"Is that so? The social movements are the invention of the new
literature. There are none among us."

An argument began.

"There are no deep social movements among us and never have been,"
the doctor declared loudly. "There is no end to what the new
literature has invented! It has invented intellectual workers in
the country, and you may search through all our villages and find
at the most some lout in a reefer jacket or a black frock-coat who
will make four mistakes in spelling a word of three letters. Cultured
life has not yet begun among us. There's the same savagery, the
same uniform boorishness, the same triviality, as five hundred years
ago. Movements, currents there have been, but it has all been petty,
paltry, bent upon vulgar and mercenary interests--and one cannot
see anything important in them. If you think you have discerned a
deep social movement, and in following it you devote yourself to
tasks in the modern taste, such as the emancipation of insects from
slavery or abstinence from beef rissoles, I congratulate you, Madam.
We must study, and study, and study and we must wait a bit with our
deep social movements; we are not mature enough for them yet; and
to tell the truth, we don't know anything about them."

"You don't know anything about them, but I do," said Mariya Viktorovna.
"Goodness, how tiresome you are to-day!"

"Our duty is to study and to study, to try to accumulate as much
knowledge as possible, for genuine social movements arise where
there is knowledge; and the happiness of mankind in the future lies