“‘So at last you understand!’ cried Kirillov rapturously. ‘So it can be understood if even a fellow like you understands. Do you understand now that salvation for all consists in proving this idea to every one? Who will prove it? I! I can’t understand how an atheist could know that there is no God and not kill himself on the spot. To recognize that there is no God, and not to recognize at the same instant that one is God oneself is an absurdity, else one would certainly kill oneself. If you recognize it, you are sovereign, and then you won’t kill yourself, but live in the greatest glory. But one, the first, must kill himself, for else who will begin and prove it? So I must certainly kill myself, to begin and prove it. Now I am only a God against my will, and I am unhappy, because I am bound to assert my will. All are unhappy because all are afraid to express their will. Man has hitherto been so unhappy and so poor because he has been afraid to assert his will up to the highest point, and has shown his self-will only in little things, like a schoolboy.... But I will assert my will, I am bound to believe that I don’t believe. I will begin and will make an end of it and open the door, and save--mankind. For three years I’ve been seeking the attribute of my Godhead and I’ve found it; the attribute of my Godhead is self-will. That’s all I can do to prove in the highest point my independence and my new terrible freedom. For it is very terrible, and I am killing myself to prove my independence and my new terrible freedom.’”[131] Blasphemous as Kirillov’s words may appear, rest assured that Dostoevsky, in drawing his figure, was possessed by the idea of Christ, by the necessity of the Crucifixion as a sacrifice to redeem mankind. If Christ had to be offered up, was it not that we, Christians, might be such without dying His death? “_If Thou be Christ, save Thyself!_” If Christ had saved Himself, mankind would have been lost: to save it, He surrendered His own life. These few lines of Dostoevsky’s, taken from his _Essay on the Bourgeoisie_, throw fresh light on Kirillov’s figure. “Be clear as to my meaning! Voluntary sacrifice, offered consciously and without constraint, the sacrifice of the individual for the good of mankind, is to my mind the mark of personality in its noblest and highest development, of perfect self-control--the absolute expression of free will. To offer one’s life for others, to suffer for others on the cross or at the stake, is possible only when there is a powerful development of the personality. A strongly-developed personality, conscious of its right to be such, having cast out fear, cannot use itself, cannot be used except in sacrifice for others, that these become like unto itself, self-determinate and happy. It is Nature’s law, and mankind tends to reach it.”[132]