The Brothers Karamazovam not afraid of it, even if it were beyond reckoning. I am
not afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before. Do you know,
perhaps I won’t answer at the trial at all.... And I seem to
have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand
anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat
to myself every moment, ‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies
— I exist. I’m tormented on the rack — but I exist! Though I
sit alone on a pillar — I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see
the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in
knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all these
philosophies are the death of me. Damn them! Brother Ivan-
.’
‘What of brother Ivan?’ interrupted Alyosha, but Mitya
did not hear.
‘You see, I never had any of these doubts before, but it
was all hidden away in me. It was perhaps just because ideas
I did not understand were surging up in me, that I used to
drink and fight and rage. It was to stifle them in myself, to
still them, to smother them. Ivan is not Rakitin, there is
an idea in him. Ivan is a sphinx and is silent; he is always
silent. It’s God that’s worrying me. That’s the only thing
that’s worrying me. What if He doesn’t exist? What if Raki-
tin’s right — that it’s an idea made up by men? Then if He
doesn’t exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe.
Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God?
That’s the question. I always come back to that. For whom is
man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To
whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says
that one can love humanity without God. Well, only a sniv-