The Brothers Karamazov

he Controversy

But Balaam’s ass had suddenly spoken. The subject was a strange one.
Grigory had gone in the morning to make purchases, and had heard from
the shopkeeper Lukyanov the story of a Russian soldier which had
appeared in the newspaper of that day. This soldier had been taken
prisoner in some remote part of Asia, and was threatened with an
immediate agonizing death if he did not renounce Christianity and
follow Islam. He refused to deny his faith, and was tortured, flayed
alive, and died, praising and glorifying Christ. Grigory had related
the story at table. Fyodor Pavlovitch always liked, over the dessert
after dinner, to laugh and talk, if only with Grigory. This afternoon
he was in a particularly good‐humored and expansive mood. Sipping his
brandy and listening to the story, he observed that they ought to make
a saint of a soldier like that, and to take his skin to some monastery.
“That would make the people flock, and bring the money in.”

Grigory frowned, seeing that Fyodor Pavlovitch was by no means touched,
but, as usual, was beginning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who
was standing by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table
towards the end of dinner, and since Ivan’s arrival in our town he had
done so every day.

“What are you grinning at?” asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, catching the smile
instantly, and knowing that it referred to Grigory.

“Well, my opinion is,” Smerdyakov began suddenly and unexpectedly in a
loud voice, “that if that laudable soldier’s exploit was so very great
there would have been, to my thinking, no sin in it if he had on such
an emergency renounced, so to speak, the name of Christ and his own
christening, to save by that same his life, for good deeds, by which,
in the course of years to expiate his cowardice.”

“How could it not be a sin? You’re talking nonsense. For that you’ll go
straight to hell and be roasted there like mutton,” put in Fyodor
Pavlovitch.

It was at this point that Alyosha came in, and Fyodor Pavlovitch, as we
have seen, was highly delighted at his appearance.

“We’re on your subject, your subject,” he chuckled gleefully, making
Alyosha sit down to listen.

“As for mutton, that’s not so, and there’ll be nothing there for this,
and there shouldn’t be either, if it’s according to justice,”
Smerdyakov maintained stoutly.

“How do you mean ‘according to justice’?” Fyodor Pavlovitch cried still
more gayly, nudging Alyosha with his knee.

“He’s a rascal, that’s what he is!” burst from Grigory. He looked
Smerdyakov wrathfully in the face.

“As for being a rascal, wait a little, Grigory Vassilyevitch,” answered
Smerdyakov with perfect composure. “You’d better consider yourself
that, once I am taken prisoner by the enemies of the Christian race,
and they demand from me to curse the name of God and to renounce my
holy christening, I am fully entitled to act by my own reason, since
there would be no sin in it.”

“But you’ve said that before. Don’t waste words. Prove it,” cried
Fyodor Pavlovitch.

“Soup‐maker!” muttered Grigory contemptuously.

“As for being a soup‐maker, wait a bit, too, and consider for yourself,
Grigory Vassilyevitch, without abusing me. For as soon as I say to
those enemies, ‘No, I’m not a Christian, and I curse my true God,’ then
at once, by God’s high judgment, I become immediately and specially
anathema accursed, and am cut off from the Holy Church, exactly as
though I were a heathen, so that at that very instant, not only when I
say it aloud, but when I think of saying it, before a quarter of a
second has passed, I am cut off. Is that so or not, Grigory
Vassilyevitch?”

He addressed Grigory with obvious satisfaction, though he was really
answering Fyodor Pavlovitch’s questions, and was well aware of it, and
intentionally pretending that Grigory had asked the questions.

“Ivan,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch suddenly, “stoop down for me to
whisper. He’s got this all up for your benefit. He wants you to praise
him. Praise him.”

Ivan listened with perfect seriousness to his father’s excited whisper.

“Stay, Smerdyakov, be quiet a minute,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch once
more. “Ivan, your ear again.”

Ivan bent down again with a perfectly grave face.

“I love you as I do Alyosha. Don’t think I don’t love you. Some
brandy?”

“Yes.—But you’re rather drunk yourself,” thought Ivan, looking steadily
at his father.

He was watching Smerdyakov with great curiosity.

“You’re anathema accursed, as it is,” Grigory suddenly burst out, “and
how dare you argue, you rascal, after that, if—”

“Don’t scold him, Grigory, don’t scold him,” Fyodor Pavlovitch cut him
short.

“You should wait, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if only a short time, and
listen, for I haven’t finished all I had to say. For at the very moment
I become accursed, at that same highest moment, I become exactly like a
heathen, and my christening is taken off me and becomes of no avail.
Isn’t that so?”

“Make haste and finish, my boy,” Fyodor Pavlovitch urged him, sipping
from his wine‐glass with relish.

“And if I’ve ceased to be a Christian, then I told no lie to the enemy
when they asked whether I was a Christian or not a Christian, seeing I
had already been relieved by God Himself of my Christianity by reason
of the thought alone, before I had time to utter a word to the enemy.
And if I have already been discharged, in what manner and with what
sort of justice can I be held responsible as a Christian in the other
world for having denied Christ, when, through the very thought alone,
before denying Him I had been relieved from my christening? If I’m no
longer a Christian, then I can’t renounce Christ, for I’ve nothing then
to renounce. Who will hold an unclean Tatar responsible, Grigory
Vassilyevitch, even in heaven, for not having been born a Christian?
And who would punish him for that, considering that you can’t take two
skins off one ox? For God Almighty Himself, even if He did make the
Tatar responsible, when he dies would give him the smallest possible
punishment, I imagine (since he must be punished), judging that he is
not to blame if he has come into the world an unclean heathen, from
heathen parents. The Lord God can’t surely take a Tatar and say he was
a Christian? That would mean that the Almighty would tell a real
untruth. And can the Lord of Heaven and earth tell a lie, even in one
word?”

Grigory was thunderstruck and looked at the orator, his eyes nearly
starting out of his head. Though he did not clearly understand what was
said, he had caught something in this rigmarole, and stood, looking
like a man who has just hit his head against a wall. Fyodor Pavlovitch
emptied his glass and went off into his shrill laugh.

“Alyosha! Alyosha! What do you say to that! Ah, you casuist! He must
have been with the Jesuits, somewhere, Ivan. Oh, you stinking Jesuit,
who taught you? But you’re talking nonsense, you casuist, nonsense,
nonsense, nonsense. Don’t cry, Grigory, we’ll reduce him to smoke and
ashes in a moment. Tell me this, O ass; you may be right before your
enemies, but you have renounced your faith all the same in your own
heart, and you say yourself that in that very hour you became anathema
accursed. And if once you’re anathema they won’t pat you on the head
for it in hell. What do you say to that, my fine Jesuit?”

“There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own heart, but there
was no special sin in that. Or if there was sin, it was the most
ordinary.”

“How’s that the most ordinary?”

“You lie, accursed one!” hissed Grigory.

“Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch,” Smerdyakov went on, staid
and unruffled, conscious of his triumph, but, as it were, generous to
the vanquished foe. “Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch; it is
said in the Scripture that if you have faith, even as a mustard seed,
and bid a mountain move into the sea, it will move without the least
delay at your bidding. Well, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if I’m without
faith and you have so great a faith that you are continually swearing
at me, you try yourself telling this mountain, not to move into the sea
for that’s a long way off, but even to our stinking little river which
runs at the bottom of the garden. You’ll see for yourself that it won’t
budge, but will remain just where it is however much you shout at it,
and that shows, Grigory Vassilyevitch, that you haven’t faith in the
proper manner, and only abuse others about it. Again, taking into
consideration that no one in our day, not only you, but actually no
one, from the highest person to the lowest peasant, can shove mountains
into the sea—except perhaps some one man in the world, or, at most,
two, and they most likely are saving their souls in secret somewhere in
the Egyptian desert, so you wouldn’t find them—if so it be, if all the
rest have no faith, will God curse all the rest? that is, the
population of the whole earth, except about two hermits in the desert,
and in His well‐known mercy will He not forgive one of them? And so I’m
persuaded that though I may once have doubted I shall be forgiven if I
shed tears of repentance.”

“Stay!” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, in a transport of delight. “So you do
suppose there are two who can move mountains? Ivan, make a note of it,
write it down. There you have the Russian all over!”

“You’re quite right in saying it’s characteristic of the people’s
faith,” Ivan assented, with an approving smile.

“You agree. Then it must be so, if you agree. It’s true, isn’t it,
Alyosha? That’s the Russian faith all over, isn’t it?”

“No, Smerdyakov has not the Russian faith at all,” said Alyosha firmly
and gravely.

“I’m not talking about his faith. I mean those two in the desert, only
that idea. Surely that’s Russian, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s purely Russian,” said Alyosha smiling.

“Your words are worth a gold piece, O ass, and I’ll give it to you
to‐day. But as to the rest you talk nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Let
me tell you, stupid, that we here are all of little faith, only from
carelessness, because we haven’t time; things are too much for us, and,
in the second place, the Lord God has given us so little time, only
twenty‐four hours in the day, so that one hasn’t even time to get sleep
enough, much less to repent of one’s sins. While you have denied your
faith to your enemies when you’d nothing else to think about but to
show your faith! So I consider, brother, that it constitutes a sin.”

“Constitute a sin it may, but consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch,
that it only extenuates it, if it does constitute. If I had believed
then in very truth, as I ought to have believed, then it really would
have been sinful if I had not faced tortures for my faith, and had gone
over to the pagan Mohammedan faith. But, of course, it wouldn’t have
come to torture then, because I should only have had to say at that
instant to the mountain, ‘Move and crush the tormentor,’ and it would
have moved and at the very instant have crushed him like a
black‐beetle, and I should have walked away as though nothing had
happened, praising and glorifying God. But, suppose at that very moment
I had tried all that, and cried to that mountain, ‘Crush these
tormentors,’ and it hadn’t crushed them, how could I have helped
doubting, pray, at such a time, and at such a dread hour of mortal
terror? And apart from that, I should know already that I could not
attain to the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven (for since the mountain
had not moved at my word, they could not think very much of my faith up
aloft, and there could be no very great reward awaiting me in the world
to come). So why should I let them flay the skin off me as well, and to
no good purpose? For, even though they had flayed my skin half off my
back, even then the mountain would not have moved at my word or at my
cry. And at such a moment not only doubt might come over one but one
might lose one’s reason from fear, so that one would not be able to
think at all. And, therefore, how should I be particularly to blame if
not seeing my advantage or reward there or here, I should, at least,
save my skin. And so trusting fully in the grace of the Lord I should
cherish the hope that I might be altogether forgiven.”