"The 'humane studies' of which you speak will only satisfy human
thought when, as they advance, they meet the exact sciences and
progress side by side with them. Whether they will meet under a new
microscope, or in the monologues of a new Hamlet, or in a new
religion, I do not know, but I expect the earth will be covered
with a crust of ice before it comes to pass. Of all humane learning
the most durable and living is, of course, the teaching of Christ;
but look how differently even that is interpreted! Some teach that
we must love all our neighbours but make an exception of soldiers,
criminals, and lunatics. They allow the first to be killed in war,
the second to be isolated or executed, and the third they forbid
to marry. Other interpreters teach that we must love all our
neighbours without exception, with no distinction of _plus_ or
_minus_. According to their teaching, if a consumptive or a murderer
or an epileptic asks your daughter in marriage, you must let him
have her. If _crêtins_ go to war against the physically and mentally
healthy, don't defend yourselves. This advocacy of love for love's
sake, like art for art's sake, if it could have power, would bring
mankind in the long run to complete extinction, and so would become
the vastest crime that has ever been committed upon earth. There
are very many interpretations, and since there are many of them,
serious thought is not satisfied by any one of them, and hastens
to add its own individual interpretation to the mass. For that
reason you should never put a question on a philosophical or so-called
Christian basis; by so doing you only remove the question further
from solution."
The deacon listened to the zoologist attentively, thought a little,
and asked:
"Have the philosophers invented the moral law which is innate in
every man, or did God create it together with the body?"
"I don't know. But that law is so universal among all peoples and
all ages that I fancy we ought to recognise it as organically
connected with man. It is not invented, but exists and will exist.
I don't tell you that one day it will be seen under the microscope,
but its organic connection is shown, indeed, by evidence: serious
affections of the brain and all so-called mental diseases, to the
best of my belief, show themselves first of all in the perversion
of the moral law."
"Good. So then, just as our stomach bids us eat, our moral sense
bids us love our neighbours. Is that it? But our natural man through
self-love opposes the voice of conscience and reason, and this gives
rise to many brain-racking questions. To whom ought we to turn for
the solution of those questions if you forbid us to put them on the
philosophic basis?"
"Turn to what little exact science we have. Trust to evidence and
the logic of facts. It is true it is but little, but, on the other
hand, it is less fluid and shifting than philosophy. The moral law,
let us suppose, demands that you love your neighbour. Well? Love
ought to show itself in the removal of everything which in one way
or another is injurious to men and threatens them with danger in
the present or in the future. Our knowledge and the evidence tells
us that the morally and physically abnormal are a menace to humanity.
If so you must struggle against the abnormal; if you are not able
to raise them to the normal standard you must have strength and
ability to render them harmless--that is, to destroy them."
"So love consists in the strong overcoming the weak."
"Undoubtedly."
"But you know the strong crucified our Lord Jesus Christ," said the
deacon hotly.
"The fact is that those who crucified Him were not the strong but
the weak. Human culture weakens and strives to nullify the struggle
for existence and natural selection; hence the rapid advancement
of the weak and their predominance over the strong. Imagine that
you succeeded in instilling into bees humanitarian ideas in their
crude and elementary form. What would come of it? The drones who
ought to be killed would remain alive, would devour the honey, would
corrupt and stifle the bees, resulting in the predominance of the
weak over the strong and the degeneration of the latter. The same
process is taking place now with humanity; the weak are oppressing
the strong. Among savages untouched by civilisation the strongest,
cleverest, and most moral takes the lead; he is the chief and the
master. But we civilised men have crucified Christ, and we go on
crucifying Him, so there is something lacking in us. . . . And that
something one ought to raise up in ourselves, or there will be no
end to these errors."
"But what criterion have you to distinguish the strong from the
weak?"
"Knowledge and evidence. The tuberculous and the scrofulous are
recognised by their diseases, and the insane and the immoral by
their actions."
"But mistakes may be made!"
"Yes, but it's no use to be afraid of getting your feet wet when
you are threatened with the deluge!"
"That's philosophy," laughed the deacon.
"Not a bit of it. You are so corrupted by your seminary philosophy
that you want to see nothing but fog in everything. The abstract
studies with which your youthful head is stuffed are called abstract
just because they abstract your minds from what is obvious. Look
the devil straight in the eye, and if he's the devil, tell him he's
the devil, and don't go calling to Kant or Hegel for explanations."
The zoologist paused and went on:
"Twice two's four, and a stone's a stone. Here to-morrow we have a
duel. You and I will say it's stupid and absurd, that the duel is
out of date, that there is no real difference between the aristocratic
duel and the drunken brawl in the pot-house, and yet we shall not
stop, we shall go there and fight. So there is some force stronger
than our reasoning. We shout that war is plunder, robbery, atrocity,
fratricide; we cannot look upon blood without fainting; but the
French or the Germans have only to insult us for us to feel at once
an exaltation of spirit; in the most genuine way we shout 'Hurrah!'
and rush to attack the foe. You will invoke the blessing of God on
our weapons, and our valour will arouse universal and general
enthusiasm. Again it follows that there is a force, if not higher,
at any rate stronger, than us and our philosophy. We can no more
stop it than that cloud which is moving upwards over the sea. Don't
be hypocritical, don't make a long nose at it on the sly; and don't
say, 'Ah, old-fashioned, stupid! Ah, it's inconsistent with Scripture!'
but look it straight in the face, recognise its rational lawfulness,
and when, for instance, it wants to destroy a rotten, scrofulous,
corrupt race, don't hinder it with your pilules and misunderstood
quotations from the Gospel. Leskov has a story of a conscientious
Danila who found a leper outside the town, and fed and warmed him
in the name of love and of Christ. If that Danila had really loved
humanity, he would have dragged the leper as far as possible from
the town, and would have flung him in a pit, and would have gone
to save the healthy. Christ, I hope, taught us a rational, intelligent,
practical love."
"What a fellow you are!" laughed the deacon. "You don't believe in
Christ. Why do you mention His name so often?"
"Yes, I do believe in Him. Only, of course, in my own way, not in
yours. Oh, deacon, deacon!" laughed the zoologist; he put his arm
round the deacon's waist, and said gaily: "Well? Are you coming
with us to the duel to-morrow?"
"My orders don't allow it, or else I should come."
"What do you mean by 'orders'?"
"I have been consecrated. I am in a state of grace."
"Oh, deacon, deacon," repeated Von Koren, laughing, "I love talking
to you."
"You say you have faith," said the deacon. "What sort of faith is
it? Why, I have an uncle, a priest, and he believes so that when
in time of drought he goes out into the fields to pray for rain,
he takes his umbrella and leather overcoat for fear of getting wet
through on his way home. That's faith! When he speaks of Christ,
his face is full of radiance, and all the peasants, men and women,
weep floods of tears. He would stop that cloud and put all those
forces you talk about to flight. Yes . . . faith moves mountains."
The deacon laughed and slapped the zoologist on the shoulder.
"Yes . . ." he went on; "here you are teaching all the time, fathoming
the depths of the ocean, dividing the weak and the strong, writing
books and challenging to duels--and everything remains as it is;
but, behold! some feeble old man will mutter just one word with a
holy spirit, or a new Mahomet, with a sword, will gallop from Arabia,
and everything will be topsy-turvy, and in Europe not one stone
will be left standing upon another."
"Well, deacon, that's on the knees of the gods."
"Faith without works is dead, but works without faith are worse
still--mere waste of time and nothing more."
The doctor came into sight on the sea-front. He saw the deacon and
the zoologist, and went up to them.
"I believe everything is ready," he said, breathing hard. "Govorovsky
and Boyko will be the seconds. They will start at five o'clock in
the morning. How it has clouded over," he said, looking at the sky.
"One can see nothing; there will be rain directly."
"I hope you are coming with us?" said the zoologist.
"No, God preserve me; I'm worried enough as it is. Ustimovitch is
going instead of me. I've spoken to him already."
Far over the sea was a flash of lightning, followed by a hollow
roll of thunder.
"How stifling it is before a storm!" said Von Koren. "I bet you've
been to Laevsky already and have been weeping on his bosom."
"Why should I go to him?" answered the doctor in confusion. "What
next?"
Before sunset he had walked several times along the boulevard and
the street in the hope of meeting Laevsky. He was ashamed of his
hastiness and the sudden outburst of friendliness which had followed
it. He wanted to apologise to Laevsky in a joking tone, to give him
a good talking to, to soothe him and to tell him that the duel was
a survival of mediæval barbarism, but that Providence itself had
brought them to the duel as a means of reconciliation; that the
next day, both being splendid and highly intelligent people, they
would, after exchanging shots, appreciate each other's noble qualities
and would become friends. But he could not come across Laevsky.
"What should I go and see him for?" repeated Samoylenko. "I did not
insult him; he insulted me. Tell me, please, why he attacked me.
What harm had I done him? I go into the drawing-room, and, all of
a sudden, without the least provocation: 'Spy!' There's a nice
thing! Tell me, how did it begin? What did you say to him?"
"I told him his position was hopeless. And I was right. It is only
honest men or scoundrels who can find an escape from any position,
but one who wants to be at the same time an honest man and a scoundrel
--it is a hopeless position. But it's eleven o'clock, gentlemen,
and we have to be up early to-morrow."
There was a sudden gust of wind; it blew up the dust on the sea-front,
whirled it round in eddies, with a howl that drowned the roar of
the sea.
"A squall," said the deacon. "We must go in, our eyes are getting
full of dust."
As they went, Samoylenko sighed and, holding his hat, said:
"I suppose I shan't sleep to-night."
"Don't you agitate yourself," laughed the zoologist. "You can set
your mind at rest; the duel will end in nothing. Laevsky will
magnanimously fire into the air--he can do nothing else; and I
daresay I shall not fire at all. To be arrested and lose my time
on Laevsky's account--the game's not worth the candle. By the
way, what is the punishment for duelling?"
"Arrest, and in the case of the death of your opponent a maximum
of three years' imprisonment in the fortress."
"The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul?"
"No, in a military fortress, I believe."
"Though this fine gentleman ought to have a lesson!"
Behind them on the sea, there was a flash of lightning, which for
an instant lighted up the roofs of the houses and the mountains.
The friends parted near the boulevard. When the doctor disappeared
in the darkness and his steps had died away, Von Koren shouted to
him:
"I only hope the weather won't interfere with us to-morrow!"
"Very likely it will! Please God it may!"
"Good-night!"
"What about the night? What do you say?"
In the roar of the wind and the sea and the crashes of thunder, it
was difficult to hear.
"It's nothing," shouted the zoologist, and hurried home.