JACQUES MAR/TAIN
225
freedom." Dostoyevsky even without benefit of St. Thomas
Aquinas is credited
w~th
the profound metaphysical insight that
one must believe either that God exists or that one is himself God.
IC God doesn't exist, then I must be God, and if I am God, I can
only prove it by committing suicide.
It is hard to take this with a straight face but it would be
discourteous to M. Maritain's high seriousness to take it otherwise.
Very well, then.
If
God does not exist, it does
not
follow in the
least that everything depends on me. Why should the only alter.
native to belief in a myth be a form of romantic madness? Even
if
God does not exist, I am still dependent in many ways upon
other things and other people who do not depend for their existence
upon me.
If
to exist means to be dependent upon something, it
still does not follow that I must be dependent upon God.
If
to exist
means to be independent of some things in some respects, it does
not follow that I must be independent of all other things in all other
respects, -that I must be "absolutely independent," whatever that
may mean. And if the absolute independence of Kirillov demands
that he commit suicide, then the absolute independence of a Divine
Power demands that, analogically understood, it, too, commit
suicide.
The whole reference to Dostoyevsky is unfortunate, and on
more grounds than one. The intellectual pattern of Dostoyevsky's
reactionary genius, although softened by pity, is not compromised,
IS
in M. Maritain, by doctrinally unmotivated gestures towards
liberalism and democracy. And his psychological insight pene·
trates even more deeply than M. Maritain realizes into the sophis.
tic compulsions of those who desire to find logical reasons for
beliefs based upon arbitrary faith. The sophism, whose conclusion
is
that atheism entails suicide, which M. MariLain borrows from
Iirillov, Dostoyevsky puts into the mouth of a madman. The more
plausible sophism that belief in an omnipotent and benevolent God
leads to self·destruction in a world of evil, Dostoyevsky puts into
the mouth of Ivan Karamazov, the most powerful intelligence
among his characters. Ivan is a believer whose Euclidean under·
llanding cannot grasp the reason why the innocent should suffer in
I
world created by an omnipotent and benevolent God. As he
explodes every justification theologians have advanced for the
existence of evil, he concludes, "It's not God that I don't accept,
