“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.

“Always the same, always the same, from the beginning of time and never any other,” Kirillov said with sparkling eyes, as though there were almost a triumph in that idea.