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The Problem of Evil in The Brothers Karamazov
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian writer and philosopher and one of the
greatest novelists of all time. He was raised a Russian Orthodox Christian and attended mass
most of his life, even if some of his religious views were more Deist than Christian. In The
Brothers Karamazov (1879), two brothers, Alyosha, a monk, and his brother, Ivan, an atheist,
are discussing how anyone can believe in a God that would allow the atrocities that occur on
our planet. Ivan (who feigns to be a believer) recounts some of the horrendous crimes committed
against children and then mentions one more before stating his case against God. Translated by
Constance Garnett
"One picture, only one more, because it's so curious, so characteristic, and I have
only just read it in some collection of Russian antiquities. I've forgotten the name. I must look it
up. It was in the darkest days of serfdom at the beginning of the century, and long live the
Liberator of the People! There was in those days a general of aristocratic connections, the owner
of great estates, one of those men—somewhat exceptional, I believe, even then—who, retiring
from the service into a life of leisure, are convinced that they've earned absolute power over the
lives of their subjects. There were such men then. So our general, settled on his property of two
thousand souls, lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor neighbours as though they were
dependents and buffoons. He has kennels of hundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog-
boys—all mounted, and in uniform. One day a serf-boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in
play and hurt the paw of the general's favourite hound. “Why is my favourite dog lame?' He is
told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog's paw. “So you did it.' The general looked the
child
up
and down. “Take him.' He was taken—taken from his mother and kept shut up all night.
Early that morning the general comes out on horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, dog-
boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full hunting parade. The servants are summoned
for their edification, and in front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought
from the lock-up. It's a gloomy, cold, foggy, autumn day, a capital day for hunting. The general
orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not
daring to cry. ‘Make him run,' commands the general. “Run! run!' shout the dog-boys. The
boy runs. ‘At him!' yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The
hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother's eyes!. . . I believe the general was
afterwards declared incapable of administering his estates. Well—what did he deserve? To be
shot? To be shot for the satisfaction of our moral feelings? Speak, Alyosha!”
“To be shot,” murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a pale, twisted smile.
“Bravo!” cried Ivan delighted. “If even you say so... You're a pretty monk! So there is a
little devil sitting in your heart, Alyosha Karamazov!”
“What I said was absurd, but.
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“That's just the point, that “but?!” cried Ivan. “Let me tell you, novice, that the absurd is
only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities, and perhaps nothing would have
come to pass in it without them. We know what we know!"
“What do you know?”
“I understand nothing," Ivan went on, as though in delirium. “I don't want to understand
anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I try
to understand anything, I shall be false to the fact, and I have determined to stick to the fact.
“Why are you trying me?” Alyosha cried, with sudden distress. “Will you say what you
mean at last?”
“Of course, I will; that's what I've been leading up to. You are dear to me,
I don't want to let you go, and I won't give you up to your Zossima.
Ivan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very sad.
“Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of
humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its centre, I will say nothing. I have
narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognise in all humility that I cannot
understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were
given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would
become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian
understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause
follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level-but that's only
Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can't consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that
there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it?-I
must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and
space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I
am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I
haven't suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future
harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and
the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly
understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I
am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That's a question
I can't answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I've only
taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must
suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It's
beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony.
Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I
understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can
be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for
all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some
jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he
didn't grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not
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blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when
everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has
lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces
the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, o
Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But
what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste
to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that
moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother
embracing the child's torturer, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!' but I don't want to cry aloud then. While
there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether.
It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist
and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not worth
it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony.
But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what
do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do,
since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell?
I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't want more suffering. And if the sufferings of
children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest
that the truth is not worth such a price. I don't want the mother to embrace the oppressor who
threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will,
let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother's heart. But the
sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even
if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of
harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could
forgive? I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left
with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and
unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's
beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket,
and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing.
It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.'
“That's rebellion,” murmured Alyosha, looking down.
“Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that,” said Ivan earnestly. “One can hardly live in
rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are
creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them
peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny
creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance and to found that edifice on its
unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the
truth.”
“No, I wouldn't consent,” said Alyosha softly.
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