Page 557 - the-idiot

that day and of our own! This criminal ended at last by de-
nouncing himself to the clergy, and giving himself up to
justice. We cannot but ask, remembering the penal system
of that day, and the tortures that awaited him—the wheel,
the stake, the fire!—we cannot but ask, I repeat, what in-
duced him to accuse himself of this crime? Why did he not
simply stop short at the number sixty, and keep his secret
until his last breath? Why could he not simply leave the
monks alone, and go into the desert to repent? Or why not
become a monk himself? That is where the puzzle comes in!
There must have been something stronger than the stake
or the fire, or even than the habits of twenty years! There
must have been an idea more powerful than all the calami-
ties and sorrows of this world, famine or torture, leprosy or
plague—an idea which entered into the heart, directed and
enlarged the springs of life, and made even that hell sup-
portable to humanity! Show me a force, a power like that, in
this our century of vices and railways! I might say, perhaps,
in our century of steamboats and railways, but I repeat in
our century of vices and railways, because I am drunk but
truthful! Show me a single idea which unites men nowa-
days with half the strength that it had in those centuries,
and dare to maintain that the ‘springs of life’ have not been
polluted and weakened beneath this ‘star,’ beneath this net-
work in which men are entangled! Don’t talk to me about
your prosperity, your riches, the rarity of famine, the rapid-
ity of the means of transport! There is more of riches, but
less of force. The idea uniting heart and soul to heart and
soul exists no more. All is loose, soft, limp—we are all of

The Idiot