"But if that's a lie," he suddenly exclaimed involuntarily, "if man in fact is not a scoundrel—in general, that is, the whole human race—then the rest is all mere prejudice, instilled fear, and there are no barriers, and that's just how it should be!..."
At this point, Prince Hippolyte snorted and laughed out loud, running well ahead of his listeners, which created a really bad impression of him as a storyteller.
I looked more widely around me. I looked at the lives of the multitudes who have lived in the past and who live today. And of those who understood the meaning of life I saw not two, or three, or ten, but hundreds, thousands and millions. And all of them, endlessly varied in their customs, minds, educations and positions, and in complete contrast to my ignorance, knew the meaning of life and death, endured suffering and hardship, lived and died and saw this not as vanity but good.
And I came to love these people. The further I penetrated into the lives of those living and dead about whom I had read and heard, the more I loved them and the easier it became for me to live.
And this pealing, ringing 'Ha-ha-ha!' was the last straw that put an end to everything: to the proposed match and to Byelikov's earthly existence.
"Yes ... If you care about your digestion, my good advice is—do not talk about Bolshevism or medicine at dinner. And—heaven preserve!—don't read any Soviet newspapers before dinner."
"Hm ... But there are no others."
"Nobody should be whipped," Philip Philippovich cried heatedly. "Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion."
"And what do you wish to call yourself?"
The man adjusted his tie and answered: "Polygraph Polygraphovich."
"Stop playing the fool."
And that also makes for the horror of life all around. How does it stun you—with thunder and lighting? No, with sidelong glances and whispers of calumny. It's all trickery and ambiguity. A single thread is like a spiderweb, pull and it's gone, but try to free yourself and you get even more entangled.
I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.
"But what am I going to see?"
"I don't know. In a certain sense, it depends on you."
Everything he's witnessed in his fifteen years of work on this planet has in one way or another fit into the framework of basis theory. And when I tell him about fascism, about the gray storm troopers, about the incitement of the petty bourgeoisie, he interprets it as emotional expressions ... I'm the only one on this whole planet who's aware of the terrible shadow creeping over the country, but I can't figure out whose shadow it is or where it's coming from.
What's wrong with discourses about the obvious is that they corrupt consciousness with their easiness, with the quickness with which they provide one with moral comfort, with the sensation of being right.
We count ourselves among those rebels who court storms, who hold that the only truth lies in perpetual seeking.