"Perhaps you're right," observed Soloveitchik sadly, "but was it
absolutely necessary? Would it not have been better if you had borne
the blow?"
"Better?" said Sanine. "A blow's always a painful thing. And why? For
what reason?"
"Oh! do, please, hear me out," interrupted Soloveitchik, with a
pleading gesture. "It might have been better--"
"For Sarudine, certainly,"
"No, for you, too; for you, too."
"Oh! Soloveitchik," replied Sanine, with a touch of annoyance, "a truce
to that silly old notion about moral victory; and a false notion, too.
Moral victory does not consist in offering one's cheek to the smiter,
but in being right before one's own conscience. How this is achieved is
a matter of chance, of circumstances. There is nothing so horrible as
slavery. Yet most horrible of all is it when a man whose inmost soul
rebels against coercion and force yet submits thereto in the name of
some power that is mightier than he."
Soloveitchik clasped his head with both hands, as one distraught.
"I've not got the brains to understand it all," he said plaintively.
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