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Conscience without God is a horror, it may lose its way to the point of utter immorality
In the majority of instances human beings, even the evil-doers among them, are far more naïve and straightforward than we suppose. And that includes ourselves.
I have, incidentally, already said of him that, having lost his mother when he was in his fourth year, he remembered her all the rest of his life, her face, her caresses, ‘every bit as though she stood before me in real life’. Images of this kind may be recalled (and this is no secret) from a yet earlier age, as far back as the age of two, but in such a manner that they emerge all one’s life only as bright points in the dark, like a tiny corner torn from an enormous picture which has all faded and disappeared, apart from that one little corner.
I’d have deduced nothing if today I hadn’t suddenly seen your brother Dmitry Fyodorovich, instantly and suddenly, exactly for what he is. It was as though in one single feature of his character I instantaneously caught the whole man. These very honest but passionate men have a line in them one should not try to cross. Otherwise – otherwise, he may stick a knife in your papa.
His entire theory is a piece of vileness! Mankind will find within it the strength to live for virtue, even if it doesn’t believe in the immortality of the soul! It will find it in a love of liberty, equality and fraternity …’
Take this fetid inn, for example, this is where they gather, huddled in corners. They have never seen each other in their lives before, and when they get out of the inn they’ll never see each other again for forty years, well, but what of it, what are they going to talk about now that they’ve snatched a minute or two in this inn of theirs?
About the questions of the universe, what else? Is there a God, is there such a thing as immortality? And as for those who don’t believe in God, well, they begin to talk of socialism and anarchism, of the reorganization of the whole of mankind according to a new regime, so that in the end it’s the same old devil that pokes his head out, the same old questions, only seen from the other end. And what we see these days in our country is a large, large number of the most uniquely talented Russian boys doing nothing but talk of the eternal questions. Don’t you think so?’
I would merely ask the reader not to be too hasty in laughing at my youth’s pure heart.
Though Mitya was both ecstatic and incoherent, he was also somehow sad. It was as though some insuperable and heavy concern were standing behind him.
‘He’ll remember it longer,’ Mitya observed. ‘It’s a woman I love, a woman! What is woman? The empress of the earth! Do you remember Hamlet? I feel sad, sad, Pyotr Ilyich. “I am so sad, I am so sad, Horatio … Alas, poor Yorick!”
Perhaps I am Yorick, too. Yes, just now I am Yorick, and shall be the skull later.’
With sorrow, Alyosha saw how suddenly its expression had altered from one of meekness and quiet cheerfulness to one of sullen malice.
He laughed, but he wept, too … for the Russian very often laughs when he ought to weep.
I have a weakness for proceeding directly to the point at issue, without reserving effects or saving up impressions for later. This possibly demonstrates a lack of foresight on my part, but is on the other hand sincere.
But psychology, gentlemen, though it is a deep thing, none the less resembles a stick with two ends’
as psychology is a thing with two ends, then permit me to supply the other end, and let us see if the result be otherwise.
Nay, a sense of honour does indeed exist within him, even though it be an irregular one, even though it be very frequently a mistaken one, but it does exist, exists to the point of passion, and he has proved this.
