Having spent himself somewhat and got rather irritable, he at last turned from foreign Jacobins to home-bred nihilists and socialists, and ended by flying into a passion.
" I would forbid nihilists even so much as to think of schools. I would put all schools into the hands of the clergy, and with an eye on them I wouldn't mind running one myself" !
His great ambition was to study law, but his father, who had a violent hatred for nihilists, made him go in for history and philology, or for " aesthetics" as Nejdanov put it with a bitter smile.