Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/476

450 act of an egoist. In the end it becomes perfectly clear to him that he has no ties with any one in the world, that he cares nothing either for any individual or for the world at large. The emissary from the central committee seeks him out. The party has a difficult task to entrust to George. But George suddenly decides that he will have nothing to do with the matter, that he does not wish to kill. "Why kill?" he asks. The emissary, probably a man who has spent his days in prison or in Siberia, seems to him only an old fellow in his dotage. "He looked anxiously at me and stroked my hand affectionately like a father. But I knew for certain: I was not with him, nor with Vanja, nor with Erna. I was with no one." He decides that he will cease to live. Memories of childhood and of his mother's love cannot teach him to love his fellow men. The world has become accursed to him. He had a desire of old, and accomplished his task. Now the desire is gone. The ultra-rationalist sickens from infirmity of will. "I am alone. I will leave the dull puppet show." The beautiful autumn day beguiles him for a moment, but when night falls George will say his last word. "My revolver is with me."

Ropšin gives a gruesome confirmation of Dostoevskii's formula, the alternatives of murder and suicide. Erna takes her own life, not merely because the police-spies are upon her trail. Fedor kills his pursuers and finally himself because, like George, he sees no meaning in the life he has been leading. "I will reserve the last shot for myself that will settle it"—such is the mood in which he undertakes the affair. If he is not killed in the struggle, he will kill himself. Vanja is of a very different type. He kills, but knows even as he does so that he is committing a great sin. He hopes that he too will be killed by the bomb that he throws, conceiving that his own death will be an appropriate punishment for his crime. He submits quietly to arrest that he may atone with his own death, for he has no wish to continue living after he has committed murder. He was a peculiar Christian or half-Christian. In a letter to his friends which he managed to smuggle out of prison he wrote: "I did not feel in me the strength to live for the sake of love, and I understood that I could die and ought to die for the sake of it."

According to Vanja, and he is here reproducing Dostoevskii's thought, it is easy to die for another, easy to sacrifice one's