The Brothers KaramazovI am far from intending to apologise for him or to justify his
innocent faith on the ground of his youth, or the little prog-
ress he had made in his studies, or any such reason. I must
declare, on the contrary, that I have genuine respect for the
qualities of his heart. No doubt a youth who received im-
pressions cautiously, whose love was lukewarm, and whose
mind was too prudent for his age and so of little value, such
a young man might, I admit, have avoided what happened
to my hero. But in some cases it is really more creditable
to be carried away by an emotion, however unreasonable,
which springs from a great love, than to be unmoved. And
this is even truer in youth, for a young man who is always
sensible is to be suspected and is of little worth — that’s my
opinion!
‘But,’ reasonable people will exclaim perhaps, ‘every
young man cannot believe in such a superstition and your
hero is no model for others.’
To this I reply again, ‘Yes! my hero had faith, a faith holy
and steadfast, but still I am not going to apologise for him.’
Though I declared above, and perhaps too hastily, that I
should not explain or justify my hero, I see that some ex-
planation is necessary for the understanding of the rest of
my story. Let me say then, it was not a question of miracles.
There was no frivolous and impatient expectation of mir-
acles in his mind. And Alyosha needed no miracles at the
time, for the triumph of some preconceived idea — oh no,
not at all — what he saw before all was one figure — the fig-
ure of his beloved elder, the figure of that holy man whom
he revered with such adoration. The fact is that all the love