During this conversation first the ladies and then Peter Semyónovich go out.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. You mean the Church?
PRIEST. Well, of course, the Church, and the evidence, let’s say, of reliable men–the Saints for instance.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Of course, it would be excellent if there existed a set of infallible people to confide in. It would be very desirable; but its desirability does not prove that they exist!
PRIEST. And I believe that just that is the proof. The Lord could not in fact have exposed His law to the possibility of mutilation or misinterpretation, but must in fact have left a guardian of His truth to prevent that truth being mutilated.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Very well; but we first tried to prove the truth itself, and now we are trying to prove the reliability of the guardian of the truth.
PRIEST. Well here, as a matter of fact, we require faith.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Faith–yes, we need faith. We can’t do without faith. Not, however, faith in what other people tell us, but faith in what we arrive at ourselves, by our own thought, our own reason … faith in God, and in true and everlasting life.
PRIEST. Reason may deceive. Each of us has a different mind.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH [hotly] There, that is the most terrible blasphemy! God has given us just one sacred tool for finding the truth–the only thing that can unite us all, and we do not trust it!
PRIEST. How can we trust in it, when there are contradictions?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Where are the contradictions? That twice two are four; and that one should not do to others what one would not like oneself; and that everything has a cause? Truths of that kind we all acknowledge because they accord with all our reason. But that God appeared on Mount Sinai to Moses, or that Buddha flew up on a sunbeam, or that Mahomet went up into the sky, and that Christ flew there also–on matters of that kind we are all at variance.
PRIEST. No, we are not at variance, those of us who abide in the truth are all united in one faith in God, Christ.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. No, even there, you are not united, but have all gone asunder; so why should I believe you rather than I would believe a Buddhist Lama? Only because I happened to be born in your faith?
[The tennis players dispute] “Out!” “Not out!”
VÁNYA. I saw it …:
During the conversation, men-servants set the table again for tea and coffee.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. You say the Church unites. But, on the contrary, the worst dissensions have always been caused by the Church. “How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathers her chickens.” …
PRIEST. That was until Christ. But Christ did gather them all together.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Yes, Christ united; but we have divided: because we have understood him the wrong way round. He destroyed all Churches.
PRIEST. Did he not say: “Go, tell the Church.”
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. It is not a question of words! Besides those words don’t refer to what we call “Church.” It is the spirit of the teaching that matters. Christ’s teaching is universal, and includes all religions, and does not admit of anything exclusive; neither of the Resurrection nor the Divinity of Christ, nor the Sacraments–nor of anything that divides.
PRIEST. That, as a matter of fact, if I may say so, is your own interpretation of Christ’s teaching. But Christ’s teaching is all founded on His Divinity and Resurrection.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. That’s what is so dreadful about the Churches. They divide by declaring that they possess the full indubitable and infallible truth. They say: “It has pleased us and the Holy Ghost.” That began at the time of the first Council of the Apostles. They then began to maintain that they had the full and exclusive truth. You see, if I say there is a God: the first cause of the Universe, everyone can agree with me; and such an acknowledgment of God will unite us; but if I say there is a God: Brahma, or Jehovah, or a Trinity, such a God divides us. Men wish to unite, and to that end devise all means of union, but neglect the one indubitable means of union–the search for truth! It is as if people in an enormous building, where the light from above shone down into the centre, tried to unite in groups around lamps in different corners, instead of going towards the central light, where they would naturally all be united.
PRIEST. And how are the people to be guided–without any really definite truth?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. That’s what is terrible! Each one of us has to save his own soul, and has to do God’s work himself, but instead of that we busy ourselves saving other people and teaching them. And what do we teach them? We teach them now, at the end of the nineteenth century, that God created the world in six days, then caused a flood, and put all the animals in an ark, and all the rest of the horrors and nonsense of the Old Testament. And then that Christ ordered everyone to be baptized with water; and we make them believe in all the absurdity and meanness of an Atonement essential to salvation; and then that he rose up into the heavens which do not really exist, and there sat down at the right hand of the Father. We have got used to all this, but really it is dreadful! A child, fresh and ready to receive all that is good and true, asks us what the world is, and what its laws are; and we, instead of revealing to him the teaching of love and truth that has been given to us, carefully ram into his head all sorts of horrible absurdities and meannesses, ascribing them all to God. Is that not terrible? It is as great a crime as man can commit. And we–you and your Church–do this! Forgive me!
PRIEST. Yes, if one looks at Christ’s teaching from a rationalistic point of view, it is so.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Whichever way one looks, it is so. [Pause].
Enter Alexándra Ivánovna. Priest bows to take his leave.
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. Good-bye, Father. He will lead you astray. Don’t you listen to him.
PRIEST. No. Search the Scriptures! The matter is too important, as a matter of fact, to be–let’s say–neglected. [Exit].
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. Really, Nicholas, you have no pity on him! Though he is a priest, he is still only a boy, and can have no firm convictions or settled views….
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Give him time to settle down and petrify in falsehood? No! Why should I? Besides, he is a good, sincere man.
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. But what will become of him if he believes you?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. He need not believe me. But if he saw the truth, it would be well for him and for everybody.
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. If it were really so good, everyone would be ready to believe you. As it is, no one believes you, and your wife least of all. She can’t believe you.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Who told you that?
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. Well, just you try and explain it to her! She will never understand, nor shall I, nor anyone else in the world, that one must care for other people and abandon one’s own children. Go and try to explain that to Mary!
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Yes, and Mary will certainly understand. Forgive me, Alexándra, but if it were not for other people’s influence, to which she is very susceptible, she would understand me and go with me.
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. To beggar your children for the sake of drunken Yefím and his sort? Never! But if I have made you angry, please forgive me. I can’t help speaking out.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. I am not angry. On the contrary, I am even glad you have spoken out and given me the opportunity–challenged me–to explain to Mary my whole outlook on life. On my way home to-day I was thinking of doing so, and I will speak to her at once; and you will see that she will agree, because she is wise and good.
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. Well, as to that, allow me to have my doubts.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. But I have no doubts. For you know, this is not any invention of my own; it is only what we all of us know, and what Christ revealed to us.
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. Yes, you think Christ revealed this, but I think he revealed something else.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. It cannot be anything else.
Shouts from the tennis ground.
LYÚBA. Out!
VÁNYA. No, we saw it.
LISA. I know. It fell just here!
LYÚBA. Out! Out! Out!
VÁNYA. It’s not true.
LYÚBA. For one thing, it’s rude to say “It’s not true.”
VÁNYA. And it’s rude to say what is not true!
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Just wait a bit, and don’t argue, but listen. Isn’t it true that at any moment we may die, and either cease to exist, or go to God who expects us to live according to His will?
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. Well?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Well, what can I do in this life other than what the supreme judge in my soul, my conscience–God–requires of me? And my conscience–God–requires that I should regard everybody as equal, love everybody, serve everybody.
ALEXÁNDRA IVÁNOVNA. Your own children too?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Naturally, my own too, but obeying all that my conscience demands. Above all, that I should understand that my life does not belong
