“I believe that God exists,” continued Sanine, “though I am not certain, absolutely certain. But whether He does or not, I do not know Him, nor can I tell what He requires of me. How could I possibly know this, even though I professed the most ardent faith in Him? God is God, and, not being human, cannot be judged by human standards. His created world around us contains all; good and evil, life and death, beauty and ugliness—everything, in fact, and thus all sense and all exact definition are lost to us, for His sense is not human, nor His ideas of good and evil human, either. Our conception of God must always be an idolatrous one, and we shall always give to our fetish the physiognomy and the garb suitable to the climatic conditions of the country in which we live. Absurd, isn’t it.”
“Yes, you’re right,” grunted Ivanoff, “quite right!”
“Then, what is the good of living?” asked Yourii, as he pushed back his glass in disgust, “or of dying, either?”
“One thing I know,” replied Sanine, “and that is, that I don’t want my life to be a miserable one. Thus, before all things, one must satisfy one’s natural desires. Desire is everything. When a man’s desires cease, his life ceases, too, and if he kills his desires, then he kills himself.”
“But his desires may be evil?”
“Possibly.”
“Well, what then.”
“Then … they must just be evil,” replied Sanine blandly, as he looked Yourii full in the face with his clear, blue eyes.
Ivanoff raised his eyebrows incredulously and said nothing. Yourii was silent also. For some reason or other he felt embarrassed by those clear, blue eyes, though he tried to keep looking at them.
For a few moments there was complete silence, so that one could plainly hear a night-moth desperately beating against the window-pane. Peter Ilitsch shook his head mournfully, and his drink-besotted visage drooped towards the stained, dirty newspaper. Sanine smiled again. This perpetual smile irritated and yet fascinated Yourii.