warned'?" asked Alexis.

"These words give the key to what the old man has to say for his
justification... But listen--

"'The terrible and wise spirit, the spirit of self annihilation
and non-being,' goes on the Inquisitor, 'the great spirit of
negation conversed with Thee in the wilderness, and we are told
that he "tempted" Thee... Was it so? And if it were so, then it is
impossible to utter anything more truthful than what is contained
in his three offers, which Thou didst reject, and which are
usually called "temptations." Yea; if ever there was on earth a
genuine striking wonder produced, it was on that day of Thy three
temptations, and it is precisely in these three short sentences
that the marvelous miracle is contained. If it were possible that
they should vanish and disappear for ever, without leaving any
trace, from the record and from the memory of man, and that it
should become necessary again to devise, invent, and make them
reappear in Thy history once more, thinkest Thou that all the
world's sages, all the legislators, initiates, philosophers and
thinkers, if called upon to frame three questions which should,
like these, besides answering the magnitude of the event, express
in three short sentences the whole future history of this our
world and of mankind--dost Thou believe, I ask Thee, that all
their combined efforts could ever create anything equal in power
and depth of thought to the three propositions offered Thee by the
powerful and all-wise spirit in the wilderness? Judging of them by
their marvelous aptness alone, one can at once perceive that they
emanated not from a finite, terrestrial intellect, but indeed,
from the Eternal and the Absolute. In these three offers we find,