Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (389 page)

“Do you know I’m awfully glad that your birthday is to-day,” cried Ippolit.

“Why?”

“You’ll see; make haste and sit down. In the first place, because your. . . people have all come here to-night. I’d reckoned there’d be a lot of people; for the first time in my life I’ve been right in my reckoning! It’s a pity I didn’t know it was your birthday. I’d have brought you a present. . . . Ha-ha! But perhaps I have brought you a present! Is it long till daylight?”

“It’s not two hours now to sunrise,” observed Ptitsyn, looking at his watch.

“What need of daylight, when one can read out of doors without it?” remarked some one.

“Because I want to see the sun rise. Can we drink to the health of the sun, prince? What do you think?”

Ippolit spoke abruptly, addressing the whole company unceremoniously, as though he were giving orders, but he was apparently unconscious of doing so himself.

“Let’s drink to it, if you like. Only you ought to keep quieter, Ippolit, oughtn’t you?”

“You’re always for sleep; you might be my nurse, prince! As soon as the sun shows itself and ‘resounds’ in the sky (who was it wrote the verse, ‘the sun resounded in the sky? There’s no sense in it, but it’s good) then we’ll go to bed. Lebedyev, the sun’s the spring of life, isn’t it? What’s the meaning of ‘springs of life’ in the Apocalypse? Have you heard of the ‘star that is called Wormwood,’ prince?”

“I’ve heard that Lebedyev identifies the ‘star that is called Wormwood’ with the network of railways spread over Europe.”

“No, excuse me, that won’t do!” cried Lebedyev, leaping up and waving his arms, as though he were trying to stop the general laughter that followed. “Excuse me! With these gentlemen ... all these gentlemen!” he turned suddenly to Myshkin, “I tell you on certain points, it’s simply this....”

And he rapped the table twice without ceremony, which increased the general mirth.

Though Lebedyev was in his usual “evening” condition, he was on this occasion over-excited and irritated by the long and learned discussion that had taken place, and on such occasions he treated his opponents with undisguised and unbounded contempt.

“That’s not right! Half an hour ago, prince, we made a compact not to interrupt, not to laugh while anyone was speaking, but to leave him free to express himself; and then let the atheists answer him, if they like. We chose the general as president. For else, anyone can be shouted down in a lofty idea, a profound idea....”

“But speak, speak! Nobody is shouting you down,” cried voices.

“Talk, but don’t talk nonsense.”

“What is ‘the star that is called Wormwood’—” asked somebody.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” answered General Ivolgin, turning with an important air to his former seat as president.

“I’m wonderfully fond of all these arguments and disputations, prince — learned ones, of course,” Keller was muttering meantime, positively fidgeting on his chair with impatience and excitement. “Learned and political,” he added, suddenly and unexpectedly addressing Yevgeny Pavlovitch, who was sitting almost next to him. “Do you know, I’m awfully fond of reading in the papers about the English Parliament. I don’t mean what they discuss (I’m not a politician, you know), but I like the way they speak to one another, and behave like politicians, so to speak: ‘the noble viscount sitting opposite,”the noble earl who is upholding my view,”my honourable opponent who has amazed Europe by his proposal’ — all those expressions, all this parliamentarism of a free people, that’s what’s so fascinating to people like us. I’m enchanted, prince. I’ve always been an artist at the bottom of my soul; I swear I have, Yevgeny Pavlovitch.”

“Why, then,” cried Ganya hotly, in another corner, “it would follow from what you say that railways are a curse, that they are the ruin of mankind, that they are a plaque that has fallen upon the earth to pollute the ‘springs of life’?”

Gavril Ardalionovitch was in a particularly excited state that evening, and in gay, almost triumphant spirits, so Myshkin fancied. He was joking, of course, with Lebedyev, egging him on; but soon he got hot himself.

“Not railways, no,” retorted Lebedyev, who was at the same time losing his temper and enjoying himself tremendously. “The railways alone won’t pollute the ‘springs of life,’ but the whole thing is accursed; the whole tendency of the last few centuries in its general, scientific and materialistic entirety, is perhaps really accursed.”

“Certainly accursed, or only perhaps? It’s important to know that, you know,” queried “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch.

“Accursed, accursed, most certainly accursed!” Lebedyev maintained with heat.

“Don’t be in a hurry, Lebedyev, you’re much milder in the morning,” put in Ptitsyn with a smile.

“But in the evening more open! In the evening more hearty and open!” Lebedyev turned to him warmly. “More open-hearted and definite, more honest and honourable; and although I am exposing my weak side to you, no matter. I challenge you all now, all you atheists. With what will you save the world, and where have you found a normal line of progress for it, you men of science, of industry, of cooperation, of labour-wage, and all the rest of it? With what? With credit? What’s credit? Where will credit take you?”

“Ach! you are inquisitive!” observed Yevgeny Pavlovitch.

“Well, my opinion is that anyone who is not interested in such questions is a fashionable ‘chenapan.’”

“But at least it leads to general solidarity and a balance of interests,” observed Ptitsyn.

“That’s all! That’s all! Without recognizing any moral basis except the satisfaction of individual egoism and material necessity! Universal peace, universal happiness, from necessity! Do I understand you right, my dear sir, may I venture to ask?”

“But the universal necessity of living, eating, and drinking, and a complete, scientific in fact, conviction that these necessities are not satisfied without association and solidarity of interests is, I believe, a sufficiently powerful idea to serve as a basis and ‘spring of life’ for future ages of humanity,” observed Ganya, who was excited in earnest.

“The necessity of eating and drinking, that is merely the instinct of self-preservation....”

“But isn’t that instinct of self-preservation a sufficient matter? Why, the instinct of self-preservation is the normal law of humanity....”

“Who told you that?” cried Yevgeny Pavlovitch suddenly. “It’s a law, that’s true; but it’s no more normal than the law of destruction, or even self-destruction. Is self-preservation the whole normal law of mankind?”

“A-ha!” cried Ippolit, turning quickly to Yevgeny Pavlovitch and scrutinising him with wild curiosity; but seeing that he was laughing, he too laughed, nudged Kolya who was standing beside him, and asked him again what o’clock it was, and even took hold of Kolya’s silver watch himself and looked eagerly at the hands. Then, as though forgetting everything, he stretched himself on the sofa, placed his arms behind his head, and stared at the ceiling; half a minute later, he sat down aqain at the table,

drawing himself up, and listening to the babble of Lebedyev, who was intensely excited.

“An artful and ironical idea, insidious as a larding-needle!” Lebedyev greedily caught up Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s paradox; “an idea expressed with the object of provoking opponents to battle — but a true idea! For you, a worldly scoffer and cavalry officer (though not without brains), are not yourself aware how true and profound your idea is. “Vfes, sir, the law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in humanity! The devil has equal dominion over humanity till the limit of time which we know not. You laugh? You don’t believe in the devil? Disbelief in the devil is a French idea, a frivolous idea. Do you know who the devil is? Do you know his name? Without even knowing his name, you laugh at the form of him, following Voltaire’s example, at his hoofs, at his tail, at his horns, which you have invented; for the evil spirit is a mighty menacing spirit, but he has not the hoofs and horns you’ve invented for him. But he’s not the point now.”

“How do you know that he’s not the point now?” cried Ippolit suddenly, and laughed as though in hysterics.

“A shrewd and insinuating thought!” Lebedyev approved. “But, again, that’s not the point. Our question is whether the ‘springs of life’ have not grown weaker with the increase of...”

“Railways?” cried Kolya.

“Not railway communication, young but impetuous youth, but all that tendency of which railways may serve, so to speak, as the artistic pictorial expression. They hurry with noise, clamour and haste, for the happiness of humanity, they tell us. ‘Mankind has grown too noisy and commercial; there is little spiritual peace,’ one secluded thinker has complained. ‘So be it; but the rumble of the waggons that bring bread to starving humanity is better, maybe, than spiritual peace,’ another thinker, who is always moving among his fellows, answers him triumphantly, and walks away from him conceitedly. But, vile as I am, I don’t believe in the waggons that bring bread to humanity. For the waggons that bring bread to humanity, without any moral basis for conduct, may coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity from enjoying what is brought; so it has been already....”

“The waggons can coldly exclude?” some one repeated.

“And so it has been already,” repeated Lebedyev, not deigning to notice the question. “We’ve already had Malthus, the friend of humanity. But the friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is the devourer of humanity, to say nothing of his conceit; for, wound the vanity of any one of these numerous friends of humanity, and he’s ready to set fire to the world out of petty revenge — like all the rest of us, though, in that, to be fair; like myself, vilest of all, for I might well be the first to bring the fuel and run away myself. But that’s not the point again!”

“What is it, then?”

“You’re boring us.”

“The points lie in what follows, in an anecdote of the past; for I absolutely must tell you a story of ancient times. In our times, and in our country, which I trust you love, gentlemen, as I do, for I am ready to shed the last drop of my blood for...”

“Get on, get on!”

“In our country, as well as in the rest of Europe, widespread and terrible famines visit humanity, as far as they can be reckoned, and as far as I can remember, not oftener now than four times a century, in other words, every twenty-five years. I won’t dispute the exact number, but they are comparatively rare.”

“Compared with what?”

“Compared with the twelfth century, or those near it, before or after. For then, as they write and as writers assert, widespread famines came usually every two years, or at least every three years, so that in such a position of affairs men even had recourse to cannibalism, though they kept it secret. One of these cannibals announced, without being forced to do so, as he was approaching old age, that in the course of his long and needy life he had killed and eaten by himself in dead secret sixty monks and a few infant laymen, a matter of six, but not more. That is extraordinarily few compared with the immense mass of ecclesiastics he had consumed. Grown-up laymen, it appeared, he had never approached with that object.”

“That can’t be true!” cried the president himself, the general, in an almost resentful voice. “I often reason and dispute with him, gentlemen, always about such thinqs; but usually he brinqs forward such absurd stories, that it makes your ears ache, without a shred of probability.”

“General, remember the siege of Kars! And let me tell you, gentlemen, that my story is the unvarnished truth. I will only observe that every reality, even though it has its unalterable laws, is almost always difficult to believe and improbable, and sometimes, indeed, the more real it is the more improbable it is.”

“But could he eat sixty monks?” they asked, laughing round him.

“He didn’t eat them all at once, that’s evident. But if he consumed them in the course of fifteen or twenty years, it is perfectly comprehensible and natural....”

“Natural?”

“Yes, natural,” Lebedyev repeated, with pedantic persistence. “Besides, a Catholic monk is, from his very nature, easily led and inquisitive, and it wouldn’t be hard to lure him into the forest, or to some hidden place, and there to deal with him as aforesaid. But I don’t deny that the number of persons devoured seems excessive to the point of greediness.”

“It may be true, gentlemen,” observed Myshkin suddenly.

Till then he had listened in silence to the disputants and had taken no part in the conversation; he had often joined heartily in the general outbursts of laughter. He was evidently delighted that they were so gay and so noisy; even that they were drinking so much. He might perhaps not have uttered a word the whole evening, but suddenly he seemed moved to speak. He spoke with marked gravity, so that every one turned to him at once with interest.

“What I mean, gentlemen, is, that famines used to be frequent. I have heard of that, though I know little history. But I think they must have been. When I was among the Swiss mountains I was surprised at the ruins of feudal castles, built on the mountain slopes or precipitous rocks at least half a mile high (which means some miles of mountain path). You know what a castle is: a perfect mountain of stones. They must have meant an awful, incredible labour. And, of course, they were all built by the poor people, the vassals. Besides which, they had to pay all the taxes and support the priesthood. How could they provide for themselves and till the land? They must have been few in number at that time; they died off terribly from famine, and there may have been literally nothing to eat. I’ve sometimes wondered, indeed, how it was that the people didn’t become extinct altogether; how it was that nothing happened to them, and how they managed to endure it and survive. No doubt Lebedyev is right in saying that there were cannibals, and perhaps many of them; only I don’t understand why he brought monks into the story, and what he means by that.”

“Probably because in the twelfth century it was only the monks who were fit to eat, because they were the only people that were fat,” observed Gavril Ardalionovitch.