No question too transcendent for Dostoevsky to handle in one of his novels; but, having said this, I am bound at once to add that he never approaches a question from the abstract, ideas never exist for him but as functions of his characters, wherein lies their perpetual relativity and source of power. One individual evolves a certain theory concerning God, providence, and life eternal because he knows he must die in a few days’ time, in a few hours maybe (Ippolit in _The Idiot_): another (in _The Possessed_) builds up an entire system of metaphysics, containing Nietzsche in embryo, on the premise of self-destruction, for in a quarter of an hour he is going to take his own life, and hearing him speak, it is impossible to distinguish whether his philosophy postulates his suicide or his suicide his philosophy. Prince Myshkin owes his most wonderful, most heavenly raptures to the imminence of an epileptic fit. In conclusion I have only one comment to offer: though pregnant with thought, Dostoevsky’s novels are never abstract, indeed, of all the books I know, they are the most palpitating with life. Representative as Dostoevsky’s characters are, they never seem to forsake their humanity to become mere symbols or the types familiar in our classical drama. They keep their individuality which is as specific as in Dickens’s most peculiar creations, and as powerfully drawn and painted as any portrait in any literature. Listen to this: “There are people whom it is difficult to describe correctly in their typical and characteristic aspect. These are the people who are usually called ‘the mass,’ ‘the majority,’ and who do actually make up the vast majority of mankind. To this class of ‘commonplace’ or ‘ordinary’ people belong certain persons of my tale, such as Gavril Ardalionovitch.”[3] Now, this is a character particularly difficult to delineate. What will he succeed in telling us about him?