"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," in The Best Short Stories of Dostoevsky, trans. David Magarshack (New York: The Modern Library, 1992; first published 1877), 335-6.
But are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can that be nature’s law? And if that is an earth there, is it the same earth as ours? Just the same poor, unhappy, but dear, dear earth, and beloved forever and ever? Arousing like our earth the same poignant love for herself even in the most ungrateful of her children? I kept crying, deeply moved by an uncontrollable, rapturous love for the dear old earth I had left behind… Suddenly a strange feeling of some great and sacred jealousy blazed up in my heart. “How is such a repetition possible and why? I love, I can only love the earth I’ve left behind, stained with my blood when, ungrateful wretch that I am, I extinguished my life by shooting myself through the heart. But never, never have I ceased to love that earth, and even on the night I parted from it I loved it perhaps more poignantly than ever. Is there suffering on this new earth? On our earth we can truly love only with suffering and through suffering! We know not how to love otherwise. We know no other love. I want suffering in order to love. I want and thirst this very minute to kiss, with tears streaming down my cheeks, the one and only earth I have left behind. I don’t want, I won’t accept life on any other!
Did I ever tell you about a picture by Boughton, “The Pilgrim’s Progress”? It is toward evening. A sandy path leads over the hills to a mountain, on the top of which is the Holy City, lit by the red sun setting behind the gray evening clouds. On the road is a pilgrim who wants to go to the city; he is already tired and asks a woman in black, who is standing by the road and whose name is “Sorrowful yet always Rejoicing”: “Does the road go uphill all the way?” “Yes, to the very end.” “And will the journey take all day long?” “Yes, from morn till night my friend.” Truly, it is not a picture, but an inspiration.
I purpose to present an outline of the great sacred struggle for the liberty of science — a struggle which has lasted for so many centuries, and which yet continues. A hard contest it has been a war waged longer with battles fiercer with sieges more persistent with strategy more shrewd than in any of the comparatively transient warfare of Caesar or Napoleon or Moltke. ¶ I shall ask you to go with me through some of the most protracted sieges and over some of the hardest fought battle fields of this war We will look well at the combatants we will listen to the battle cries we will note the strategy of leaders the cut and thrust of champions the weight of missiles the temper of weapons we will look also at the truces and treaties and note the delusive impotency of all compromises in which the warriors for scientific truth have consented to receive direction or bias from the best of men uninspired by the scientific spirit, or unfamiliar with scientific methods.
To express my feelings for her [Kee], I said, “She, and no other.” And her “no, never, never” (niet, nooit, nimmer) was not strong enough to make me give her up. I still had hope, and my love remained alive, notwithstanding this refusal, which I thought was like a piece of ice that would melt. But I could find no rest. The strain became unbearable because she was alwys silent and I never received a word in answer. Then I went to Amsterdam. There [her parents] told me, “When you are in the house, Kee leaves it. She answers, ‘Certainly not him’ to your, ‘she, and no other'”. Your persistence is disgusting. I put my hand in the flame of the lamp and said, “Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame”… no wonder that Teersteg perhaps noticed my hand afterward. But I think they blew out the lamp and said, “You will not see her.” Well, it was too much for me, especially when they spoke of my wanting to coerce her, and I felt that the crushing things they said to me were unanswerable, and that my “she, and no other” had been killed.
The impregnable position of science may be described in a few words. We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology the entire domain of cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon the domain of science must, in so far as they do this, submit to its control, and relinquish all thought of controlling it. Acting otherwise proved disastrous in the past, and it is simply fatuous to-day. Every system which would escape the fate of an organism too rigid to adjust itself to its environment, must be plastic to the extent that the growth of knowledge demands. When this truth has been thoroughly taken in, rigidity will be relaxed, exclusiveness diminished, things now deemed essential will be dropped, and elements now rejected will be assimilated. The lifting of the life is the essential point; and as long as dogmatism, fanaticism, and intolerance are kept out, various modes of leverage may be employed to raise life to a higher level.
Unite the pair so long disjoined,
Knowledge and vital piety:
Learning and holiness combined,
And truth and love, let all men see
In those whom up to thee we give,
Thine, wholly thine, to die and live.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, "The First Cry from the Cross", Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume 15 (October 24, 1869).
Go
A church in London which does not exist to do good in the slums, and dens, and kennels of the city, is a church that has no reason to justify its longer existing. A church that does not exist to reclaim heathenism, to fight with evil, to destroy error, to put down falsehood, a church that does not exist to take the side of the poor, to denounce injustice and to hold up righteousness, is a church that has no right to be.
Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you yourself shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. ¶ The excursion is ended, and has passed to its place among the things that were. But its varied scenes and its manifold incidents will linger pleasantly in our memories for many a year to come. Always on the wing, as we were, and merely pausing a moment to catch fitful glimpses of the wonders of half a world, we could not hope to receive or retain vivid impressions of all it was our fortune to see. Yet our holyday flight has not been in vain — for above the confusion of vague recollections, certain of its best prized pictures lift themselves and will still continue perfect in tint and outline after their surroundings shall have faded away.