Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [410]
As it happened, Misha had heard of this philosopher, who was in vogue amongst the Radicals but he had to confess that he had never read him.
‘Had you done so,’ Nicolai said coldly, ‘you would know that your God is nothing more than a projection of human desires. No more, no less.’ He looked at Misha with pity. ‘You need God and the church because they belong to the society of the past. In the society of the future, we won’t need God any more. God is dead.’
Misha put down his journal and looked at his son with interest. ‘If God is dead,’ he asked, ‘what will you replace Him with?’
‘Science, of course.’ Nicolai looked at him impatiently. ‘Science has proved that the universe is material. Everything can be explained, don’t you realize, by physical laws? There is no God pulling the strings – that’s mere superstition. It’s like thinking the earth was flat. But science, and only science, makes men free.’
‘Free?’
‘Yes. Masters of themselves. In Russia, a superstitious church supports an autocratic Tsar and the people live in darkness, like slaves. But science will sweep it all away, and then,’ he concluded impressively, ‘there will be a new world.’
‘What sort of world?’ Misha enquired.
‘Quite unlike yours,’ Nicolai told him bluntly. ‘A world of truth and justice. A world where men share the fruits of the earth together and where one man is not set over another. A world without exploitation of man by man.’
Misha nodded thoughtfully. He recognized that these were noble sentiments, yet he could not help observing: ‘Your new world sounds to me a little like a Christian heaven.’
‘Not at all,’ Nicolai replied quickly. ‘Your Christian heaven is an invention. It exists in a non-existent after-life. It’s an illusion, a cheat. But the new world, the scientific one, will be here on earth and men will live in it.’
‘So you despise my hope of heaven and you think my religion is a fraud?’
‘Precisely.’
Misha considered. He did not object to his son’s desire to build a heaven on earth, even if he could not himself believe in it. Yet it seemed to him that there was a flaw in the whole argument.
‘You speak of a new world where no one will be exploited,’ he ventured. ‘You also say that there is no God. But tell me this: if the universe is material, if I face no threat of hell nor hope of heaven in the life to come – then why should I trouble to be kind to my neighbour and share the fruits of the earth with him? Won’t I exploit him, materially, for all I can get, since I’ve nothing else to look forward to?’
Nicolai looked at Popov and laughed scornfully. ‘You don’t understand anything, do you?’ he remarked contemptuously. And then, coldly: ‘I’m afraid I’ve nothing more to say to you.’
Misha gazed at his son sadly. It was not the argument he minded, nor even the rudeness. He and Nicolai had often had hot disputes before. But something in the tone of this last dismissal worried him profoundly. He could sense that it implied some deeper parting of the ways. He turned to Popov. ‘Perhaps you can enlighten me,’ he said quietly.
‘Perhaps.’ Popov shrugged. ‘It’s quite simple. You can’t understand because you are a product of the old world. Your thinking is so conditioned by your society that you can’t imagine a moral world without a God. In the new world, where society will be organized differently, people will be different.’ He stared at Misha with cold, green eyes. ‘It’s like Darwin’s Theory of Evolution – some species don’t adapt, and die out.’
‘So a person who thinks like me won’t exist any more?’ Misha suggested.
And then Yevgeny Popov gave one of his rare smiles.
‘You’re already dead,’ he said simply.
And why now, Misha wondered, should Nicolai suddenly jump up, his face very pale, and run out of the room?