“What of it? Why connect it? Life’s one thing and that’s another. Life exists, but death doesn’t at all.”
“You’ve begun to believe in a future eternal life?”
“No, not in a future eternal life, but in eternal life here. There are moments, you reach moments, and time suddenly stands still, and it will become eternal.”
“You hope to reach such a moment?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll scarcely be possible in our time,” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch responded slowly and, as it were, dreamily; the two spoke without the slightest irony. “In the Apocalypse the angel swears that there will be no more time.”
“I know. That’s very true; distinct and exact. When all mankind attains happiness then there will be no more time, for there’ll be no need of it, a very true thought.”
“Where will they put it?”
“Nowhere. Time’s not an object but an idea. It will be extinguished in the mind.”
“The old commonplaces of philosophy, the same from the beginning of time,” Stavrogin muttered with a kind of disdainful compassion.