M. Souday, who recently devoted one of his literary reviews in the _Temps_ to Dostoevsky, takes a delight in pointing out his mistakes. In these articles of Dostoevsky’s he sees nothing more than journalism of the most everyday type, which fact I am prepared to concede. But I do protest when he goes on to say that these same articles are a wonderful revelation of Dostoevsky’s ideas. As a matter of fact, the problems Dostoevsky handles in his _Journal of an Author_ are not the problems that interest him most. Political questions are frankly less important in his estimation than social problems, these in turn far less important than moral and individual problems. The rarest and deepest truths we can expect from him are psychological, and I add that in this province the ideas he submits are most often left in the problematic state, in the form of a question. He is seeking not so much a solution as an exposition of these very questions which, by reason of their complexity, confusion, and interdependence, are as a rule left ill-defined. In a word, Dostoevsky is not, strictly speaking, a thinker but a novelist. His favourite theories, and all that is subtle and novel in them, must be sought in the speeches of his characters, and not always of his most important ones even. It often happens that his most valuable and daring ideas are attributed to subordinate characters. Dostoevsky is awkwardness itself when speaking in his own name. To his own case might well be applied the sentence he puts into Versilov’s mouth. “Explain?” he said. “No, it’s better not to; besides, I’ve a passion for talking without explanations. That’s really it. And there’s another strange thing; if it happens that I try to explain an idea I believe in, it almost always happens that I cease to believe what I have explained.”[61] We can even say that it is exceptional for Dostoevsky not to turn against his own theory as soon as formulated. It seems as if for him it immediately breathed an odour of decay, like that which emanated from Father Zossima’s dead body--the body expected to work miracles--and made the deathwatch so painful for Alyosha Karamazov, his disciple.