, but there was no great harm in my first acquiring some degree of knowledge of the differential and integral calculus, and then completely forgetting it.
Without the natural sciences there is no salvation for modem man. Without that wholesome food, without that strict training of the mind by facts, without that closeness to the life surrounding us, without humility before its independence, the monastic cell remains hidden somewhere in the soul, and in it the drop of mysticism which might have flooded the whole understanding with its dark waters.
Before I completed my studies the Chemist had gone away to Petersburg, and I did not see him again until I came back from Vyatka. Some months after my marriage I went half secretly for a few days to the estate near Moscow where my father was then living. The object of this journey was to effect a final reconciliation with him, for he was still angry with me for my marriage.
On the way I halted at Perkhushkovo where we had so many times broken our journey in old days. The Chemist was expecting me there and had actually got a dinner and two bottles of champagne ready for me. In those four or five years he had not changed at all except for being a little older. Before dinner he asked me quite seriously: