that Russia must 'serve the nations'--how could he be taken with an idea so rapacious? And indeed almost all his political ideas have the mark of rapacity upon them: to grab and grab, and still to grab.... As the occasion demands, he now expresses the hope that we may have Germany's friendship, and again threatens her; now he argues that we have need of England, and again he asserts that we could do without her,--just like a leader-writer in a _bien-pensant_ provincial paper. One thing alone makes itself felt among all these ludicrous and eternally contradictory assertions,--Dostoevsky understands nothing, absolutely nothing, about politics, and moreover, he has nothing at all to do with politics. He is forced to go in tow of others who, compared with him, are utter nonentities, and he goes. Even his ambition--and he had a colossal ambition, an ambition unique in its kind, as befitted a universal man--suffers not one whit: chiefly because men expected prophecy from him, because the next title to that of a great writer is that of a prophet, and because a ring of conviction and a loud voice are the signs of the prophetic gift. Dostoevsky could speak aloud: he could also speak with the tone of one who knows secrets, and of one with authority. One learns much in the underworld. All these things served him. Men took the poet-laureate of the existing order for the inspirer of thoughts and the governor of Russia's remotest destinies. It was enough for Dostoevsky. It was even necessary for Dostoevsky. He knew of course that he was no prophet; but he knew that there had never been one on earth, and that those who were prophets had no better right to the title than he. III I will permit myself to remind the reader of Tolstoi's letter to his son, lately published by the latter in the newspapers. It is very interesting. Once more, not from the standpoint of the practical man who has to decide the questions of the day--from this standpoint Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and their similars are quite useless--but man does not live by bread alone. Even now in the terrible days through which we have to live, now, if you will, more than ever before, one cannot read newspapers alone, nor think only of the awful surprises which to-morrow prepares for us. To every one is left an hour of leisure between the reading of newspapers and party programmes, if it be not an hour in the day when the noise of events and the pressure of immediate work distracts, then an hour in the deep night, when everything that was possible has been already done, and everything that was required has been said. Then come flying in the old thoughts and questions, frightened away by business, and for the thousandth time one returns to the mystery of human genius and human greatness. Where and how far can genius know and accomplish more than ordinary men?