The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; Andrew R. MacAndrew Page A

because, if they’re not going to drag me down to hell, what justice is there in the world? No, even if they didn’t exist, those hooks,  il faudrait les inventer,  even especially for me, because you can’t even begin to imagine, my boy, all the disgraceful things I’ve done.”
    “But there are no hooks there,” Alyosha said quietly and seriously, looking attentively at his father.
    “I know, I know, just the shadows of hooks. I’ve heard the story. It’s like that Frenchman’s description of hell:  ‘J’ai vu I’ombre d’un cocher, qui avec I’ombre d’une brosse frottait I’ombre d’une carrosse.’  And how do you know, my dear boy, that there are no hooks? We’ll see what tune you sing after you’ve spent a while with those monks. Still, while you’re there, try to find out the truth, and when you do, come and tell me what’s what. It will be easier to leave for the other world if I know what to expect there. Besides, it will be more seemly for you to live in the monastery than to stay here with an old drunkard like me, and with all these sluts, though nothing could sully you, clean angel that you are. Well, I trust there’ll be nothing to sully you there either and that’s why I’m letting you go. Why, devils haven’t eaten your brains, after all, and if you’re all afire to go there now, it’ll burn off in good time, cool off. You’ll get over it and come back to me. And I’ll be waiting for you here, because I know you’re the only person on earth who hasn’t condemned me—I feel it. I can’t help feeling it!”
    And he even wept. He was sentimental. He was wicked and sentimental.
    Chapter 5: Elders
    THE READER may imagine, perhaps, that my young man was sickly, exalted, a poor physical specimen, an undersized, puny, pale, and consumptive dreamer. Just the opposite was true: Alyosha was then the picture of health, a sturdy, red-cheeked, clear-eyed nineteen-year-old boy. He was very handsome, too, and slender, above average height, with dark-brown hair, a regular although rather long face, and shiny dark-gray wide-set eyes, which gave him a thoughtful and serene look. Of course, nothing prevents a mystic or a fanatic from having red cheeks. But be that as it may, I think Alyosha was more of a realist than anyone I know. Of course, when he was in the monastery he believed entirely in miracles, but I don’t think that miracles ever confound a realist. Nor is it miracles that bring a realist to religion. If he is an unbeliever, a true realist will always find the strength and ability not to believe in a miracle, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact, he will rather disbelieve his own senses than accept that fact. Or he may concede the fact and explain it away as a natural phenomenon until then unknown. In a realist, it is not miracles that generate faith, but faith that generates miracles. Once a realist becomes a believer, however, his very realism will make him accept the existence of miracles. The apostle Thomas said he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said: “My Lord and my God!” Was it a miracle that made him believe? Most likely not. He believed only because he wanted to believe, and possibly he already believed in the secret recesses of his being while he was saying, “Except I shall see, I will not believe.”
    Some may say that Alyosha was not too bright, rather uneducated, had not even finished school, and so on. It is true that he had not finished school, but it would be doing him a great injustice to say that he was obtuse or stupid. I shall simply repeat here what I have said before: he chose the course he did only because it struck him at that particular moment as the ideal course for his soul, which longed to escape from darkness into light. It must be added that, in a way, he was indeed a member of our younger generation, which means that he was honest, that he believed in, demanded, and searched for truth; that, because