The Brothers Karamazov
taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil.
Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and
beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep
the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the
reward of heaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in the
other world, it certainly would not be for such as they. It is
prophesied that Thou wilt come again in victory, Thou wilt come with
Thy chosen, the proud and strong, but we will say that they have only
saved themselves, but we have saved all. We are told that the harlot
who sits upon the beast, and holds in her hands the _mystery_, shall be
put to shame, that the weak will rise up again, and will rend her royal
purple and will strip naked her loathsome body. But then I will stand
up and point out to Thee the thousand millions of happy children who
have known no sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us for their
happiness will stand up before Thee and say: “Judge us if Thou canst
and darest.” Know that I fear Thee not. Know that I too have been in
the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and locusts, I too prized the
freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I too was striving to
stand among Thy elect, among the strong and powerful, thirsting “to
make up the number.” But I awakened and would not serve madness. I
turned back and joined the ranks of those _who have corrected Thy
work_. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness
of the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion
will be built up. I repeat, to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient
flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders
about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For
if any one has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To-morrow I shall
burn Thee. _Dixi._’”
Ivan stopped. He was carried away as he talked, and spoke with
excitement; when he had finished, he suddenly smiled.
Alyosha had listened in silence; towards the end he was greatly moved
and seemed several times on the point of interrupting, but restrained
himself. Now his words came with a rush.
“But ... that’s absurd!” he cried, flushing. “Your poem is in praise of
Jesus, not in blame of Him—as you meant it to be. And who will believe
you about freedom? Is that the way to understand it? That’s not the
idea of it in the Orthodox Church.... That’s Rome, and not even the
whole of Rome, it’s false—those are the worst of the Catholics, the
Inquisitors, the Jesuits!... And there could not be such a fantastic
creature as your Inquisitor. What are these sins of mankind they take
on themselves? Who are these keepers of the mystery who have taken some
curse upon themselves for the happiness of mankind? When have they been
seen? We know the Jesuits, they are spoken ill of, but surely they are
not what you describe? They are not that at all, not at all.... They
are simply the Romish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in
the future, with the Pontiff of Rome for Emperor ... that’s their
ideal, but there’s no sort of mystery or lofty melancholy about it....
It’s simple lust of power, of filthy earthly gain, of
domination—something like a universal serfdom with them as
masters—that’s all they stand for. They don’t even believe in God
perhaps. Your suffering Inquisitor is a mere fantasy.”
“Stay, stay,” laughed Ivan, “how hot you are! A fantasy you say, let it
be so! Of course it’s a fantasy. But allow me to say: do you really
think that the Roman Catholic movement of the last centuries is
actually nothing but the lust of power, of filthy earthly gain? Is that
Father Païssy’s teaching?”
“No, no, on the contrary, Father Païssy did once say something rather
the same as you ... but of course it’s not the same, not a bit the
same,” Alyosha hastily corrected himself.
“A precious admission, in spite of your ‘not a bit the same.’ I ask you
why your Jesuits and Inquisitors have united simply for vile material
gain? Why can there not be among them one martyr oppressed by great
sorrow and loving humanity? You see, only suppose that there was one
such man among all those who desire nothing but filthy material gain—if
there’s only one like my old Inquisitor, who had himself eaten roots in
the desert and made frenzied efforts to subdue his flesh to make
himself free and perfect. But yet all his life he loved humanity, and
suddenly his eyes were opened, and he saw that it is no great moral
blessedness to attain perfection and freedom, if at the same time one
gains the conviction that millions of God’s creatures have been created
as a mockery, that they will never be capable of using their freedom,
that these poor rebels can never turn into giants to complete the
tower, that it was not for such geese that the great idealist dreamt
his dream of harmony. Seeing all that he turned back and joined—the
clever people. Surely that could have happened?”
“Joined whom, what clever people?” cried Alyosha, completely carried
away. “They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and
secrets.... Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that’s all their secret. Your
Inquisitor does not believe in God, that’s his secret!”
“What if it is so! At last you have guessed it. It’s perfectly true,
it’s true that that’s the whole secret, but isn’t that suffering, at
least for a man like that, who has wasted his whole life in the desert
and yet could not shake off his incurable love of humanity? In his old
age he reached the clear conviction that nothing but the advice of the
great dread spirit could build up any tolerable sort of life for the
feeble, unruly, ‘incomplete, empirical creatures created in jest.’ And
so, convinced of this, he sees that he must follow the counsel of the
wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and therefore
accept lying and deception, and lead men consciously to death and
destruction, and yet deceive them all the way so that they may not
notice where they are being led, that the poor blind creatures may at
least on the way think themselves happy. And note, the deception is in
the name of Him in Whose ideal the old man had so fervently believed
all his life long. Is not that tragic? And if only one such stood at
the head of the whole army ‘filled with the lust of power only for the
sake of filthy gain’—would not one such be enough to make a tragedy?
More than that, one such standing at the head is enough to create the
actual leading idea of the Roman Church with all its armies and
Jesuits, its highest idea. I tell you frankly that I firmly believe
that there has always been such a man among those who stood at the head
of the movement. Who knows, there may have been some such even among
the Roman Popes. Who knows, perhaps the spirit of that accursed old man
who loves mankind so obstinately in his own way, is to be found even
now in a whole multitude of such old men, existing not by chance but by
agreement, as a secret league formed long ago for the guarding of the
mystery, to guard it from the weak and the unhappy, so as to make them
happy. No doubt it is so, and so it must be indeed. I fancy that even
among the Masons there’s something of the same mystery at the bottom,
and that that’s why the Catholics so detest the Masons as their rivals
breaking up the unity of the idea, while it is so essential that there
should be one flock and one shepherd.... But from the way I defend my
idea I might be an author impatient of your criticism. Enough of it.”
“You are perhaps a Mason yourself!” broke suddenly from Alyosha. “You
don’t believe in God,” he added, speaking this time very sorrowfully.
He fancied besides that his brother was looking at him ironically. “How
does your poem end?” he asked, suddenly looking down. “Or was it the
end?”
“I meant to end it like this. When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he
waited some time for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed
down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the
time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply.
The old man longed for Him to say something, however bitter and
terrible. But He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly
kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all His answer. The old
man shuddered. His lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said
to Him: ‘Go, and come no more ... come not at all, never, never!’ And
he let Him out into the dark alleys of the town. The Prisoner went
away.”
“And the old man?”
“The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”
“And you with him, you too?” cried Alyosha, mournfully.
Ivan laughed.
“Why, it’s all nonsense, Alyosha. It’s only a senseless poem of a
senseless student, who could never write two lines of verse. Why do you
take it so seriously? Surely you don’t suppose I am going straight off
to the Jesuits, to join the men who are correcting His work? Good Lord,
it’s no business of mine. I told you, all I want is to live on to
thirty, and then ... dash the cup to the ground!”
“But the little sticky leaves, and the precious tombs, and the blue
sky, and the woman you love! How will you live, how will you love
them?” Alyosha cried sorrowfully. “With such a hell in your heart and
your head, how can you? No, that’s just what you are going away for, to
join them ... if not, you will kill yourself, you can’t endure it!”
“There is a strength to endure everything,” Ivan said with a cold
smile.
“What strength?”
“The strength of the Karamazovs—the strength of the Karamazov
baseness.”
“To sink into debauchery, to stifle your soul with corruption, yes?”
“Possibly even that ... only perhaps till I am thirty I shall escape
it, and then—”
“How will you escape it? By what will you escape it? That’s impossible
with your ideas.”
“In the Karamazov way, again.”
“‘Everything is lawful,’ you mean? Everything is lawful, is that it?”
Ivan scowled, and all at once turned strangely pale.
“Ah, you’ve caught up yesterday’s phrase, which so offended Miüsov—and
which Dmitri pounced upon so naïvely, and paraphrased!” he smiled
queerly. “Yes, if you like, ‘everything is lawful’ since the word has
been said. I won’t deny it. And Mitya’s version isn’t bad.”
Alyosha looked at him in silence.
“I thought that going away from here I have you at least,” Ivan said
suddenly, with unexpected feeling; “but now I see that there is no
place for me even in your heart, my dear hermit. The formula, ‘all is
lawful,’ I won’t renounce—will you renounce me for that, yes?”
Alyosha got up, went to him and softly kissed him on the lips.
“That’s plagiarism,” cried Ivan, highly delighted. “You stole that from
my poem. Thank you though. Get up, Alyosha, it’s time we were going,
both of us.”
They went out, but stopped when they reached the entrance of the
restaurant.
“Listen, Alyosha,” Ivan began in a resolute voice, “if I am really able
to care for the sticky little leaves I shall only love them,
remembering you. It’s enough for me that you are somewhere here, and I
shan’t lose my desire for life yet. Is that enough for you? Take it as
a declaration of love if you like. And now you go to the right and I to
the left. And it’s enough, do you hear, enough. I mean even if I don’t
go away to-morrow (I think I certainly shall go) and we meet again,
don’t say a word more on these subjects. I beg that particularly. And
about Dmitri too, I ask you specially, never speak to me again,” he
added, with sudden irritation; “it’s all exhausted, it has all been
said over and over again, hasn’t it? And I’ll make you one promise in
return for it. When at thirty, I want to ‘dash the cup to the ground,’
wherever I may be I’ll come to have one more talk with you, even though