bear Ivan, he hates him. He’s not fond of you, either. But I don’t turn him out, for he is a clever fellow. Awfully conceited, though. I said to him just now, ‘The Karamazovs are not blackguards, but philosophers; for all true Russians are philosophers, and though you’ve studied, you are not a philosopher—you are a low fellow.’ He laughed, so maliciously. And I said to him, ‘ De ideabus non est disputandum .’ Isn’t that rather good? I can set up for being a classic, you see!” Mitya laughed suddenly.
“Why is it all over with you? You said so just now,” Alyosha interposed.
“Why is it all over with me? H’m! … The fact of it is … if you take it as a whole, I am sorry to lose God—that’s why it is.”
“What do you mean by ‘sorry to lose God’?”
“Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head—that is, these nerves are there in the brain … (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering … that is, you see, I look at something with my eyes and then they begin quivering, those little tails … and when they quiver, then an image appears … it doesn’t appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes … and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment—devil take the moment!—but an image; that is, an object, or an action, damn it! That’s why I see and then think, because of those tails, not at all because I’ve got a soul, and that I am some sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense! Rakitin explained it all to me yesterday, brother, and it simply bowled me over. It’s magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man’s arising—that I understand. … And yet I am sorry to lose God!”
“Well, that’s a good thing, anyway,” said Alyosha.
“That I am sorry to lose God? It’s chemistry, brother, chemistry! There’s no help for it, your reverence, you must make way for chemistry. And