A most pernicious individual for young people to have to do with!'
The comparison Paklin had made, though true and apt, called up no smile on any one's face. Only Ostrodumov observed that young people who were capable of taking an interest in aesthetic criticism deserved no pity, even if Skoropihin did lead them astray.
'But really, one moment,' Paklin exclaimed with warmth the less sympathy he met with, the hotter he got, 'here we have a question, not political we admit, but important for all that. To listen to Skoropihin, every ancient work of art is no good, for the very reason that it is ancient. . . . If that's so, art is nothing but a fashion, and it's not worth while to talk seriously about it! If there is nothing stable, eternal in it then away with it! In science, in mathematics, for instance, you don't regard Euler, Laplace, Hauss as antiquated imbeciles, do you? Are you prepared to reckon them as authorities, while Raphael and Mozart are fools? Does your pride revolt against their authority? The canons of art are more difficult to arrive at, than the laws of science . . . agreed; but they exist, and any one who doesn't see them, is blind; whether wilfully or not, makes no difference!'
Paklin ceased . . . and no one uttered a
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