“‘Science and reason have, from the beginning of time, played a secondary and subordinate part in the life of nations; so it will be till the end of time. Nations are built up and moved by another force which sways and dominates them, the origin of which is unknown and inexplicable; that force is the force of an insatiable desire to go on to the end, though at the same time it denies that end. It is the force of persistent assertion of one’s own existence, and a denial of death. It’s the spirit of life, as the Scriptures call it, the river of living water, the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse. It’s the æsthetic principle, as the philosophers call it, the ethical principle with which they identify it, “the seeking for God,” as I call it more simply. The object of every national movement, in every people and at every period of its existence, is only the seeking for its God, who must be its own God, and the faith in Him as the only true one. God is the synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning to its end. It has never happened that all, or even many, peoples have had one common god, but each has always had its own. It’s a sign of the decay of nations when they begin to have gods in common. When gods are common to several nations the gods are dying and the faith in them, together with the nations themselves. The stronger a people, the more individual their God. There never has been a nation without a religion, that is, without an idea of good and evil. Every people has its own conception of good and evil, and its own good and evil. When the same conception of good and evil become prevalent in several nations, then these nations are dying, and then the very distinction between good and evil is beginning to disappear.[134]... These are your own words, Stavrogin.... I haven’t altered anything of your ideas, or even of your words, not a syllable.’ “‘I don’t agree that you’ve not altered anything,’ Stavrogin observed cautiously. ‘You accepted them with ardour, and in your ardour have transformed them unconsciously. The very fact that you reduce God to a simple attribute of nationality....’ “He suddenly began watching Shatov with intense and peculiar attention, not so much his words as himself.