'Repeat it, if it's just the conclusion...'
Stavrogin nearly made a move to look at his watch, but refrained and did not look.
Shatov again leaned forward a little on his chair, and even raised his finger again for a moment.
'Not one nation,' he began, as if reciting line by line, and at the same time still looking menacingly at Stavrogin, 'not one nation has ever set itself up on the principles of science and reason; there has never been an example of it, unless perhaps only for a moment, out of foolishness. Socialism by its very essence must be atheism, because it has precisely declared, from the very first line, that it is an atheistic order, and intends to set itself up on the principles of science and reason exclusively. Reason and science always, now, and from the beginning of the ages, have performed only a secondary and auxiliary task in the life of nations; and so they will to the end of the ages. Nations are formed and moved by another ruling and dominating force, whose origin is unknown and inexplicable. This force is the force of the unquenchable desire to get to the end, while at the same time denying the end. It is the force of a ceaseless and tireless confirmation of its own being and a denial of death. The Spirit of life, as Scripture says, the 'rivers of living water,' whose running dry is so threatened in the Apocalypse.[93] The aesthetic principle, as philosophers say, the moral principle, as they also identify it. 'Seeking for God'—as I call it in the simplest way. The aim of all movements of nations, of every nation and in every period of its existence, is solely the seeking for God, its own God, entirely its own, and faith in him as the only true one. God is the synthetic person of the whole nation, taken from its beginning and to its end. It has never yet happened that all or many nations have had one common God, but each has always had a separate one. It is a sign of a nation's extinction when there begin to be gods in common. When there are gods in common, they die along with the belief in them and with the nations themselves. The stronger the nation, the more particular its God. There has never yet been a nation without a religion, that is, without an idea of evil and good. Every nation has its own idea of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many nations start having common ideas of evil and good, then the nations die out and the very distinction between evil and good begins to fade and disappear. Reason has never been able to define evil and good, or even to separate evil from good, if only approximately; on the contrary, it has always confused them, shamefully and pitifully; and science has offered the solution of the fist. Half-science has been especially distinguished for that—the most terrible scourge of mankind, worse than plague, hunger, or war, unknown till our century. Half-science is a despot such as has never been seen before. A despot with its own priests and slaves, a despot before whom everything has bowed down with a love and superstition unthinkable till now, before whom even science itself trembles and whom it shamefully caters to. These are all your own words, Stavrogin, all except the words about half-science; those are mine, because I myself am only half-science, and therefore I especially hate it. As for your thoughts and even your very words, I haven't changed anything, not a word.'
'I wouldn't say you haven't,' Stavrogin remarked cautiously. 'You took it ardently, and have altered it ardently without noticing it. The fact alone that you reduce God to a mere attribute of nationality...'
He suddenly began to observe Shatov with increased and particular attention, not so much his words as the man himself.
'I reduce God to an attribute of nationality?' Shatov cried. 'On the contrary, I raise the nation up to God. Has it ever been otherwise? The nation is the body of God. Any nation is a nation only as long as it has its own particular God and rules out all other gods in the world with no conciliation; as long as it believes that through its God it will be victorious and will drive all other gods from the world. Thus all have believed from the beginning of time, all great nations at least, all that were marked out to any extent, all that have stood at the head of mankind. There is no going against the fact. The Jews lived only to wait for the true God, and left the true God to the world. The Greeks deified nature, and bequeathed the world their religion, that is, philosophy and art. Rome deified the nation in the state, and bequeathed the state to the nations. France, throughout her whole long history, has simply been the embodiment and development of the idea of the Roman God, and if she has finally flung her Roman God down into the abyss and plunged into atheism, which for the time being they call socialism, that is solely because atheism is, after all, healthier than Roman Catholicism. If a great nation does not believe that the truth is in it alone (precisely in it alone, and that exclusively), if it does not believe that it alone is able and called to resurrect and save everyone with its truth, then it at once ceases to be a great nation, and at once turns into ethnographic material and not a great nation. A truly great nation can never be reconciled with a secondary role in mankind, or even with a primary, but inevitably and exclusively with the first. Any that loses this faith is no longer a nation. But the truth is one, and therefore only one among the nations can have the true God, even if the other nations do have their particular and great gods. The only 'god-bearing' nation is the Russian nation, and... and ... do you, do you really regard me as such a fool, Stavrogin,' he suddenly cried out frenziedly, 'who cannot even tell whether his words now are old, decrepit rubbish, ground up in all the Slavophil mills of Moscow, or a completely new word, the last word, the only word of renewal and resurrection, and... what do I care about your laughter at this moment! What do I care that you don't understand me at all, not at all, not a word, not a sound! ... Oh, how I despise your proud laughter and look at this moment!'
He jumped up from his place; there was even foam on his lips.
'On the contrary, Shatov, on the contrary,' Stavrogin said, with remarkable seriousness and restraint, without rising from his place, 'on the contrary, with your ardent words you've revived many extremely powerful recollections in me. I recognize in your words my own state of mind two years ago, and I shall no longer say to you, as I just did, that you have exaggerated my thoughts of that time. It even seems to me that they were still more exceptional, still more absolute, and I assure you for the third time that I would wish very much to confirm everything you've said, even to a word, but...'
'But you need a hare?'
'Wha-a-at?'
'Your own vile expression,' Shatov laughed spitefully, sitting down again.”‘To make sauce from a hare, you need a hare; to have belief in God, you need a God,' you went around saying in Petersburg, I'm told, like Nozdryov, who wanted to catch a hare by its hind legs.'[94]
'No, he was precisely boasting that he'd already caught it. Incidentally, though, allow me to trouble you with a question as well, the more so as it seems to me I now have full right to ask. Tell me about your hare—have you caught it, or is it still running around?'
'Do not dare to ask me in such words; use others, others!' Shatov suddenly trembled all over.
'As you wish, here are your others,' Nikolai Vsevolodovich looked at him sternly. 'I simply wanted to know: do you yourself believe in God, or not?'
'I believe in Russia, I believe in her Orthodoxy ... I believe in the body of Christ ... I believe that the new coming will take place in Russia ... I believe...' Shatov babbled frenziedly.
'But in God? In God?'
'I ... I will believe in God.'
Not a muscle moved in Stavrogin's face. Shatov looked at him fierily, defiantly, as if he wanted to burn him with
