What Dostoevsky says here about dreams we shall apply to his own books, not for a moment that I would consider assimilating these stories to the absurdities of certain dreams, because we feel when we leave one of his books, even should our reason refuse complete agreement with it, that he has laid his finger on some obscure spot “which is part of our actual life.” In this, I think, we shall find explained the refusal of certain minds, in the name of Western-European civilization, to admit Dostoevsky’s genius, because I readily observe that in all our Western literature (and I do not limit myself to French alone) the novel, with but rare exceptions, concerns itself solely with relations between man and man, passion and intellect, with family, social, and class relations, but never, practically never with the relations between the individual and his self or his God, which are to Dostoevsky all important. I fancy nothing could better illustrate my idea than the reflection made by a Russian and quoted in Mme. Hoffmann’s biography, the best by far I know, but which unfortunately has not yet been translated. His reflection, she holds, will enable us to discern one of the peculiarities of the Russian soul. Once reproached with his unpunctuality this Russian gravely retorted: “Yes, life is difficult! There are moments that must be lived well, and this is more important than the keeping of any engagement.”[2] The inner life is thus more highly prized than relations with one’s fellow-man. Here lies Dostoevsky’s secret, the thing which makes him for some so great, for many others so insufferable! Not for a moment do I suggest that in Western Europe, in France, for example, man is wholly a social being, ever dressed for a part. We have Pascal’s _Thoughts_ and the _Fleurs du Mal_, strangely solitary and profound, yet as French as any other works in our literature. But a certain category of problems, heart-searchings, passions, and associations seem to be the province of the moralist and the theologian, and a novelist has no call to burden himself with them. The miracle Dostoevsky accomplished consists in this: each of his characters--and he created a world of them--lives by virtue of his own personality, and these intimately personal beings, each with his peculiar secret, are introduced to us in all their puzzling complexity. The wonder of it is that the problems are lived over by each of his characters, or rather let us say the problems exist at the expense of his characters: problems which conflict, struggle, and assume human guise to perish or triumph before our eyes.