I learned
that it was impossible to avoid sin.
"You drink wine--this is a sin; give short weight--that is a sin;
look on your neighbour's wife--that is a sin; everything you do
is sin--even if you do nothing, that is sin; there is no road of
sinlessness.
"I went on living as I felt inclined, without care as to whether it
were sin or no. But still I asked myself about man's life.
"Some one said to me, 'You will never understand, because you think of
yourself as a separate individual, and not as just a little part of
the human race. You live on in all the people who come after you, just
as before you were born you lived in those who were before you.'
"That was something new, but I understood him, and I asked him a new
question: 'If what you say is true--and very likely it is--what, then,
is the past of the whole human race, and what its future? What does
the life of the human race mean?'
"That he could not answer. Can you answer it? No. No one can answer
it."
* * * * *
"You are like Socrates," I said.
"Who was Socrates?"
"He was the man whom the Oracle indicated as the wisest man alive. All
men knew nothing, but Socrates was found wiser than they, for he alone
knew that he knew nought."
A look of pleased vanity floated over the face of my Mingrelian host.
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