Thursday, October 17, 2019

It is not the law but the belief in immortality that drives us to love

"'Generally, again, I ask your permission to drop the subject,' Pyotr Alexandrovich repeated, 'and instead let me tell you another anecdote, gentlemen, about Ivan Fyodorovich himself, a most typical and interesting one. No more than five days ago, at a local gathering, predominantly of ladies, he solemnly announced in the discussion that there is decidedly nothing in the whole world that would make men love their fellow men; that there exists no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that if there is and has been any love on earth up to now, it has come not from natural law but solely from people's belief in their immortality....'" - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, pg. 69

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