“‘Well, that’s all right then,’ encouraged Pyotr Stepanovitch. “‘But I know He doesn’t and can’t.’ “‘That’s more likely.’ “‘Surely you must understand that a man with two such ideas can’t go on living?’ “‘Must shoot himself, you mean?’ “‘Surely you understand that one might shoot oneself for that alone?’ “‘But you won’t be the only one to kill yourself: there are lots of suicides.’ “‘With good cause! But to do it without any cause at all, simply for self-will, I am the only one.’ “‘He won’t shoot himself,’ flashed across Pyotr Stepanovitch’s mind again. “‘Do you know,’ he observed irritably, ‘if I were in your place, I should kill someone else to show my self-will, not myself. You might be of use. I’ll tell you whom, if you are not afraid. Then you needn’t shoot yourself to-day, perhaps. We may come to terms.’”[129] For a moment Pyotr Stepanovitch dreams, in the event of Kirillov’s refusing to carry out his plan of self-destruction, of using him as the instrument to murder Shatov, instead of merely imputing the crime to him. “‘To kill someone else would be the lowest point of self-will, and you should show your whole soul in that. I am not you; I want the highest point, and I’ll kill myself.... I am bound to show my unbelief,’ said Kirillov, walking about the room. ‘I have no higher idea than disbelief in God. I have all the history of mankind on my side. Man has done nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill himself: that’s the whole of universal history up till now. I am the first one in the whole history of mankind who would not invent God.’”[130] Do not forget Dostoevsky’s Christianity is real. What he reveals in Kirillov’s declaration is again a case of moral bankruptcy. Dostoevsky, I repeat, has visions of salvation only through renunciation. But a fresh idea has crept in to complicate his theory: to illuminate it, I must have recourse once more to William Blake’s _Proverbs of Hell_. “_If others had not been foolish, we should be so._” In order that we might be spared foolishness, others consented to foolishness before us. Into Kirillov’s half-mad brain enters the idea of sacrifice: “I will begin and open the door and save--mankind.” If it is necessary that Kirillov be abnormal in order to entertain such ideas--ideas moreover which Dostoevsky does not unreservedly sanction since they betoken insubordination--there is none the less a particle of truth in his conception, and if it is necessary that Kirillov be abnormal in order to entertain such ideas, it is that we also may have them in our day, yet be in our right mind.