Status Updates From Resurrection

Answers in the form of new questions, like the boy's, was all Nekhlúdoff got in reply to his one primary question. He found much that was clever, learned much that was interesting, but what he did not find was an answer to the principal question: By what right some people punish others?

Nekhlúdoff distinctly saw that both these men were richly endowed by nature, but had been neglected and crippled like uncared-for plants.

But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands our worship—then we are swallowed up by it completely, and worship animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful."

The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting," thought he, "but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and—whether one has fallen or resisted—one remains what one was before.

for the sake of getting rid of one really dangerous person, ten who seemed dangerous were punished, as, when cutting a rotten piece out of anything, one has to cut away some that is good. This explanation seemed very simple and clear to Nekhlúdoff; but its very simplicity and clearness made him hesitate to accept it. Was it possible that so complicated a phenomenon could have so simple and terrible an explanation?