specially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are
utterly inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only three
dimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and what's more, I accept
His wisdom, His purpose--which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the
underlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony
in which they say we shall one day be blended. I believe in the Word to
Which the universe is striving, and Which Itself was 'with God,' and Which
Itself is God and so on, and so on, to infinity. There are all sorts of
phrases for it. I seem to be on the right path, don't I? Yet would you
believe it, in the final result I don't accept this world of God's, and,
although I know it exists, I don't accept it at all. It's not that I don't
accept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and
cannot accept. Let me make it plain. I believe like a child that suffering
will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of
human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the
despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind
of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony,
something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all
hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all
the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they've shed; that it will make
it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with
men--but though all that may come to pass, I don't accept it. I won't
accept it. Even if parallel lines do meet and I see it myself, I shall see
it and say that they've met, but still I won't accept it. That's what's at
the root of me, Alyosha; that's my creed. I am in earnest in what I say. I
began our talk as stupidly as I could on purpose, but I've led up to my
confession, for that's all you want. You didn't want to hear about God,
but only to know what the brother you love lives by. And so I've told
you."

Ivan concluded his long tirade with marked and unexpected feeling.

"And why did you begin 'as stupidly as you could'?" asked Alyosha, looking
dreamily at him.

"To begin with, for the sake of being Russian. Russian conversations on
such subjects are always carried on inconceivably stupidly. And secondly,
the stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is,
the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artle