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finally of that ambition which creates greatness in its
efforts, and the envy which creates smallness in the
soul.
It is a character which reminds one of Rousseau’s,
irritable and suspicious, with fits of depression and the
most exalted flights. Although his family belonged to
the lower ranks of nobility of Russia, from which the
subordinate officials are generally taken, he has, like
Rousseau, a thoroughly democratic stamp. Moreover,
even if he is fanatical in his ideas, like Rousseau, he
differs from him in his profound spiritual characteristics.
Rousseau is a deist, but, in spite of his sentimentality,
not a Christian, an enemy of the Christian humility, and
of all submission to fate. Dostoyevski, on the contrary,
— entirely regardless of the fact whether his dogmatic
faith was orthodox or not, — is in his whole emotional
nature the typical Christian. His works constitute a true
repertory of characters and conditions of thought
conceived from a Christian standpoint. All his persons are
invalids, sinners or saints, of both sexes, and the
transition from sinner to a convert, from fair sinner to fair
saint, and from the bodily sick to the spiritually sound,
happens, now after a slow purification, and now at a
flash, as in the New Testament; nay, often the fair
sinner is at the same time a fair saint, and the
greatest criminal just as near being worthy of admiration
as he is near being a scoundrel.
Physiologically and psychologically, all these types of
paupers and poor fellows, of the ignorant good-hearted,
of the simple emotional, of noble Magdalens, of the
nervously distracted, of those seized with frequent
hallucinations, of gifted epileptics, of enthusiastic seekers after
martyrdom, are just the same types as prevailed
centuries ago.
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