The Brothers Karamazov
cluding, she looked with defiant resolution at the elder.
‘It’s just the same story as a doctor once told me,’ ob-
served the elder. ‘He was a man getting on in years, and
undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in
jest, in bitter jest. ‘I love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder
at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I
love man in particular. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often
come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of hu-
manity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion
if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of
living in the same room with anyone for two days together,
as I know by experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his
personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my
freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of
men: one because he’s too long over his dinner; another be-
cause he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become
hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it
has always happened that the more I detest men individu-
ally the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.’
‘But what’s to be done? What can one do in such a case?
Must one despair?’
‘No. It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what
you can, and it will be reckoned unto you. Much is done
already in you since you can so deeply and sincerely know
yourself. If you have been talking to me so sincerely, simply
to gain approbation for your frankness, as you did from me
just now, then, of course, you will not attain to anything in
the achievement of real love; it will all get no further than
dreams, and your whole life will slip away like a phantom.