It is evident that for a philosopher this feature would be something of a drawback. His ideas are practically never absolute, remaining relative always to the characters expressing them. I shall press the point even further and assert their relativity not merely to these characters, but to a specific moment in the lives of these characters. The ideas are, as it were, the product of a special and transitory state of his _dramatis personæ_, and relative they remain, subservient to and conditioned by the particular fact or action which determines them or by which they are determined. As soon as Dostoevsky begins to theorize, he disappoints us. Thus even in his article, _Of the Nature of Lying_,[62] despite his prodigious skill in exhibiting falsehood in all its forms and making us realize thereby what prompts the untruthful to their falsehoods (and how differently he proceeds from Corneille!), as soon as he begins to account for it all, as soon as he theorizes on the strength of his examples, he becomes stale and unprofitable. This _Journal_ is proof that Dostoevsky’s genius is essentially as a novelist, for although in theoretical or critical articles he never rises above mediocrity, he becomes excellent as soon as a character appears on the scene. It is in this _Journal_ that we come across these admirable tales of _The Peasant Marey_[63] and _Krotchkaya_,[64] the latter outstandingly fine and powerful, in its way a novel that is really but one long monologue, like the _Notes from Underground_, written about the same period. Better still, or rather, more significant, are the two instances in this _Journal_ when Dostoevsky allows us to watch the almost involuntary, almost subconscious activity of his mind engaged in the construction of a narrative. After he tells us his delight in watching people walking in the streets and occasionally in following them, we see him suddenly attach himself to a chance passer-by: