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  • Problem of Evil, Brothers K

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    17 Ansichten3 Seiten

    Problem of Evil, Brothers K

    Hochgeladen von

    caitobyrne3412

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Als PDF herunterladen oder online auf Scribd lesen
    Markieren Sie unangemessene Inhalte
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    thae’s only a beaten, So the ss the knout as can be beaten. rand bis wife a girl oF sven, apa was glad sigs, ‘Tk stings Sing his daugh who at every literal sensual- very blow they ve minutes, for savagely. The not scream, it olical unseemly vart, A counsel sve long called » The counsel such a simple vent. A father ve it ssid, itis “anced by him, slic roars with ed. Ab, pity I Lo raise a sb + pictures, t children. Pve assian children, ‘who was hated worthy and ‘on and breed: itis a peculiar swe of torturing other types of | aly and bene uropeans; but dren, even fond 1s just their sentor, just the » has no refuge dod on fe. In s hidden—the fal heat at the demon of lw of diseases that 1 and 60 on. “This poor child of five was subjected to every possible toreare by thote cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till herbody was one brite. Thea, they went co eater refincments of cruchy—sbut her up all ight inthe cold and frost in a privy, and because she did't ak to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleping its angelic, sound seep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared he fice and fled het ‘mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, het smother did this. And that mother could lep, hea. ing the poor chié’s groans! Can you understand why a ile creature, who can't cen understand what's done to her, should beat her litle aching heart with her tiny fstin che darkand the cold, and weep her meek wnresentful tears o dea, kind God to protect her! Do you understand that, end and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permit ted? Without i, Iam told, man could nor have existed on earth, for he couk not have known good and evil, Why should he know that diabotial good and cvil when it costs so mach? Why, the whole world of knowledge isnot worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God?! Tsay nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have caten the apple, damn them, and the devi take them al! But these like one! Pam making you safer, Aosha, you ae ‘not yourself. Tl leave offit if'you Bike.” “Never mind, I want to suffer too,” muttered Alyosha “One picture, only one more, because it's 30 carious, so characte, and T have only just read icin some collection of Russian antiquities. Pve fr gotten the name. I must look it up. Tewas ia the darkest days of serfdom a the beginning of the cen tury, and long live the Liberator of the People! There wasin those days a general of aristocratic con: nections, the owner of great estates, one of those ‘men—somewhat exceptional, I believe, even thea ‘who, retiring from the service into a ite of leisure, ate convinced that they've eamed absolute power ove he lives ofthe subjets, There were such men thea, So our general, seted on his property of two thousand souls, lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor neighbors as though they were depend cats and buffoons. He has kennels of hundreds of Eyudor Dessocvsky: Rebellion 83 hounds and nearly a hundred dogboys—all ‘mounted, and in uniform. One day a serf boy, a litle child of eight, threw a stone in play and hurt the paw of the general's fivorite hound, ‘Why is my favorite dog lame” He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog’s paw. ‘So you did it” The ‘general looked the child up and down, *Take him.” ‘He was raken—taken from his mother and kept shut vp all night. Early that morning the general comes ‘outon horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, ddog-boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in fall hunting parade. The servants are summoned {or their edification, and in front of them all stands the mother of the child, The child is brought from the lockup, Its 2 gloomy, cold, foggy autumn day, 8 capital day for hunting. The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked. ‘He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to ery... ‘Make hin run,” commands the general. “Run! run! shout the dog-boys. The boy runs... ‘At him!” yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother’s eyes! . believe the general was afterwards declared inca pable of administering his estates, Well—what did he deserve? To be shot? To be shot for the satisiction of our moral feclings? Speak, Alyosha!™ “To be shor,” murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a pale, rwisted smile. “Bravo!” cried Ivan delighted. “If even you say s0 ... You're a pretty monk! So there isa litte devil sicting in your heart. Alyosha Karamazov!” “What I said was absurd, but—” “That's just the point that “but!” cried Ivan. “Let me tell you, novice, that the absurd is only too necessary on earth, The World stands on absurcities, and perhaps nothing would have come to passin it ‘without them. We know what we know!” “What do you know?” “T understand nothing,” Ivan went on, as though in delirium. “I don’e want to understand anything now: Iwant to stick to the fact. Lmade ap my mind Jong ago not to understand. IfI try to understand anything, I shall be false to the fact and I have deter- ‘mined to stick to the fact.” “Why arc you trying me?” Alyosha cried, with sudden distress, “Will you say what you mean at last” 84 PART ONE: REASON AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF “Of course, I will that’s what I've been leading ‘up to, You are dear to me, { don't want to let you go, and I won"t give you up to your Zossima [prest, Father)” Ivan fora minute was silent, his face became all at once very sed. “Listen! I took the case of children only #0 make my case clearer. Of the other teats of humanity with ‘which the earth is soaked from its crust to its center, will say nothing, I have narrowed my subject on purpose, Lam a bug, and I recognize in all humil fy that I cannot understand why the world is arranged asit is, Men are themselves to blame, I sup~ pose; they were given paradise, they wanted free- ‘dom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, 90 there is:n0 need to, pity them. With my pitifil, earthly, Buclidean under- Sanding, all knows that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly, thet everything flows and finds its level—but that’s only Buclidean nonsense, T know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is to me that there are none guilty and that ‘cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I Know it--I must have justice, or I will destroy ‘myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, bat here on earth, and that I could see ryself. [have believed in it.I want to see it, and if {Tam dead by then, let me rise again, for ifitall hap pens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely 1 haven’s suffered, simply that T, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the farure har: ‘mony for somebody else, I want to see with my own ‘eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. [want to be there ‘when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built fon this longing, and I am a believer. But there are the children, and what am I to do about them? ‘That's question Tcaa’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but Tve only taken the children, because in their case ‘what I mean is $0 unanswerably clear. Listen! Tf all ‘must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony; what have children to do with it, tell me, please? Tes ‘beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, ‘and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, t00, fumish marerial to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand soli- darty in sin among men. [understand solidarity in retribution, toos but there can be no such solidar- lay with children, And if i is really true that they ‘must share responsibility forall cir father's crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my ‘comprehension. Some jester will sy, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didi’ grow up, le was torn to pieces by the dogs, at cight years old. Ob, Alyosha, Tam not blaspheming! 1 understand, of course, what an upheaval ofthe universe it will be, when everything jn heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that ives and has lived cries lou “Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.” When the mother embraces the fiend who threw hier child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou are just, O Lord! then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear, But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I ‘make haste to take my ovn measures. You see, ‘Alyosha, pethaps ir really may happen that if T ive to that moment, or rise again (0 see it, 1, t00, per hhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the ‘mother embracing the child’s torturer, “Thou are just, O Lord!” but I don’t want to ery aloud then, While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself and so L renounce the higher harmony altogether. {es not worth the teats of that one tortured child who beat itself om the breast wih its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse with an unexpiated tear to ‘dear, kind God’! IP's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. Buthow? How are ‘you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care fora hell for oppressors? What {good can hell do, since those children have already, been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? T want to forgive. I want to embrace. T don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which svas necessary t0 pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. [don’t want be mother to embrace the oppressor who threw het cvich the soil derstand soli «solidarity in such soldar sre that they ither’serimes, is beyond my pethaps, that ve sinned, but topieces by ‘sha, Tam not sse, What an cneverything yenn of praise d cries aloud: are revealed,”

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