Demons

While abroad Shatov radically revised certain of his former socialist convictions and jumped to the opposite extreme. He was one of those idealistic Russian beings who are suddenly struck by some powerful idea and immediately, then and there, seem to be crushed by it, even sometimes permanently. They are never equipped to deal with it, and instead come to believe in it passionately, and so their entire life from then on passes in its final throes, as it were, under the stone that has fallen upon them and already crushed them half to death.

‘Each people has its own concept of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many different peoples begin to hold concepts of evil and good in common, then the peoples die out, and then the very difference between evil and good begins to blur and disappear. Reason has never had the power of defining evil and good or separating evil from good, even approximately. On the contrary, it has always mixed them up in a shameful and pitiful fashion, whereas science has found solutions by sheer force.’

‘And is it […] true that in Petersburg you belonged to some secret society that practised bestial carnality? Is it true that the Marquis de Sade could have taken lessons from you? Is it true that you seduced and debauched children?’ […]

‘I did say these words, but I didn’t harm any children,’ Stavrogin pronounced, but only after a very prolonged silence. He had turned pale, and his eyes blazed.

‘But you said them!’ Shatov continued imperiously, not taking his flashing eyes off him. ‘Is it true that you stated you didn’t make a distinction between the beauty of any instance of bestial carnality and a heroic deed of any kind, even the sacrifice of one’s life for humanity? Is it true that you found equal beauty and identical pleasure in both these extremes?’

‘It’s impossible to answer like this… I don’t want to answer,’ Stavrogin muttered.

‘You got married out of a passion for inflicting torment, out of a passion for feeling the pangs of conscience, out of moral carnality […] When you bit the governor’s ear, did you feel a surge of carnality? Did you feel it? You idle, footloose son of a landowner, did you feel it?’

‘You’re a psychologist,’ Stavrogin was growing increasingly pale, ‘although you are partly mistaken about the reasons for my marriage…’

‘Nikolay Vsevolodovich, Nikolay Vsevolodovich, this cannot be, perhaps you’ll give it some more thought, you won’t want to lay hands on… What will people say, what will the world say?’

‘Oh, I’m hardly afraid of your world. After all, I did marry your sister then, when I felt like it, after a drunken dinner, on a bet for wine, and now I’m going to proclaim it for all to hear — why not, if it amuses me now?’

‘There are seconds — they come only five or six at a time — when you suddenly feel the presence of an eternal harmony that has been fully attained. This is not something earthly. I’m not saying that it’s heavenly, but that man in his earthly form cannot endure it. He must change physically or else die. It is a clear and unambiguous feeling. It’s as if you suddenly have a sense of nature as a whole, and you suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: “Yes, this is true, this is good.” This… this is not deep emotion, but is simply joy. […] If it lasts longer than five seconds, your soul can’t endure it and must disappear. In these five seconds I live an entire lifetime, and for them I will give my entire life, because it’s worth it.’

Virginsky suddenly flared up, ‘I protest… I protest as vigorously as I can… I want… This is what I want: when he gets here, I want all of us to come out and ask him. If it’s true, then we accept his repentance, and if he gives his word of honour, then we let him go. In any case, we’ll have a trial; we’ll have a trial; we’ll act only after a trial. And not us hiding, and then falling upon him.’

‘To put the common cause at risk because of someone’s word of honour is the height of stupidity!’

‘Having given the matter a great deal of thought, I have decided that the proposed murder is not only a waste of valuable time, which could be used in a more essential and relevant way, but above and beyond that, it represents the sort of pernicious deviation from the normal path that has always done the utmost harm to the cause and has sidetracked its successes for decades, by subordinating itself to the influence of frivolous and primarily political people, instead of pure socialists.’

‘For me there is no higher idea than the nonexistence of God. Human history is behind me. Man has done nothing but invent God in order to live without killing himself; that’s the essence of world history to this point. I am the only one in world history who hasn’t felt like inventing God for the first time. Let people find that out once and for all.’

‘He won’t shoot himself,’ an alarmed Pyotr Stepanovich was thinking.

To the question of why so many murders, scandals and vile acts had been committed, [Lyamshin] answered with feverish haste that it was for the purpose of ‘systematically shaking the foundations, systematically undermining society and all principles; for the purpose of demoralizing everyone and throwing everything into chaos, and then, once society had begun to totter as a result — and was sick and weakened, cynical and devoid of beliefs, yet still yearning for some guiding idea and self-preservation — they would suddenly take it into their hands, raising the banner of rebellion and relying on a complete network of groups of five, which would all be active at the same time, recruiting and making practical efforts to search out all the means and all the weak spots that could be exploited’.