'One might think that only God was able to limit Infinity,' Chepyzhin went on. 'Beyond a cosmic boundary, we have to admit the presence of a divine power. Right?'
'Of course,' said Viktor, thinking to himself: 'I may be arrested any day, Dmitry Petrovich. I'm not in the mood for philosophy. Yes, I'm probably done for. I talked too much when I was in Kazan. I said things I shouldn't have said to a fellow called Madyarov. Either he's an informer, or else he's been arrested and they've made him talk. It's a mess, a terrible mess.'
He looked at Chepyzhin. Aware that Viktor was only pretending to pay attention, Chepyzhin continued:
'I think there is a boundary limiting the infinity of the universe – life itself. This boundary's nothing to do with Einstein's curvature of space; it lies in the opposition between life and inanimate matter. In my opinion, life can be defined as freedom. Life is freedom. Freedom is the fundamental principle of life. That is the boundary – between freedom and slavery, between inanimate matter and life.
'Now, as soon as freedom first appeared, it began to evolve. It evolved along two lines. First: man has more freedom than protozoa. The whole evolution of the living world has been a movement from a lesser to a greater degree of freedom. This is the very essence of evolution – the highest being is the one which has the most freedom.'
Viktor was now watching Chepyzhin thoughtfully. Chepyzhin nodded as though approving of his attentiveness.
'And then there's a second, quantitative, line of evolution. If we assume the weight of an average man to be fifty kilos, then humanity now weighs 100 million tons. That's a great deal more than, say, a thousand years ago. The mass of animate matter will constantly increase at the expense of that of inanimate matter. The terrestrial globe will gradually come to life. After settling the Arctic and the deserts, man will burrow under the earth, continually pushing back the horizons of his underworld cities and fields. Eventually there will be a predominance of animate matter on earth. Then the other planets will come to life. If we try to imagine the evolution of life over infinity, then the animation of inanimate matter will take place on a galactic scale. Inanimate matter will be transformed into free, living matter. The universe will come to life. Everything in the world will become alive and thus free. Freedom – life itself – will overcome slavery.'
'Yes,' said Viktor with a smile. 'You can even take the integral.'
'Listen now,' said Chepyzhin. 'I used to study the evolution of stars, but now I've come to understand the importance of the slightest movement of a spot of living mucus. Take the first line of evolution -from the lowest to the highest form of life. One day man will be endowed with all the attributes of the deity – omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience. The coming century will bring a solution to the problem of the transformation of matter into energy and the creation of life itself. There will be a parallel development towards the attainment of extreme speeds and the conquest of space. More distant millennia will see progress towards the harnessing of the very highest form of energy – psychic energy.'
Suddenly Viktor realized that this wasn't just idle chatter and that he strongly disagreed with it.
'Man will learn to materialize in his laboratory the content and rhythm of the psychic activity of rational beings throughout the metagalaxy. Psychic energy will cross millions of light-years of space instantaneously. Omnipresence – formerly an attribute of God – will have become one more conquest of reason. But man won't just stop there. After attaining equality with God, he will begin to solve the problems that were beyond God. He will establish communication with rational beings from the highest level of evolution, beings from another space and another time to whom the whole history of humanity seems merely a dim flicker. He will establish communication with the life of the microcosm whose whole evolution occurs within the twinkling of a man's eye. The abyss of time and space will be overcome. Man will finally be able to look down on God.'
Viktor shook his head.
'Dmitry Petrovich,' he said, 'when you began, I was thinking that I might be arrested any day and that I wasn't in the mood for philosophy. Suddenly I quite forgot about Kovchenko, Shishakov and comrade Beria; I forgot that I might be thrown out of my laboratory tomorrow and into prison on the following day. But what I felt as I listened to you was not joy, but utter despair. We think we're so wise -to us Hercules seems like a child with rickets. And yet on this very day the Germans are slaughtering Jewish children and old women as though they were mad dogs. And we ourselves have endured 1937 and the horrors of collectivization – famine, cannibalism and the deportation of millions of unfortunate peasants… Once, everything seemed simple and clear. But these terrible losses and tragedies have confused everything. You say man will be able to look down on God – but what if he also becomes able to look down on the Devil? What if he eventually surpasses him? You say life is freedom. Is that what people in the camps think? What if the life expanding through the universe should use its power to create a slavery still more terrible than your slavery of inanimate matter? Do you think this man of the future will surpass Christ in his goodness? That's the real question. How will the power of this omnipresent and omniscient being benefit the world if he is still endowed with our own fatuous self-assurance and animal egotism? Our class egotism, our race egotism, our State egotism and our personal egotism? What if he transforms the whole world into a galactic concentration cam? What I want to know is – do you believe in the evolution of kindness, morality, mercy? Is man capable of evolving in that way?'
He gave Chepyzhin a rueful look.
'Forgive me for throwing a question like that at you. It seems even more abstract than the equations we were just talking about.'
'No,' said Chepyzhin. 'It's not so very abstract. It's a question that's had a very real effect on my life. I took a decision not to take part in any research relating to nuclear fission. You said yourself that man isn't yet kind enough or wise enough to lead a rational life. Just think what would happen now if he was presented with the power within the atom! Man's spiritual energy is still at a lamentable level. But I do believe in the future. I believe that it is not only man's power that will evolve, but also his soul, his capacity for love.'
Chepyzhin fell silent, troubled by the expression on Viktor's face.
'I have thought about all this,' said Viktor. 'And I ended up feeling quite appalled. You and I are concerned about the imperfection of
man. But take my laboratory – who else there has ever thought about these questions? Sokolov? He's very clever – but very timid. He prostrates himself before the State and believes that there is no power except that of God. Markov? Markov hasn't the slightest inkling of questions of good and evil, of love and morality. His is a strictly practical talent. His attitude to scientific problems is that of a chessplayer. Savostyanov – the man I was just talking about? He's charming and witty and a splendid physicist. But at the same time he's just a gay young fellow without a thought in his head. When we were evacuated, he took with him a whole pile of photos of young women in bathing costumes. He likes playing the dandy, he likes dancing and getting drunk. He sees science as another kind of sport – understanding some particular phenomenon, solving a particular problem is the same as setting a new athletic record. All he cares about is getting there first. And I'm no better. I've never thought seriously about these matters myself. Science today should be entrusted to men of spiritual understanding, to prophets and saints. But instead it's been left to chessplayers and scientists. They don't know what they're doing. You do. But there's only one of you. If there's a Chepyzhin in Berlin, he won't refuse to do research on neutrons. What then? And what about me? What's going to happen to me? Once everything seemed quite simple, but now, now… You know that Tolstoy considered his works of genius to be just a trivial game. Well, we physicists are no geniuses but we aren't half pleased with ourselves.'