“The slave desires his liberty, while his master wants him to remain a slave. The wealthy man wants to keep his wealth, and the poor man, to destroy the rich; he who is oppressed, to be free; the victor to remain unvanquished; the loveless to be loved; the living not to die. Man desires the destruction of beasts, just as beasts wish to destroy man. Thus it was in the beginning, and thus it ever shall be; nor has any man a special right to get good that is good for him alone.”
“Men are wont to say that loving-kindness is better than hatred. Yet that is false, for if there be a reward, then certainly it is better to be kind and unselfish, but if not, then it is better for a man to take his share of happiness beneath the sun.”
Yourii read on, thinking that these written meditations of his were amazingly profound.
“It’s all so true!” he said to himself, and in his melancholy there was a touch of pride.
He went to the window and looked out into the garden where the paths were strewn with yellow leaves. The sickly hue of death confronted him at every point—dying leaves and dying insects whose lives depend on warmth and light.
Yourii could not comprehend this calm. The pageant of dying summer filled his soul with wrath unutterable.
“Autumn already; and then winter, and the snow. Then spring, and summer, and autumn again! The eternal monotony of it all! And what shall I be doing all the while? Exactly what I’m doing now. At best, I shall become dull-witted, caring for nothing. Then old age, and death.”
The same thoughts that had so often harassed him now rushed through his brain. Life, so he said, had passed by him; after all, there was no such thing as an exceptional existence; even a hero’s life is full of tedium, grievous at the outset, and joyless at the close.
“An achievement! A victory of some sort!” Yourii wrung his hands in despair. “To blaze up, and then to expire, without fear, without pain. That is the only real life!”
A thousand exploits one more heroic than the other, presented themselves to his mind, each like some grinning death’s head. Closing his eyes, Yourii could clearly behold a grey Petersburg morning, damp brick walls and a gibbet faintly outlined against the leaden sky. He pictured the barrel of a revolver pressed to his brow; he imagined that he could hear the whiz of nagaïkas as they struck his defenceless face and naked back.