heir heads are
partitioned off into little chambers; they are always careful not to
do anything which is unnecessary or harmful. Now you can't clear a
dense forest by cutting down one tree at a time, can you? That's what
they do. While they chop at one end, it grows up at the other. You
can't accomplish anything that way; it's labor lost. I proposed a
scheme to them, something on a larger scale. They got frightened,
wouldn't hear of it. A little weak-kneed they are. So I left them.
Let them practise virtue. A narrow-minded bunch. They lack breadth of
vision.

LIPA

You say it as calmly as if you were joking.

SAVVA

No, I am not joking.

LIPA

Aren't you afraid?

SAVVA

I? So far I haven't been, and I don't ever expect to be. What worse
can happen to a man than to have been born? It's like asking a man who
is drowning whether he is not afraid of getting wet. _(Laughs)_

LIPA

So that's the kind you are.

SAVVA

One thing I learned from them: respect for dynamite. It's a powerful
instrument, dynamite is--nothing like it for a convincing argument.

LIPA

You are only twenty-three years old. You have no beard yet, not even a
moustache.

SAVVA _(feeling his face)_

Yes, a measly growth; but what conclusions do you draw from that?

LIPA

Fear will come to you yet.

SAVVA

No. If I haven't been frightened so far by watching life, there's
nothing else to fear. Life, yes. I embrace the earth with my eyes, the
whole of it, the entire little planetoid, and I can find nothing more
terrible on it than man and human life. And I am not afraid of man.

LIPA _(scarcely listening to him; ecstatically)_

Yes, that's the word. That's it. Savva, dear, I am not afraid of
bodily suffering either. Burn me on a slow fire. Cut me to pieces. I
won't cry. I'll laugh. I know I will. But there is another thing I am
afraid of. I am afraid of people's suffering, of the misery from which
they cannot escape. When in the stillness of the night, broken only by
the striking of the hours, I think of how much suffering there is all
around us--aimless, needless suffering; suffering one doesn't even
know of--when I think of that, I am chilled with terror. I go down on
my knees and pray. I pray to God, saying to Him: "Oh, Lord, if there
has to be a victim, take me, but give the people joy, give them peace,
give them forgetfulness. Oh, Lord, all powerful as Thou art--"

SAVVA

Yes.

LIPA

I have read about a man who was