Maria Ivanovna looked at him in amazement. She had never been able to
understand her son; she never could tell when he was joking or in
earnest, nor what he thought or felt, when other comprehensible persons
felt and thought much as she did herself. According to her idea, a man
was always bound to speak and feel and act exactly as other men of his
social and intellectual status were wont to speak and feel and act. She
was also of opinion that people were not simply men with their natural
characteristics and peculiarities, but that they must be all cast in
one common mould. Her own environment encouraged and confirmed this
belief. Education, she thought, tended to divide men into two groups,
the intelligent and the unintelligent. The latter might retain their
individuality, which drew upon them the contempt of others. The former
were divided into groups, and their convictions did not correspond with
their personal qualities but with their respective positions. Thus,
every student was a revolutionary, every official was bourgeois, every
artist a free thinker, and every officer an exaggerated stickler for
rank.
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