Do you understand what I mean, stupid? Do you understand that if I love this person, and you ask me to give him a box in the ear, which, according to my ideas and yours, is a trifle,—do you understand that if you asked me to do this, I should consider you a fool and a low fellow; and if you compelled me to do it, I should kill either you or myself, according to whose life were the less desirable—I would kill either you or myself, but I would not do this. Do you understand this, you stupid fellow? I am speaking about a man and a slap, which is a trifle, but which takes away the peace of life from a man. Besides men, there are in this world women, who are also human beings; besides slaps, there are other kinds of trifles, which, according to your idea and mine, and which are really trifles, but which also deprive people of the peace of life. Do you understand that to subject any person, even though it be a woman, to any such thing, which, according to your opinion and mine, and in reality are trifles,—well, to do any such thing, it does not matter what,—do you understand, that to subject any one to such a thing, is mean, contemptible, dishonest? Do you hear me? I say that you have dishonorable thoughts."
"My friend, you speak the exact truth about what is honorable and dishonorable; only I do not know what you are saying these things for, and I do not understand what relation it may have to me. I have not told you anything at all, nor have I said anything about any intention of risking the peace of life of anybody in the world! nothing of the kind! You are indulging in fancies, and that's all there is of it. I ask of you, my friend, not to forget me, because it is agreeable to me, as your friend, to spend time with you, and that's all. Will you fulfil your friend's request?"
"It is dishonorable, I told you, and I don't act dishonorably."
"It is very praiseworthy of you that you don't; but you got angry over some fancy or other, and you dashed off into theory. You apparently wanted to theorize without any reason, without any applicability to what we were talking about. Now I also am going to theorize, also absolutely without any direct intention, I will ask you a question that has no relation, whatever to anything except the explanation of an abstract truth, without any application to any one in particular. If any one without any distaste to himself can afford to give another pleasure, then common sense, according to my view,
