The Brothers Karamazov полностью

He listened and looked kindly at me: “That is all extremely interesting,” he said. “I shall come and see you again and again.” And after that he took to visiting me almost every evening. And we should have become very close friends if he had spoken to me about himself as well. But he said hardly a word about himself, but only kept asking me about myself. In spite of that, I came to love him very much, and trusted him completely with all my feelings, for I thought: why do I need his secrets, when I can see even without that that he is a righteous man? Besides, he is such a serious man, and we are not the same age, yet he keeps coming to me and does not disdain my youth. And I learned much that was useful from him, for he was a man of lofty mind. “That life is paradise,” he said to me suddenly, “I have been thinking about for a long time”—and suddenly added, “that is all I think about.” He looked at me, smiling. “I am convinced of it,” he said, “more than you are; you shall find out why later on.” I listened and thought to myself: “Surely he wants to reveal something to me.” “Paradise,” he said, “is hidden in each one of us, it is concealed within me, too, right now, and if I wish, it will come for me in reality, tomorrow even, and for the rest of my life.” I looked at him: he was speaking with tenderness and looking at me mysteriously, as if questioning me. “And,” he went on, “as for each man being guilty before all and for all, besides his own sins, your reasoning about that is quite correct, and it is surprising that you could suddenly embrace this thought so fully. And indeed it is true that when people understand this thought, the Kingdom of Heaven will come to them, no longer in a dream but in reality.” “But when will this come true?” I exclaimed to him ruefully. “And will it ever come true? Is it not just a dream?” “Ah,” he said, “now you do not believe it, you preach it and do not believe it yourself. Know, then, that this dream, as you call it, will undoubtedly come true, believe it, though not now, for every action has its law. This is a matter of the soul, a psychological matter. In order to make the world over anew, people themselves must turn onto a different path psychically. Until one has indeed become the brother of all, there will be no brotherhood. No science or self-interest will ever enable people to share their property and their rights among themselves without offense. Each will always think his share too small, and they will keep murmuring, they will envy and destroy one another. You ask when it will come true. It will come true, but first the period of human isolation must conclude.” “What isolation?” I asked him. “That which is now reigning everywhere, especially in our age, but it is not all concluded yet, its term has not come. For everyone now strives most of all to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation. For all men in our age are separated into units, each seeks seclusion in his own hole, each withdraws from the others, hides himself, and hides what he has, and ends by pushing himself away from people and pushing people away from himself. He accumulates wealth in solitude, thinking: how strong, how secure I am now; and does not see, madman as he is, that the more he accumulates, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence. For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people’s help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish. Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity. But there must needs come a term to this horrible isolation, and everyone will all at once realize how unnaturally they have separated themselves one from another. Such will be the spirit of the time, and they will be astonished that they sat in darkness for so long, and did not see the light. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the heavens^[205] ... But until then we must keep hold of the banner, and every once in a while, if only individually, a man must suddenly set an example, and draw the soul from its isolation for an act of brotherly communion, though it be with the rank of holy fool. So that the great thought does not die ...”