1 The Brothers Karamazov
you say to that, my fine Jesuit?’
‘There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own
heart, but there no special sin in that. Or if there was sin, it
was the most ordinary.’
‘How’s that the most ordinary?’
‘You lie, accursed one!’ hissed Grigory.
‘Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch,’ Smerdyakov
went on, staid and unruffled, conscious of his triumph, but,
as it were, generous to the vanquished foe. ‘Consider your-
self, Grigory Vassilyevitch; it is said in the Scripture that
if you have faith, even as a mustard seed, and bid a moun-
tain move into the sea, it will move without the least delay
at your bidding. Well, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if I’m without
faith and you have so great a faith that you are continu-
ally swearing at me, you try yourself telling this mountain,
not to move into the sea for that’s a long way off, but even
to our stinking little river which runs at the bottom of the
garden. You’ll see for yourself that it won’t budge, but will
remain just where it is however much you shout at it, and
that shows, Grigory Vassilyevitch, that you haven’t faith in
the proper manner, and only abuse others about it. Again,
taking into consideration that no one in our day, not only
you, but actually no one, from the highest person to the
lowest peasant, can shove mountains into the sea — except
perhaps some one man in the world, or, at most, two, and
they most likely are saving their souls in secret somewhere
in the Egyptian desert, so you wouldn’t find them — if so
it be, if all the rest have no faith, will God curse all the rest?
that is, the population of the whole earth, except about two