The Brothers Karamazov

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

And so, I accept God, not only willingly, but, not least, in all His wisdom and His purpose, which are completely unknown to us; I believe in order, in the meaning of life, I believe in eternal harmony, in which we shall all merge, I believe in the Word,7 toward which the universe is striving, and which itself ‘was with God,’ and which is God, and so on and so forth. Many words have been written on this subject. It seems that I’m on a good path, right? Well, just imagine, in the final result I don’t accept God’s world, and though I know that it exists, I don’t accept it at all. It’s not God that I don’t accept, you must understand, but the world created by Him; I don’t accept God’s world and can’t agree to accept it. I make the following proviso: I’m convinced, like a child, that suffering will be healed and alleviated; that all the offensive comicality of human contradictions will disappear, like a pitiful mirage, like the vile ruminations of an infinitesimally small, feeble, Euclidean mind, which, in the last analysis, at world’s end, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so valuable will transpire that it will be sufficient for all hearts, for the comforting of all indignations, for the expiation of people’s wicked deeds, all the blood shed by them, it’ll be possible not only to forgive, but even to justify everything that’s happened to people—may all this come to pass; but I don’t accept it and don’t wish to accept it! Even if parallel lines meet and I myself get...