“‘I reduce God to an attribute of nationality?’ cried Shatov. ‘On the contrary, I raise the people to God. And has it ever been otherwise? The people is the body of God. Every people is only a people so long as it has its own God and excludes all other gods on earth irreconcilably, so long as it believes that by its God it will conquer and drive out of the world all other gods. Such, from the beginning of time, has been the belief of all great nations, all, anyway, who have been specially remarkable, all who have been leaders of humanity. There is no going against facts. The Jews lived only to await the coming of the true God and left the world the true God. The Greeks deified nature and bequeathed the world their religion, that is, philosophy and art. Rome deified the people in the State, and bequeathed the idea of the State to the nations. France throughout her long history was only the incarnation and development of the Roman God.... “‘If a great people does not believe that the truth is only to be found in itself (in itself alone and in it exclusively), if it does not believe that it alone is fit and destined to raise up and save all the rest by its truth, it would at once sink into being ethnographical material, and not a great people. A really great people can never accept a secondary part in the history of humanity, nor even one of the first, but will have the first. A nation which loses this belief ceases to be a nation.’”[135] And by the way of corollary, we have Stavrogin’s reflection which might be a fitting conclusion: “An individual out of touch with his country has lost God.” What would Dostoevsky think of Russia to-day and of her people? It is a painful speculation.... Did he apprehend, was he able to foresee her ghastly torments? In _The Possessed_ we find all the seeds of Bolshevism. You need only listen to Shigalev’s exposition of his theory and the admission he makes at its close: “I am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction to the original idea with which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.”[136] And that loathsome Pyotr Stepanovitch Verhovensky exults: “There’s going to be such an upset as the world has never seen before.... Russia will be overwhelmed with darkness, the earth will weep for its old gods.”[137] Imprudent, dishonest even, I admit, to impute to the author himself the thoughts expressed by the characters in his novels or tales. But we know this was Dostoevsky’s medium of expression, often utilizing a colourless individual to formulate one of his cherished truths. We seem to hear him speak from the lips of a secondary character in _The Eternal Husband_ when the “malady of the age” is mentioned.