110 The Brothers Karamazov
Having uttered these words Dmitri ceased speaking as
suddenly as he had begun. Everyone looked at him with cu-
riosity.
‘Is that really your conviction as to the consequences of
the disappearance of the faith in immortality?’ the elder
asked Ivan suddenly.
‘Yes. That was my contention. There is no virtue if there
is no immortality.’
‘You are blessed in believing that, or else most unhappy.’
‘Why unhappy?’ Ivan asked smiling.
‘Because, in all probability you don’t believe yourself in
the immortality of your soul, nor in what you have written
yourself in your article on Church Jurisdiction.’
‘Perhaps you are right!... But I wasn’t altogether joking,’
Ivan suddenly and strangely confessed, flushing quickly.
‘You were not altogether joking. That’s true. The ques-
tion is still fretting your heart, and not answered. But the
martyr likes sometimes to divert himself with his despair,
as it were driven to it by despair itself. Meanwhile, in your
despair, you, too, divert yourself with magazine articles,
and discussions in society, though you don’t believe your
own arguments, and with an aching heart mock at them
inwardly.... That question you have not answered, and it is
your great grief, for it clamours for an answer.’
‘But can it be answered by me? Answered in the affir-
mative?’ Ivan went on asking strangely, still looking at the
elder with the same inexplicable smile.
‘If it can’t be decided in the affirmative, it will never be
decided in the negative. You know that that is the peculiar-