第27章

It will be very difficult to say this to himself; it requires a rare combination of unusual circumstances.Now, on the other side, take the Church's own view of crime: is it not bound to renounce the present almost pagan attitude, and to change from a mechanical cutting off of its tainted member for the preservation of society, as at present, into completely and honestly adopting the idea of the regeneration of the man, of his reformation and salvation?""What do you mean? I fail to understand again," Miusov interrupted."Some sort of dream again.Something shapeless and even incomprehensible.What is excommunication? What sort of exclusion? Isuspect you are simply amusing yourself, Ivan Fyodorovitch.""Yes, but you know, in reality it is so now," said the elder suddenly, and all turned to him at once."If it were not for the Church of Christ there would be nothing to restrain the criminal from evil-doing, no real chastisement for it afterwards; none, that is, but the mechanical punishment spoken of just now, which in the majority of cases only embitters the heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, which lies in the recognition of sin by conscience.""How is that, may one inquire?" asked Miusov, with lively curiosity.

"Why," began the elder, "all these sentences to exile with hard labour, and formerly with flogging also, reform no one, and what's more, deter hardly a single criminal, and the number of crimes does not diminish but is continually on the increase.You must admit that.Consequently the security of society is not preserved, for, although the obnoxious member is mechanically cut off and sent far away out of sight, another criminal always comes to take his place at once, and often two of them.If anything does preserve society, even in our time, and does regenerate and transform the criminal, it is only the law of Christ speaking in his conscience.It is only by recognising his wrongdoing as a son of a Christian society- that is, of the Church- that he recognises his sin against society- that is, against the Church.So that it is only against the Church, and not against the State, that the criminal of to-day can recognise that he has sinned.If society, as a Church, had jurisdiction, then it would know when to bring back from exclusion and to reunite to itself.Now the Church having no real jurisdiction, but only the power of moral condemnation, withdraws of her own accord from punishing the criminal actively.She does not excommunicate him but simply persists in motherly exhortation of him.What is more, the Church even tries to preserve all Christian communion with the criminal.She admits him to church services, to the holy sacrament, gives him alms, and treats him more a captive than as a convict.And what would become of the criminal, O Lord, if even the Christian society-that is, the Church- were to reject him even as the civil law rejects him and cuts him off? What would become of him if the Church punished him with her excommunication as the direct consequence of the secular law? There could be no more terrible despair, at least for a Russian criminal, for Russian criminals still have faith.Though, who knows, perhaps then a fearful thing would happen, perhaps the despairing heart of the criminal would lose its faith and then what would become of him? But the Church, like a tender, loving mother, holds aloof from active punishment herself, as the sinner is too severely punished already by the civil law, and there must be at least someone to have pity on him.The Church holds aloof, above all, because its judgment is the only one that contains the truth, and therefore cannot practically and morally be united to any other judgment even as a temporary compromise.She can enter into no compact about that.The foreign criminal, they say, rarely repents, for the very doctrines of to-day confirm him in the idea that his crime is not a crime, but only a reaction against an unjustly oppressive force.

Society cuts him off completely by a force that triumphs over him mechanically and (so at least they say of themselves in Europe)accompanies this exclusion with hatred, forgetfulness, and the most profound indifference as to the ultimate fate of the erring brother.