With Balzac (as invariably in Western society, in French especially, to which his novels hold a mirror) two factors are active which in Dostoevsky’s work practically do not exist: first, the intellect, second, the will. I do not pretend that in Balzac will-power always urges a man towards what is good, and that his strong-willed characters are never but virtuous. But at least consider how many of his characters attain to what is of good repute by effort of will and open up a glorious career by dint of perseverance, cleverness, and determination. Think of his David Séchards, his Bianchons, Joseph Brideaus, and Daniel d’Arthez--and there are twenty such I could name! In all Dostoevsky we have not a single great man. “But what about that splendid Father Zossima in _The Karamazovs_?” you may say. Yes, he is certainly the noblest figure the Russian novelist had drawn; he far and away dominates the whole tragedy, and once we have entered into possession of the promised complete version of _The Karamazovs_, we shall understand still better his importance. At the same time we shall realize what in Dostoevsky’s eyes constitutes his real greatness. Father Zossima is not of the great as the world reckons them. He is a saint--no hero! And he has reached saintliness by surrender of will and abdication of intellect. If I examine along with Balzac’s the resolute characters that Dostoevsky presents, I suddenly realize what terrible creatures they are, one and all. Look at Raskolnikov, heading the list; in his beginnings, a miserable worm--with ambitions, who would like to be a Napoleon, and only attains to being the murderer of an old broker-woman and of an innocent girl. Look at Stavrogin, Pyotr Stepanovitch, Ivan Karamazov, the hero of _A Raw Youth_ (the only one of Dostoevsky’s characters who, from his earliest days, at least since consciousness dawned, lived with a fixed determination, to wit, in this case, of becoming a Rothschild, and, by mockery as it were, in all the books of Dostoevsky nowhere is there a more pithless creature, at the mercy of his fellow-beings, individually and collectively). His heroes’ determination, every particle of cleverness and will-power they possess, seem but to hurry them onward to perdition, and if I seek to know what part mind plays in Dostoevsky’s novels, I realize that its power is demonic. His most dangerous characters are the strongest intellectually, and not only do I maintain that the mind and the will of Dostoevsky’s characters are active solely for evil, but that, when urged and guided towards good, the virtue to which they attain is rotten with pride and leads to destruction. Dostoevsky’s heroes inherit the Kingdom of God only by the denial of mind and will and the surrender of personality.