He becomes the living interrogation of life.  He cannot begin living until he knows what living means, and he seeks its meaning vainly.  “Why should I try to live life when I do not know what life is?” he objects when Mayakin strives with him to return and manage his business.  Why should men fetch and carry for him? be slaves to him and his money?

“Work is not everything to a man,” he says; “it is not true that justification lies in work . . .  Some people never do any work at all, all their lives long—­yet they live better than the toilers.  Why is that?  And what justification have I?  And how will all the people who give their orders justify themselves?  What have they lived for?  But my idea is that everybody ought, without fail, to know solidly what he is living for.  Is it possible that a man is born to toil, accumulate money, build a house, beget children, and—­ die?  No; life means something in itself. . . .  A man has been born, has lived, has died—­why?  All of us must consider why we are living, by God, we must!  There is no sense in our life—­there is no sense at all.  Some are rich—­they have money enough for a thousand men all to themselves—­and they live without occupation; others bow their backs in toil all their life, and they haven’t a penny.”

But Foma can only be destructive.  He is not constructive.  The dim groping spirit of his mother and the curse of his environment press too heavily upon him, and he is crushed to debauchery and madness.  He does not drink because liquor tastes good in his mouth.  In the vile companions who purvey to his baser appetites he finds no charm.  It is all utterly despicable and sordid, but thither his quest leads him and he follows the quest.  He knows that everything is wrong, but he cannot right it, cannot tell why.  He can only attack and demolish.  “What justification have you all in the sight of God?  Why do you live?” he demands of the conclave of merchants, of life’s successes.  “You have not constructed life—­you have made a cesspool!  You have disseminated filth and stifling exhalations by your deeds.  Have you any conscience?  Do you remember God?  A five-kopek piece—­ that is your God!  But you have expelled your conscience!”

Like the cry of Isaiah, “Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your misfortunes that shall come upon you,” is Foma’s:  “You blood-suckers!  You live on other people’s strength; you work with other people’s hands!  For all this you shall be made to pay!  You shall perish—­you shall be called to account for all!  For all—­to the last little tear-drop!”

Stunned by this puddle of life, unable to make sense of it, Foma questions, and questions vainly, whether of Sofya Medynsky in her drawing-room of beauty, or in the foulest depths of the first chance courtesan’s heart.  Linboff, whose books contradict one another, cannot help him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the verse writers and harlots in dives and boozingkens.  And so, wondering, pondering, perplexed, amazed, whirling through the mad whirlpool of life, dancing the dance of death, groping for the nameless, indefinite something, the magic formula, the essence, the intrinsic fact, the flash of light through the murk and dark—­the rational sanction for existence, in short—­Foma Gordyeeff goes down to madness and death.