Brothers
“Yes, we shall set them [the flock] to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make their life like a child’s game, with children’s songs and innocent dance.
Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. And we shall take it upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviours who have taken on themselves their sins before God. And they will have no secrets from us.
We shall allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children according to whether they have been obedient or disobedient- and they will submit to us gladly and cheerfully.
The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we, we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy.
There will be thousands of millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil.
Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in the other world, it certainly would not be for such as they.”
Dostoevsky? So much for “light summer reading”… :)
Life, death, the afterlife or lack thereof… it certainly was a day to have all that on the brain. Rest in peace, indeed, lil coffee bean.
For a long while now I’ve known the last paragraph as a quotation, and when I looked it up again I found the surrounding text… which is just as incredible.
Most do indeed only wish for a just master and have no desire for true freedom.