his corner, and moved nearer to the table, with a spiteful smile on his face.
“You are exaggerating very much,” Ivan Petrovitch drawled with an air of being bored, and even rather ashamed of something. “There are representatives of that Church who are virtuous and worthy of all respect….”
“I have said nothing about individual representatives of the Church. I was speaking of Roman Catholicism in its essence. I am speaking of Rome. Can a Church disappear altogether? I never said that!”
“I agree. But all that’s well known and — irrelevant, indeed, and … it’s a theological question …”
“Oh, no, no! It’s not only a theological question, I
assure you it’s not! It concerns us much more closely than you think. That’s our whole mistake, that we can’t see that this is not exclusively a theological question! Why, socialism too springs from Catholicism and the Catholic idea! Like its brother atheism, it comes from despair in opposition to Catholicism on the moral side, to replace the lost moral power of religion, to quench the spiritual thirst of parched humanity, and to save them not by Christ but also by violence. That, too, is freedom through violence, that, too, is union through sword and blood. ‘Don’t dare to believe in God, don’t dare to have property and individuality, fratemite ou la mort, two millions of heads!’ By their works ye shall know them — as it is said. And don’t imagine that all this is so harmless and without danger for us. Oh, we need to make resistance at once, at once! Our Christ whom we have kept and they have never known must shine forth and vanquish the West. Not letting ourselves be slavishly caught by the wiles of the Jesuits, but carrying our Russian civilisation to them, we ought to stand before them and not let it be said among us, as it was just now, that their preaching is skilful.”
“But allow me, allow me!” said Ivan Petrovitch,
growing dreadfully uneasy, looking about him, and positively beginning to be terrified. “All your ideas, of course, are very praiseworthy and full of patriotism, but all this is exaggerated in the extreme, and … in fact, we had better drop the subject….”
“No, it’s not exaggerated; it’s even understated, positively understated, because I am not capable of expressing …”
“Al-low me!”
Myshkin ceased speaking, and sitting upright in his chair gazed with a fixed and fervent look at Ivan Petrovitch.
“I fancy you have been too much affected by what happened to your benefactor,” the old dignitary indulgently observed, with unruffled composure. “You have grown over-ardent. . . perhaps from solitude. If you were to live more among people and to see more of the world, I expect you would be welcomed as a remarkable young man; then, of course, you would grow less excitable and you would see that it is all much simpler . . . and besides, such exceptional cases are due in my opinion partly to our being blase, partly to our being … bored.”
“Just so, just so!” cried Myshkin. “A splendid idea! It’s just from dullness, from our dullness. Not from being blase. On the contrary, from unsatisfied yearning … not from being blase. There you’re mistaken. Not simply from unsatisfied yearnings, but from feverishness, from burning thirst. And . . . and don’t think that it’s to such a slight extent that one can afford to laugh at it. Excuse me, one needs to look ahead in these things. As soon as Russians feel the ground under their feet and are confident that they have reached firm ground, they are so delighted at reaching it that they rush at once to the furthest limit. Why is that? You are surprised at Pavlishtchev, and you put it down to madness on his part, or to simplicity. But it’s not that! And Russian intensity in such cases is a surprise not to us only but to all Europe. If one of us turns Catholic, he is bound to become a Jesuit, and one of the most underground. If he becomes an atheist, he’s sure to clamour for the extirpation of belief in God by force, that is, by the sword. Why is this, why such frenzy? \bu must surely know! Because he has found the fatherland which he has missed here. He has reached the shore, he has found the land and he rushes to kiss it. Russian atheists and Russian Jesuits are the outcome not only of vanity, not only of a bad, vain feeling, but also of spiritual agony, spiritual thirst, a craving for something higher, for a firm footing, for a fatherland in which they have ceased to believe, because they have never even known it! It’s easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world. And Russians do not merely become atheists, but they invariably believe in atheism, as though it were a new religion without noticing that they are putting faith in a negation. So great is our craving! ‘He who has no roots beneath him has no god.’ That’s not my own saying. It was said by a merchant and Old Believer, whom I met when I was travelling. It’s true he did not use those words. He said: ‘The man who has renounced his fatherland has renounced his god.’ Only think that among us, even highly educated people join the sect of Flagellants. Though why is that worse than nihilism, Jesuitism, or atheism? It may even be rather more profound! But that’s what their agony has brought them to. Reveal to the yearning and feverish companions of Columbus the ‘New World,’ reveal to the Russian the ‘world’ of Russia, let him find the gold, the treasure hidden from him in the earth! Show him the whole of humanity, rising again, and renewed by Russian thought alone, perhaps by the Russian God and Christ, and you will see into what a mighty and truthful, what a wise and gentle giant he will grow, before the eyes of the astounded world, astounded and dismayed, because it expects of us nothing but the sword, nothing but the sword and violence, because, judging us by themselves, the other peoples cannot picture us free from barbarism. That has always been so hitherto and goes on getting more so! And …”
But at this point an incident took place, and the speaker’s eloquence was cut short in the most unexpected manner.
This wild tirade, this rush of strange and agitated words and confused, enthusiastic ideas, which seemed tripping each other up and tumbling over one another in confusion, all seemed suggestive of something ominous in the mental condition of the young man who had broken out so suddenly, apropos of nothing. Those present who knew Myshkin wondered apprehensively (and some of them with shame) at this outbreak, which was so out of keeping with his habitual diffidence and restraint, with his rare and peculiar tact in some cases, and his instinctive feeling for real propriety. They could not understand what it was due to. What had been told him about Pavlishtchev could not have been the cause of it. The ladies gazed at him from their corner, as though he had taken leave of his senses, and Princess Byelokonsky confessed afterwards that in another minute she would have taken to her heels. The old gentlemen were almost disconcerted in their first amazement; the chief of the department looked sternly and with displeasure at him from his place. The colonel of engineers sat in absolute immobility. The German positively turned pale, but still smiled his artificial smile, looking at the rest of the company to see how they were taking it. But all this and the whole “scandal” might have ended in the most ordinary and natural way in another minute. General Epanchin, who was extremely astonished, though he grasped the situation sooner than the rest, had made several attempts to stop Myshkin already. But failing in his efforts, he was making his way towards him, with a firm and resolute design. In another minute, he would perhaps, had it been necessary, have taken the extreme step of leading Myshkin out of the room in a friendly way on the pretext of his being ill, which would, perhaps, have been the truth, and which the general fully believed himself. . . . But the scene had a very different conclusion.
At the beginning, when Myshkin at first entered the drawing-room, he had seated himself as far as possible from the china vase about which Aglaia had so scared him. It seems almost beyond belief, but after Aglaia’s words the day before a haunting conviction, a prodigious and incredible presentiment obsessed him that he would be sure to break the vase next day, however carefully he kept away from it and tried to avoid the disaster. But so it was. In the course of the evening other and brighter impressions had flowed into his soul: we have spoken of that already. He forgot his presentiment. When he had heard Pavlishtchev’s name mentioned, and General Epanchin had brought him forward and introduced him again to Ivan Petrovitch, he moved nearer to the table and sat down in the very armchair nearest to the huqe and handsome china vase, which stood on a pedestal almost at his elbow and a little behind him.
At his last words he suddenly rose from his seat, and incautiously waved his arm, somehow twitching his shoulder and . . . there was a general scream of horror! The vase tottered at first, as though hesitating whether to fall upon the