like seed, so that something new, something different, may come forth. It isn’t time that’s required, it’s a new way of looking at things. A new appetite for life, in other words. As it is, we have but a semblance of life. We’re alive only in dreams. It’s the mind in us that refuses to be killed off. The mind is tough—and far more mysterious than the wildest dreams of theologians. It may well be that there is nothing but mind . . . not the little mind we know, to be sure, but the great Mind in which we swim, the Mind which permeates the whole universe. Dostoevski, let me remind you, had amazing insight not only into the soul of man but into the mind and spirit of the universe. That’s why it’s impossible to shake him off, even though, as I said, what he represents is done for.”
Here I had to interrupt. “Excuse me,” I said, “but what did Dostoevski represent, in your opinion?”
“I can’t answer that in a few words. Nobody can. He gave us a revelation, and it’s up to each one of us to make what we can of it. Some lose themselves in Christ. One can lose himself in Dostoevski too. He takes you to the end of the road. . . . Does that mean anything to you?”
“Yes and no.”
“To me,” said Stymer, “it means that there are no possibilities today such as men imagine. It means that we are thoroughly deluded—about everything. Dostoevski explored the field in advance, and he found the road blocked at every turn. He was a frontier man, in the profound sense of the word. He took up one position after another, at every dangerous, promising point, and he found that there was no issue for us, such as we are. He took refuge finally in the Supreme Being.”
“That doesn’t sound exactly like the Dostoevski I know,” said I. “It has a hopeless ring to it.”
“No, it’s not hopeless at all. It’s realistic—in a superhuman sense. The last thing Dostoevski could possibly have believed in is a hereafter such as the clergy give us. All religions give us a sugarcoated pill to swallow. They want us to swallow what we never can or will swallow—death. Man will never accept the idea of death, never reconcile himself to it. . . . But I’m getting off the track. You speak of man’s fate. Better than anyone, Dostoevski understood that man will never accept life unquestioningly until he is threatened with extinction. It was his belief, his deep conviction, I would say, that man may have everlasting life if he desires it with his whole heart and being. There is no reason to die, none whatever. We die because we lack faith in life, because we refuse to surrender to life completely. . . . And that brings me to the present, to life as we know it today. Isn’t it obvious that our whole way of life is a dedication to death? In our desperate efforts to preserve ourselves, preserve what we have created, we bring about our own death. We do not surrender to life, we struggle to avoid dying. Which means not that we have lost faith in God but that we have lost faith in life itself. To live dangerously, as Nietzsche put it, is to live naked and unashamed. It means putting one’s trust in the life-force and ceasing to battle with a phantom called death, a phantom called disease, a phantom called sin, a phantom called fear, and so on. The phantom world! That’s the world which we have created for ourselves. Think of the military, with their perpetual talk of the enemy. Think of the clergy, with their perpetual talk of sin and damnation. Think of the legal fraternity, with their perpetual talk of fine and imprisonment. Think of the medical profession, with their perpetual talk of disease and death. And our educators, the greatest fools ever, with their parrot-like rote and their innate inability to accept any idea unless it be a hundred or a thousand years old. As for those who govern the world, there you have the most dishonest, the most hypocritical, the most deluded and the most unimaginative beings imaginable. You pretend to be concerned about man’s fate. The miracle is that man has sustained even the illusion of freedom. No, the road is blocked, whichever way you turn. Every wall, every barrier, every obstacle that hems us in is our own doing. No need to drag in God, the Devil or Chance. The Lord of all Creation is taking a cat nap while we work out the puzzle. He’s permitted us to deprive ourselves of everything but mind. It’s in the mind that the life-force has taken refuge. Everything has been analyzed to the point of nullity. Perhaps now the very emptiness of life will take on meaning, will provide the clue.”
He came to a dead stop, remained absolutely immobile for a space, then raised himself on one elbow.
“The criminal aspect of the mind! I don’t know how or where I got hold of that phrase, but it enthralls me absolutely. It might well be the overall title for the books I have in mind to write. The very word criminal shakes me to the foundations. It’s such a meaningless word today, yet it’s the most—what shall I say?—the most serious word in man’s vocabulary. The very notion of crime is an awesome one. It has such deep, tangled roots. Once the great word, for me, was rebel. When I say criminal, however, I find myself utterly baffled. Sometimes, I confess, I don’t know what the word means. Or, if I think I do, then I am forced to look upon the whole human race as one indescribable hydra-headed monster whose name is CRIMINAL. I sometimes put it another way to myself—man his own criminal. Which is almost meaningless. What I’m trying to say, though perhaps it’s trite, banal, oversimplified, is this . . . If there is such a thing as a criminal, then the whole race is tainted. You can’t remove the criminal element in man by performing a surgical operation on society. What’s criminal is cancerous, and what’s cancerous is unclean. Crime isn’t merely coeval with law and order, crime is prenatal, so to speak. It’s in the very consciousness of man, and it won’t be dislodged, it won’t be extirpated, until a new consciousness is born. Do I make it clear? The question I ask myself over and over is—how did man ever come to look upon himself, or his fellow man, as a criminal? What caused him to harbor guilt feelings? To make even the animals feel guilty? How did he ever come to poison life at the source, in other words? It’s very convenient to blame it on the priesthood. But I can’t credit them with having that much power over us. If we are victims, they are too. But what are we the victims of? What is it that tortures us, young and old alike, the wise as well as the innocent? It’s my belief that that is what we are going to discover, now that we’ve been driven underground. Rendered naked and destitute, we will be able to give ourselves up to the grand problem unhindered. For an eternity, if need be. Nothing else is of importance, don’t you see? Maybe you don’t. Maybe I see it so clearly that I can’t express it adequately in words. Anyway, that’s our world perspective. . . .”
At this point he got out of bed to fix himself a drink, asking as he did so if I could stand any more of his drivel. I nodded affirmatively.
“I’m thoroughly wound up, as you see,” he continued. “As a matter of fact, I’m beginning to see it all so clearly again, now that I’ve unlimbered to you, that I almost feel I could write the books myself. If I haven’t lived for myself I certainly have lived other people’s lives. Perhaps I’ll begin to live my own when I begin writing. You know, I already feel kindlier toward the world, just getting this much off my chest. Maybe you were right about being more generous with myself. It’s certainly a relaxing thought. Inside I’m all steel girders. I’ve got to melt, grow fiber, cartilage, lymph and muscle. To think that anyone could let himself grow so rigid . . . ridiculous, what! That’s what comes from battling all one’s life.”
He paused long enough to take a good slug, then raced on.
“You know, there isn’t a thing in the world worth fighting for except peace of mind. The more you triumph in this world the more you defeat yourself. Jesus was right. One has to triumph over the world. ‘Overcome the world,’ I think was the expression. To do that, of course, means acquiring a new consciousness, a new view of things. And that’s the only meaning one can put on freedom. No man can attain freedom who is of the world. Die to the world and you find life everlasting. You know, I suppose, that the advent of Christ was of the greatest importance to Dostoevski. Dostoevski only succeeded in embracing the idea of God through conceiving of a man-god. He humanized the conception of God, brought Him nearer to us, made Him more comprehensible, and finally, strange as it may sound, even more Godlike. . . . Once again I must come back to the criminal. The only sin, or crime, that man could commit, in the eyes of Jesus, was to sin against the Holy Ghost. To deny the spirit, or the life force, if you will. Christ recognized no such thing as a criminal. He ignored all this nonsense, this confusion, this rank superstition with which