A.P. Chekhov
- The Duel
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"The 'humane studies' of which you speak will
only satisfy human thought when, as they advance, they meet the
exact sciences and progress side by side with them. Whether they
will meet under a new microscope, or in the monologues of a new
Hamlet, or in a new religion, I do not know, but I expect the
earth will be covered with a crust of ice before it comes to
pass. Of all humane learning the most durable and living is, of
course, the teaching of Christ; but look how differently even
that is interpreted! Some teach that we must love all our
neighbours but make an exception of soldiers, criminals, and
lunatics. They allow the first to be killed in war, the second
to be isolated or executed, and the third they forbid to marry.
Other interpreters teach that we must love all our neighbours
without exception, with no distinction of plus or minus.
According to their teaching, if a consumptive or a murderer or
an epileptic asks your daughter in marriage, you must let him
have her. If crtins go to war against the physically and
mentally healthy, don't defend yourselves. This advocacy of love
for love's sake, like art for art's sake, if it could have
power, would bring mankind in the long run to complete
extinction, and so would become the vastest crime that has ever
been committed upon earth. There are very many interpretations,
and since there are many of them, serious thought is not
satisfied by any one of them, and hastens to add its own
individual interpretation to the mass. For that reason you
should never put a question on a philosophical or so-called
Christian basis; by so doing you only remove the question
further from solution."
The deacon listened to the zoologist attentively, thought a
little, and asked:
"Have the philosophers invented the moral law which is innate in
every man, or did God create it together with the body?"
"I don't know. But that law is so universal among all peoples
and all ages that I fancy we ought to recognise it as
organically connected with man. It is not invented, but exists
and will exist. I don't tell you that one day it will be seen
under the microscope, but its organic connection is shown,
indeed, by evidence: serious affections of the brain and all
so-called mental diseases, to the best of my belief, show
themselves first of all in the perversion of the moral law."
"Good. So then, just as our stomach bids us eat, our moral sense
bids us love our neighbours. Is that it? But our natural man
through self-love opposes the voice of conscience and reason,
and this gives rise to many brain-racking questions. To whom
ought we to turn for the solution of those questions if you
forbid us to put them on the philosophic basis?"
"Turn to what little exact science we have. Trust to evidence
and the logic of facts. It is true it is but little, but, on the
other hand, it is less fluid and shifting than philosophy. The
moral law, let us suppose, demands that you love your neighbour.
Well? Love ought to show itself in the removal of everything
which in one way or another is injurious to men and threatens
them with danger in the present or in the future. Our knowledge
and the evidence tells us that the morally and physically
abnormal are a menace to humanity. If so you must struggle
against the abnormal; if you are not able to raise them to the
normal standard you must have strength and ability to render
them harmless -- that is, to destroy them."
"So love consists in the strong overcoming the weak."
"Undoubtedly."
"But you know the strong crucified our Lord Jesus Christ," said
the deacon hotly.
"The fact is that those who crucified Him were not the strong
but the weak. Human culture weakens and strives to nullify the
struggle for existence and natural selection; hence the rapid
advancement of the weak and their predominance over the strong.
Imagine that you succeeded in instilling into bees humanitarian
ideas in their crude and elementary form. What would come of it?
The drones who ought to be killed would remain alive, would
devour the honey, would corrupt and stifle the bees, resulting
in the predominance of the weak over the strong and the
degeneration of the latter. The same process is taking place now
with humanity; the weak are oppressing the strong. Among savages
untouched by civilisation the strongest, cleverest, and most
moral takes the lead; he is the chief and the master. But we
civilised men have crucified Christ, and we go on crucifying
Him, so there is something lacking in us. . . . And that
something one ought to raise up in ourselves, or there will be
no end to these errors."
"But what criterion have you to distinguish the strong from the
weak?"
"Knowledge and evidence. The tuberculous and the scrofulous are
recognised by their diseases, and the insane and the immoral by
their actions."
"But mistakes may be made!"
"Yes, but it's no use to be afraid of getting your feet wet when
you are threatened with the deluge!"
"That's philosophy," laughed the deacon.
"Not a bit of it. You are so corrupted by your seminary
philosophy that you want to see nothing but fog in everything.
The abstract studies with which your youthful head is stuffed
are called abstract just because they abstract your minds from
what is obvious. Look the devil straight in the eye, and if he's
the devil, tell him he's the devil, and don't go calling to Kant
or Hegel for explanations."
The zoologist paused and went on:
"Twice two's four, and a stone's a stone. Here to-morrow we have
a duel. You and I will say it's stupid and absurd, that the duel
is out of date, that there is no real difference between the
aristocratic duel and the drunken brawl in the pot-house, and
yet we shall not stop, we shall go there and fight. So there is
some force stronger than our reasoning. We shout that war is
plunder, robbery, atrocity, fratricide; we cannot look upon
blood without fainting; but the French or the Germans have only
to insult us for us to feel at once an exaltation of spirit; in
the most genuine way we shout 'Hurrah!' and rush to attack the
foe. You will invoke the blessing of God on our weapons, and our
valour will arouse universal and general enthusiasm. Again it
follows that there is a force, if not higher, at any rate
stronger, than us and our philosophy. We can no more stop it
than that cloud which is moving upwards over the sea. Don't be
hypocritical, don't make a long nose at it on the sly; and don't
say, 'Ah, old-fashioned, stupid! Ah, it's inconsistent with
Scripture!' but look it straight in the face, recognise its
rational lawfulness, and when, for instance, it wants to destroy
a rotten, scrofulous, corrupt race, don't hinder it with your
pilules and misunderstood quotations from the Gospel. Leskov has
a story of a conscientious Danila who found a leper outside the
town, and fed and warmed him in the name of love and of Christ.
If that Danila had really loved humanity, he would have dragged
the leper as far as possible from the town, and would have flung
him in a pit, and would have gone to save the healthy. Christ, I
hope, taught us a rational, intelligent, practical love."
"What a fellow you are!" laughed the deacon. "You don't believe
in Christ. Why do you mention His name so often?"
"Yes, I do believe in Him. Only, of course, in my own way, not
in yours. Oh, deacon, deacon!" laughed the zoologist; he put his
arm round the deacon's waist, and said gaily: "Well? Are you
coming with us to the duel to-morrow?"
"My orders don't allow it, or else I should come."
"What do you mean by 'orders'?"
"I have been consecrated. I am in a state of grace."
"Oh, deacon, deacon," repeated Von Koren, laughing, "I love
talking to you."
"You say you have faith," said the deacon. "What sort of faith
is it? Why, I have an uncle, a priest, and he believes so that
when in time of drought he goes out into the fields to pray for
rain, he takes his umbrella and leather overcoat for fear of
getting wet through on his way home. That's faith! When he
speaks of Christ, his face is full of radiance, and all the
peasants, men and women, weep floods of tears. He would stop
that cloud and put all those forces you talk about to flight.
Yes . . . faith moves mountains."
The deacon laughed and slapped the zoologist on the shoulder.
"Yes . . ." he went on; "here you are teaching all the time,
fathoming the depths of the ocean, dividing the weak and the
strong, writing books and challenging to duels -- and everything
remains as it is; but, behold! some feeble old man will mutter
just one word with a holy spirit, or a new Mahomet, with a
sword, will gallop from Arabia, and everything will be
topsy-turvy, and in Europe not one stone will be left standing
upon another."
"Well, deacon, that's on the knees of the gods."
"Faith without works is dead, but works without faith are worse
still -- mere waste of time and nothing more."
The doctor came into sight on the sea-front. He saw the deacon
and the zoologist, and went up to them.
"I believe everything is ready," he said, breathing hard.
"Govorovsky and Boyko will be the seconds. They will start at
five o'clock in the morning. How it has clouded over," he said,
looking at the sky. "One can see nothing; there will be rain
directly."
"I hope you are coming with us?" said the zoologist.
"No, God preserve me; I'm worried enough as it is. Ustimovitch
is going instead of me. I've spoken to him already."
Far over the sea was a flash of lightning, followed by a hollow
roll of thunder.
"How stifling it is before a storm!" said Von Koren. "I bet
you've been to Laevsky already and have been weeping on his
bosom."
"Why should I go to him?" answered the doctor in confusion.
"What next?"
Before sunset he had walked several times along the boulevard
and the street in the hope of meeting Laevsky. He was ashamed of
his hastiness and the sudden outburst of friendliness which had
followed it. He wanted to apologise to Laevsky in a joking tone,
to give him a good talking to, to soothe him and to tell him
that the duel was a survival of medival barbarism, but that
Providence itself had brought them to the duel as a means of
reconciliation; that the next day, both being splendid and
highly intelligent people, they would, after exchanging shots,
appreciate each other's noble qualities and would become
friends. But he could not come across Laevsky.
"What should I go and see him for?" repeated Samoylenko. "I did
not insult him; he insulted me. Tell me, please, why he attacked
me. What harm had I done him? I go into the drawing-room, and,
all of a sudden, without the least provocation: 'Spy!' There's a
nice thing! Tell me, how did it begin? What did you say to him?"
"I told him his position was hopeless. And I was right. It is
only honest men or scoundrels who can find an escape from any
position, but one who wants to be at the same time an honest man
and a scoundrel -- it is a hopeless position. But it's eleven
o'clock, gentlemen, and we have to be up early to-morrow."
There was a sudden gust of wind; it blew up the dust on the
sea-front, whirled it round in eddies, with a howl that drowned
the roar of the sea.
"A squall," said the deacon. "We must go in, our eyes are
getting full of dust."
As they went, Samoylenko sighed and, holding his hat, said:
"I suppose I shan't sleep to-night."
"Don't you agitate yourself," laughed the zoologist. "You can
set your mind at rest; the duel will end in nothing. Laevsky
will magnanimously fire into the air -- he can do nothing else;
and I daresay I shall not fire at all. To be arrested and lose
my time on Laevsky's account -- the game's not worth the candle.
By the way, what is the punishment for duelling?"
"Arrest, and in the case of the death of your opponent a maximum
of three years' imprisonment in the fortress."
"The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul?"
"No, in a military fortress, I believe."
"Though this fine gentleman ought to have a lesson!"
Behind them on the sea, there was a flash of lightning, which
for an instant lighted up the roofs of the houses and the
mountains. The friends parted near the boulevard. When the
doctor disappeared in the darkness and his steps had died away,
Von Koren shouted to him:
"I only hope the weather won't interfere with us to-morrow!"
"Very likely it will! Please God it may!"
"Good-night!"
"What about the night? What do you say?"
In the roar of the wind and the sea and the crashes of thunder,
it was difficult to hear.
"It's nothing," shouted the zoologist, and hurried home.
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