The Brothers Karamazov
And what do they talk about in that momentary halt in the tavern? Of
the eternal questions, of the existence of God and immortality. And
those who do not believe in God talk of socialism or anarchism, of the
transformation of all humanity on a new pattern, so that it all comes
to the same, they’re the same questions turned inside out. And masses,
masses of the most original Russian boys do nothing but talk of the
eternal questions! Isn’t it so?”
“Yes, for real Russians the questions of God’s existence and of
immortality, or, as you say, the same questions turned inside out, come
first and foremost, of course, and so they should,” said Alyosha, still
watching his brother with the same gentle and inquiring smile.
“Well, Alyosha, it’s sometimes very unwise to be a Russian at all, but
anything stupider than the way Russian boys spend their time one can
hardly imagine. But there’s one Russian boy called Alyosha I am awfully
fond of.”
“How nicely you put that in!” Alyosha laughed suddenly.
“Well, tell me where to begin, give your orders. The existence of God,
eh?”
“Begin where you like. You declared yesterday at father’s that there
was no God.” Alyosha looked searchingly at his brother.
“I said that yesterday at dinner on purpose to tease you and I saw your
eyes glow. But now I’ve no objection to discussing with you, and I say
so very seriously. I want to be friends with you, Alyosha, for I have
no friends and want to try it. Well, only fancy, perhaps I too accept
God,” laughed Ivan; “that’s a surprise for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course, if you are not joking now.”
“Joking? I was told at the elder’s yesterday that I was joking. You
know, dear boy, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who
declared that, if there were no God, he would have to be invented.
_S’il n’existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer._ And man has
actually invented God. And what’s strange, what would be marvelous, is
not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the
idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage,
vicious beast as man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great
a credit it does to man. As for me, I’ve long resolved not to think
whether man created God or God man. And I won’t go through all the
axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject, all derived from
European hypotheses; for what’s a hypothesis there, is an axiom with
the Russian boy, and not only with the boys but with their teachers
too, for our Russian professors are often just the same boys
themselves. And so I omit all the hypotheses. For what are we aiming at
now? I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature,
that is what manner of man I am, what I believe in, and for what I
hope, that’s it, isn’t it? And therefore I tell you that I accept God
simply. But you must note this: if God exists and if He really did
create the world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the
geometry of Euclid and the human mind with the conception of only three
dimensions in space. Yet there have been and still are geometricians
and philosophers, and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt
whether the whole universe, or to speak more widely the whole of being,
was only created in Euclid’s geometry; they even dare to dream that two
parallel lines, which according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may
meet somewhere in infinity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I
can’t understand even that, I can’t expect to understand about God. I
acknowledge humbly that I have no faculty for settling such questions,
I have a Euclidian earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that
are not of this world? And I advise you never to think about it either,
my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether He exists or not. All
such questions are utterly inappropriate for a mind created with an
idea of only three dimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and
what’s more, I accept His wisdom, His purpose—which are utterly beyond
our ken; I believe in the underlying order and the meaning of life; I
believe in the eternal harmony in which they say we shall one day be
blended. I believe in the Word to Which the universe is striving, and
Which Itself was ‘with God,’ and Which Itself is God and so on, and so
on, to infinity. There are all sorts of phrases for it. I seem to be on
the right path, don’t I? Yet would you believe it, in the final result
I don’t accept this world of God’s, and, although I know it exists, I
don’t accept it at all. It’s not that I don’t accept God, you must
understand, it’s the world created by Him I don’t and cannot accept.
Let me make it plain. I believe like a child that suffering will be
healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human
contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable
fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man,
that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something
so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for
the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes
of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not
only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with
men—but though all that may come to pass, I don’t accept it. I won’t
accept it. Even if parallel lines do meet and I see it myself, I shall
see it and say that they’ve met, but still I won’t accept it. That’s
what’s at the root of me, Alyosha; that’s my creed. I am in earnest in
what I say. I began our talk as stupidly as I could on purpose, but
I’ve led up to my confession, for that’s all you want. You didn’t want
to hear about God, but only to know what the brother you love lives by.
And so I’ve told you.”
Ivan concluded his long tirade with marked and unexpected feeling.
“And why did you begin ‘as stupidly as you could’?” asked Alyosha,
looking dreamily at him.
“To begin with, for the sake of being Russian. Russian conversations on
such subjects are always carried on inconceivably stupidly. And
secondly, the stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The
stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless,
while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave,
but stupidity is honest and straightforward. I’ve led the conversation
to my despair, and the more stupidly I have presented it, the better
for me.”
“You will explain why you don’t accept the world?” said Alyosha.
“To be sure I will, it’s not a secret, that’s what I’ve been leading up
to. Dear little brother, I don’t want to corrupt you or to turn you
from your stronghold, perhaps I want to be healed by you.” Ivan smiled
suddenly quite like a little gentle child. Alyosha had never seen such
a smile on his face before.
Chapter IV.
Rebellion
“I must make you one confession,” Ivan began. “I could never understand
how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my
mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance. I
once read somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a hungry,
frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his
arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and
loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from
‘self-laceration,’ from the self-laceration of falsity, for the sake of
the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For any one to
love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love
is gone.”
“Father Zossima has talked of that more than once,” observed Alyosha;
“he, too, said that the face of a man often hinders many people not
practiced in love, from loving him. But yet there’s a great deal of
love in mankind, and almost Christ-like love. I know that myself,
Ivan.”
“Well, I know nothing of it so far, and can’t understand it, and the
innumerable mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether
that’s due to men’s bad qualities or whether it’s inherent in their
nature. To my thinking, Christ-like love for men is a miracle
impossible on earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for
instance, suffer intensely. Another can never know how much I suffer,
because he is another and not I. And what’s more, a man is rarely ready
to admit another’s suffering (as though it were a distinction). Why
won’t he admit it, do you think? Because I smell unpleasant, because I
have a stupid face, because I once trod on his foot. Besides, there is
suffering and suffering; degrading, humiliating suffering such as
humbles me—hunger, for instance—my benefactor will perhaps allow me;
but when you come to higher suffering—for an idea, for instance—he will
very rarely admit that, perhaps because my face strikes him as not at
all what he fancies a man should have who suffers for an idea. And so
he deprives me instantly of his favor, and not at all from badness of
heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, ought never to show
themselves, but to ask for charity through the newspapers. One can love
one’s neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close
quarters it’s almost impossible. If it were as on the stage, in the
ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear silken rags and tattered
lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then one might like looking
at them. But even then we should not love them. But enough of that. I
simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to speak of the
suffering of mankind generally, but we had better confine ourselves to
the sufferings of the children. That reduces the scope of my argument
to a tenth of what it would be. Still we’d better keep to the children,
though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children can be
loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when they
are ugly (I fancy, though, children never are ugly). The second reason
why I won’t speak of grown-up people is that, besides being disgusting
and unworthy of love, they have a compensation—they’ve eaten the apple
and know good and evil, and they have become ‘like gods.’ They go on
eating it still. But the children haven’t eaten anything, and are so
far innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and
you will understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer
horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers’ sins, they must
be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple; but that
reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart
of man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another’s sins,
and especially such innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but
I am awfully fond of children, too. And observe, cruel people, the
violent, the rapacious, the Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of
children. Children while they are quite little—up to seven, for
instance—are so remote from grown-up people; they are different
creatures, as it were, of a different species. I knew a criminal in
prison who had, in the course of his career as a burglar, murdered
whole families, including several children. But when he was in prison,
he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time at his
window, watching the children playing in the prison yard. He trained
one little boy to come up to his window and made great friends with
him.... You don’t know why I am telling you all this, Alyosha? My head
aches and I am sad.”
“You speak with a strange air,” observed Alyosha uneasily, “as though
you were not quite yourself.”
“By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow,” Ivan went on, seeming
not to hear his brother’s words, “told me about the crimes committed by
Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a