THE GRAND INQUISITOR
267
It is interesting to compare his earlier and later handling of this
theme of "the compulsory organization of human happiness." Let
us begin, then, by putting the Grand Inquisitor into relation with
another and quite as famous protagonist of Dostoevsky's, the hero–
narrator of
Notes from Underground.
It is for the content of
their
thought that they are worth comparing, and not primarily as novel–
istic creations. The aged cardinal of Seville, lacking the dimension of
subjectivity so conspicuous in the underground man, is not a charac–
ter in the proper sense of the term but simply the personification of
a
Weltanschauung-that
of Ivan Karamazov in its most heretical
and negative aspects. The undergroundling, on the other hand, is
very far from being merely the
embodiment
of an idea. Still, in link–
ing him
with
the Inquisitor, our concern is not with the underground–
ling's prostrate personality,
with
his nausea of consciousness and en–
joyment of his own degradation, but rather
with
the theory of human
nature he propounds, a theory in which the bold affirmation of free–
dom
is
combined
with
the equally bold negation of "reason, progress
and enlightenment."
What this theory has
in
common with that of the Inquisitor is
that both are centered on the question of freedom. Where they differ
is in their answers to this
question,
the undergroundling's answer be–
ing
as positive as the Inquisitor's is negative. Hence the contrast be–
tween the two theories gives us the measure of the growth and change
of Dostoevsky's thought between the early 1860s, when he wrote
Notes from Underground,
and the period of his last and greatest
novel. The earlier work is written from the perspective of the isolated
and perversely recalcitrant individual, who, in his "moral obliquity,"
will never consent to join the "universal and happy antheap" pro–
jected by the ideologues of rational self-interest and progress toward
an harmonious society. Through the
figure
of this unconsoled and un–
consolable individual Dostoevsky pointed to the chaos and irrational–
ity of human nature, thus mocking the utilitarian formulas of the
radicals and liberals. "Man everywhere and at all
times
. . .
has
preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and
advantage dictated. . . . One's own unfettered
choice,
one's own
caprice . . . is that very 'most advantageous advantage' . . . against
which all systems and theories are shattered to atoms. . . . What man
wants is simply
independent
choice, whatever that independence may
