How many souls have had to be ruined and how many honourable reputations destroyed for the sake of that one righteous man, Job, over whom they made such a fool of me in old days!
Yes, till the secret is revealed, there are two sorts of truths for me- one, their truth, yonder, which I know nothing about so far, and the other my own.
And there's no knowing which will turn out the better.... Are you asleep?"
"I might well be," Ivan groaned angrily. "All my stupid ideas- outgrown, thrashed out long ago, and flung aside like a dead carcass you present to me as something new!"
"There's no pleasing you!
And I thought I should fascinate you by my literary style. That hosannah in the skies really wasn't bad, was it?
And then that ironical tone a la Heine, eh?"
"No, I was never such a flunkey!
How then could my soul beget a flunkey like you?"
"My dear fellow, I know a most charming and attractive young Russian gentleman, a young thinker and a great lover of literature and art, the author of a promising poem entitled The Grand Inquisitor. I was only thinking of him!"
"I forbid you to speak of The Grand Inquisitor," cried Ivan, crimson with shame.
"And the Geological Cataclysm.
Do you remember?
That was a poem, now!"
"Hold your tongue, or I'll kill you!"
"You'll kill me?
No, excuse me, I will speak.
I came to treat myself to that pleasure.
Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering with eagerness for life!
'There are new men,' you decided last spring, when you were meaning to come here, 'they propose to destroy everything and begin with cannibalism.
Stupid fellows! they didn't ask my advice!
I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the idea of God in man, that's how we have to set to work.
It's that, that we must begin with. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding!
As soon as men have all of them denied God- and I believe that period, analogous with geological periods, will come to pass- the old conception of the universe will fall of itself without cannibalism, and, what's more, the old morality, and everything will begin anew.
Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world.
Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man-god will appear.
From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven.
Everyone will know that he is mortal and will accept death proudly and serenely like a god.
His pride will teach him that it's useless for him to repine at life's being a moment, and he will love his brother without need of reward.
Love will be sufficient only for a moment of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave'... and so on and so on in the same style.
Charming!"
Ivan sat with his eyes on the floor, and his hands pressed to his ears, but he began trembling all over.
The voice continued.
"The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible that such a period will ever come?
If it does, everything is determined and humanity is settled for ever.
But as, owing to man's inveterate stupidity, this cannot come about for at least a thousand years, everyone who recognises the truth even now may legitimately order his life as he pleases, on the new principles.
In that sense, 'all things are lawful' for him.
What's more, even if this period never comes to pass, since there is anyway no God and no immortality, the new man may well become the man-god, even if he is the only one in the whole world, and promoted to his new position, he may lightheartedly overstep all the barriers of the old morality of the old slaveman, if necessary.
There is no law for God.
Where God stands, the place is holy.
Where I stand will be at once the foremost place... 'all things are lawful' and that's the end of it!
That's all very charming; but if you want to swindle why do you want a moral sanction for doing it?
But that's our modern Russian all over. He can't bring himself to swindle without a moral sanction. He is so in love with truth-"
The visitor talked, obviously carried away by his own eloquence, speaking louder and louder and looking ironically at his host. But he did not succeed in finishing; Ivan suddenly snatched a glass from the table and flung it at the orator.
"Ah, mais c'est bete enfin,"* cried the latter, jumping up from the sofa and shaking the drops of tea off himself. "He remembers Luther's inkstand!
He takes me for a dream and throws glasses at a dream!
It's like a woman!
I suspected you were only pretending to stop up your ears." * But after all, that's stupid.
A loud, persistent knocking was suddenly heard at the window.
Ivan jumped up from the sofa.