Anxious not to extend a field already so vast, I shall not attempt to define his doctrine here. I merely wanted to indicate its wealth of contradictions to the Western mind, unused to this need of reconciling extremes. Dostoevsky remains steadfast in the belief that between nationalism and europeanism, individualism and self-abnegation, the contradiction is apparent only. He holds that because each understands but one aspect of this vital question, the opposing parties remain uniformly remote from the truth. One more quotation: it will, I am sure, throw more light on Dostoevsky’s position than any commentary. “To be happy must one be impersonal? Does salvation lie in self-effacement? Far from it, I should say. Not only must there be no self-effacement, but one must become a personality, even in a degree beyond what is possible in the West. Be clear as to my meaning: voluntary sacrifice, offered consciously and without constraint, 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 the will. 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 may become, like unto itself, self-determining and happy personalities. It is Nature’s law, and mankind tends to reach it.”[28] This solution is taught him by Christ: “_For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it._” Back in Petersburg in the winter of 1871-2, being then fifty years of age, he writes to Janovsky:[29] “There is no use hiding the fact that old age is coming near, and yet one doesn’t think of it, and makes preparation for a new work (_The Karamazovs_), for at last publishing something that will please; one still hopes for something out of life, and yet it is possible that everything has already been received. I am speaking of myself! Well, I am thoroughly happy!” This is the happiness, the joy beyond suffering latent in all Dostoevsky’s life and work, a joy that Nietzsche had rightly sensed, and which I charge M. de Vogüé with having missed entirely. The tone of the letters changes brusquely at this period. His usual correspondents being, like himself, in Petersburg, he is no longer writing to them but to strangers, chance correspondents who turn to him for edification, comfort, guidance. I should require to quote almost all the letters; my better plan is to refer you to the book; I am writing this article solely to bring my reader into touch with it.