“I don’t quite understand what this is, Ivan,” Alyosha, who all the while had been listening silently, smiled. “Is it boundless fantasy, or some mistake on the old man’s part, some impossible
“Assume it’s the latter, if you like,” Ivan laughed, “if you’re so spoiled by modern realism and can’t stand anything fantastic—if you want it to be qui
“And the prisoner is silent, too? Just looks at him without saying a word?”
“But that must be so in any case,” Ivan laughed again. “The old man himself points out to him that he has no right to add anything to what has already been said once. That, if you like, is the most basic feature of Roman Catholicism, in my opinion at least: ‘Everything,’ they say, ‘has been handed over by you to the pope, therefore everything now belongs to the pope, and you may as well not come at all now, or at least don’t interfere with us for the time being.’ They not only speak this way, they also write this way, at least the Jesuits do. I’ve read it in their theologians myself. ‘Have you the right to proclaim to us even one of the mysteries of that world from which you have come?’ my old man asks him, and answers the question himself: ‘No, you have not, so as not to add to what has already been said once, and so as not to deprive people of freedom, for which you stood so firmly when you were on earth. Anything you proclaim anew will encroach upon the freedom of men’s faith, for it will come as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was the dearest of all things to you, even then, one and a half thousand years ago. Was it not you who so often said then: “I want to make you free”?[164] But now you have seen these “free” men,’ the old man suddenly adds with a pensive smile. ‘Yes, this work has cost us dearly,’ he goes on, looking sternly at him, ‘but we have finally finished this work in your name. For fifteen hundred years we have been at pains over this freedom, but now it is finished, and well finished. You do not believe that it is well finished? You look at me meekly and do not deign even to be indignant with me. Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet. It is our doing, but is it what you wanted? This sort of freedom?’”
“Again I don’t understand,” Alyosha interrupted. “Is he being ironic? Is he laughing?”
“Not in the least. He precisely lays it to his and his colleagues’ credit that they have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy. ‘For only now’ (he is referring, of course, to the Inquisition) ‘has it become possible to think for the first time about human happiness. Man was made a rebel; can rebels be happy? You were warned,’ he says to him, ‘you had no lack of warnings and indications, but you did not heed the warnings, you rejected the only way of arranging for human happiness, but fortunately, on your departure, you handed the work over to us. You promised, you established with your word, you gave us the right to bind and loose,[165] and surely you cannot even think of taking this right away from us now. Why, then, have you come to interfere with us?’”
“What does it mean, that he had no lack of warnings and indications?” Alyosha asked.
“You see, that is the main thing that the old man needs to speak about.
