Despite the extraordinarily rich diversity of his _Comédie Humaine_, Dostoevsky’s characters group and arrange themselves always on one plane only, that of humility and pride. This system of grouping discomfits us; indeed, at first, it appears far from clear, for the very simple reason that we do not usually approach the problem of making a division at such an angle and that we distribute mankind in hierarchies. Let me explain my idea: in Dickens’s wonderful novels, for instance, I am often uneasy at the conventionality, childishness even, of his _hierarchy_, or to use Nietzsche’s phrase, _scale of values_. While reading him I have the impression that I am contemplating one of Fra Angelico’s _Last Judgements_ where you have the redeemed, the damned, and the indeterminate (not too numerous!) over whom angel and demon struggle. The balance that weighs them all, like in an Egyptian bas-relief, reckons only the positive or negative quality of their virtue. Heaven for the just: for the wicked, Hell. Herein Dickens is true to the opinion of his countrymen and of his time. It does happen that the evil prosper, while the just are sacrificed--to the great shame of this earthly existence and of society as we have organized it. All his novels endeavour to show us and make us realize the shining superiority of qualities of heart over qualities of head. I have selected Dickens as a type because of all the great novelists we know he uses this classification in its simplest form: which--if I may say in conclusion--is the secret of his popularity. Now, after reading in close succession practically all Dostoevsky’s works, I have the impression that there exists in them, too, a similar classification: less apparent, no doubt, although almost as simple, and, in my estimation, much more significant. For it is not according to the positive or negative quality of their virtue that one can _hierarchize_ (forgive me this horrible word!) his characters: not according to their goodness of heart, but by their degree of pride. Dostoevsky presents on one side the humble (some of these are humble to an abject degree, and seem to enjoy their abasement); on the other, the proud (some to the point of crime). The latter are usually the more intelligent. We shall see them, tormented by the demon of pride, ever striving after something higher still: “There, I’ll bet anything--that you’ve been sitting side by side in the drawing-room all night wasting your precious time discussing something lofty and elevated,” says Stavrogin to the abominable Pyotr Stepanovitch in _The Possessed_.[58] Or again: