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52 The Gospel in Dostoyevsky“And what tortures have you in the other world besides thequadrillion kilometers?” asked Ivan with a strange eagerness.“What tortures? Ah, don’t ask. In the old days we had all sorts,but now they have taken chiefly to moral punishments – ‘thestings of conscience’ and all that nonsense. We got that toofrom you, from the softening of your manners. And who’s thebetter for it? Only those who have no conscience, for how canthey be tortured by conscience when they have none? But decentpeople who have a conscience and a sense of honor suffer forit. Reforms – when the ground has not been prepared for them,and especially if they are institutions copied from abroad – donothing but mischief! The ancient fire was better. Well, this manwho was condemned to the quadrillion kilometers stood still,looked round, and lay down across the road. ‘I won’t go, I refuseon principle!’ Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist andmix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked for threedays and nights in the belly of the whale, and you get the characterof that thinker who lay across the road.”“What did he lie on there?”“Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. You are notlaughing?”“Bravo!” cried Ivan, still with the same strange eagerness. Nowhe was listening with an unexpected curiosity. “Well, is he lyingthere now?”“That’s the point, he isn’t. He lay there almost a thousandyears, and then he got up and went on.”“What an ass!” cried Ivan, laughing nervously and still seemingto be pondering something intently. “Does it make any differencewhether he lies there forever or walks the quadrillion kilometers?It would take a billion years to walk it?”