The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky (the reader ebook txt) 📖

but then, in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man cannot live nor God exist, for God gives joy: it’s His privilege⁠—a grand one. Ah, man should be dissolved in prayer! What should I be underground there without God? Rakitin’s laughing! If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. One cannot exist in prison without God; it’s even more impossible than out of prison. And then we men underground will sing from the bowels of the earth a glorious hymn to God, with Whom is joy. Hail to God and His joy! I love Him!”

Mitya was almost gasping for breath as he uttered his wild speech. He turned pale, his lips quivered, and tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Yes, life is full, there is life even underground,” he began again. “You wouldn’t believe, Alexey, how I want to live now, what a thirst for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these peeling walls. Rakitin doesn’t understand that; all he cares about is building a house and letting flats. But I’ve been longing for you. And what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it were beyond reckoning. I am not afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before. Do you know, perhaps I won’t answer at the trial at all.⁠ ⁠… And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies⁠—I exist. I’m tormented on the rack⁠—but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar⁠—I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all these philosophies are the death of me. Damn them! Brother Ivan⁠—”

“What of brother Ivan?” interrupted Alyosha, but Mitya did not hear.

“You see, I never had any of these doubts before, but it was all hidden away in me. It was perhaps just because ideas I did not understand were surging up in me, that I used to drink and fight and rage. It was to stifle them in myself, to still them, to smother them. Ivan is not Rakitin, there is an idea in him. Ivan is a sphinx and is silent; he is always silent. It’s God that’s worrying me. That’s the only thing that’s worrying me. What if He doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin’s right⁠—that it’s an idea made up by men? Then if He doesn’t exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That’s the question. I always come back to that. For whom is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity without God. Well, only a sniveling idiot can maintain that. I can’t understand it. Life’s easy for Rakitin. ‘You’d better think about the extension of civic rights, or even of keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.’ I answered him, ‘Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat, if it suits you, and make a rouble on every copeck.’ He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer me that, Alexey. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it’s a relative thing. Or isn’t it? Is it not relative? A treacherous question! You won’t laugh if I tell you it’s kept me awake two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity! Ivan has no God. He has an idea. It’s beyond me. But he is silent. I believe he is a freemason. I asked him, but he is silent. I wanted to drink from the springs of his soul⁠—he was silent. But once he did drop a word.”

“What did he say?” Alyosha took it up quickly.

“I said to him, ‘Then everything is lawful, if it is so?’ He frowned. ‘Fyodor Pavlovitch, our papa,’ he said, ‘was a pig, but his ideas were right enough.’ That was what he dropped. That was all he said. That was going one better than Rakitin.”

“Yes,” Alyosha assented bitterly. “When was he with you?”

“Of that later; now I must speak of something else. I have said nothing about Ivan to you before. I put it off to the last. When my business here is over and the verdict has been given, then I’ll tell you something. I’ll tell you everything. We’ve something tremendous on hand.⁠ ⁠… And you shall be my judge in it. But don’t begin about that now; be silent. You talk of tomorrow, of the trial; but, would you believe it, I know nothing about it.”

“Have you talked to the counsel?”

“What’s the use of the counsel? I told him all about it. He’s a soft, city-bred rogue⁠—a Bernard! But he doesn’t believe me⁠—not a bit of it. Only imagine, he believes I did it. I see it. ‘In that case,’ I asked him, ‘why have you come to defend me?’ Hang them all! They’ve got a doctor down, too, want to prove I’m mad. I won’t have that! Katerina Ivanovna wants to do her ‘duty’ to the end, whatever the strain!” Mitya smiled bitterly. “The cat! Hardhearted creature! She knows that I said of her at Mokroe that she was a woman of ‘great wrath.’ They repeated it. Yes, the facts against me have grown numerous as the sands of the sea. Grigory sticks to his point. Grigory’s honest, but a fool. Many people are honest because they are fools: that’s Rakitin’s idea. Grigory’s my enemy. And there are some people who are better