The intermediate region, the domain of passion, I have already discussed. Here, and on this plane, the play is staged, not merely the play Dostoevsky presents in each of his works, but the drama of entire mankind. We observed, too, what at first wore the air of a paradox: no matter how restless and powerful, the passions after all are of but slender importance, or at least do not stir the soul’s utmost depths. Events have no hold on the soul--they are simply outwith its province. To support my assertion, what instance could I more aptly adduce than war? Investigations have been carried out in regard to the terrible struggle through which we have but lately passed. Literary men were asked to estimate its real or apparent moment, its moral after-effects, its influence on literature. The answer is simple: to all intents and purposes its influence has been nil. Consider for a moment the Napoleonic wars: endeavour to trace their repercussion in literature and determine in what way they have modified the soul of humanity. I admit there exist poems inspired by the imperial epic as there exist only all too many with the Great War for theme. But where is there a deeper note, a spiritual transformation? No exterior event, whatever its tragedy or magnitude, can effect such a change. On the other hand, the French Revolution is different, but here we are concerned with a disturbance that is more than physical, a traumatism, if I may use the word. This time the convulsion proceeds from the very soul of the nation. The influence of the French Revolution on the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau is enormous, although their works date from before the event for which they prepared the way. And we shall observe the same order of things in Dostoevsky’s novels: the idea is not consecutive to the event, but precedes it. In most cases passion has to serve as intermediary between thought and action. At any rate, in Dostoevsky’s novels we shall see the intellectual element comes at times into touch with that deeper region, which is not the soul’s hell, but its heaven. In Dostoevsky we find the mysterious inversion of values already noticed in William Blake, the great mystic amongst English poets. Hell, according to Dostoevsky, is the first region, the realm of mind and reason. Throughout his works, if our attention be at all alert, we shall become conscious of a depreciation of mental powers which is not so much systematic as involuntary and inspired by the spirit of the Gospel. Dostoevsky never deliberately states, although he often insinuates, that the antithesis of love is less hate than the steady activity of the mind. In his eyes it is intellect which individualizes, which is the enemy of the Kingdom of Heaven, life eternal, and that bliss where time is not, reached only by renouncing the individual self and sinking deep in a solidarity that knows no distinctions.