Do not draw a mistaken conclusion from this seeming ferocity which is frequent in Dostoevsky. It is an integral part of his quietism, as of Blake’s. You remember my saying that Dostoevsky’s Christianity had closer affinities with Asia than with Rome? Yet his acceptance of the doctrine of energy, a doctrine positively glorified by Blake, is rather of the West than of the East. But for Blake and Dostoevsky both, the truth of New Testament teaching is too radiantly clear for them to deny this ferocity as but a transitory phase, the short-lived consequence of a passing blindness. And to reveal to you only the vision of his cruelty would be an act of treachery towards Blake. I wish I could counter my quotations from his terrible _Proverbs of Hell_ by reading one of the loveliest of his _Songs of Innocence_--alas! its aëry form eludes translation--the poem where he foretells the time when the lion in his strength will lie down with the lamb and watch over the fold. But let us continue with our reading from _The Possessed_. “They’re bad because they don’t know they’re good; when they find out they won’t outrage a little girl. They’ll find out that they’re good and they’ll all become good, every one of them,” declares Kirillov.[116] And so the conversation continues until we stumble across the singular conception of the man-God. “Here you’ve found it out! So you’ve become good then?” “I am good.” “That I agree with, though,” muttered Stavrogin, frowning. “He who teaches that all are good will end the world.” “He who taught it was crucified.” “He will come, and his name will be the man-God.” “The God-man?” “The man-God! That’s the difference.”[117] The notion of a man-God succeeding the God-man brings us round again to Nietzsche. À propos of the _superman_ theory, I should like to contribute one emendation in protest against an opinion which is only too current and too easily accepted. Nietzsche’s _superman_ (observe, pray, wherein he differs from the _superman_ of Raskolnikov’s or Kirillov’s vision), though _ruthlessness_ is his motto, is ruthless not to others but to himself. The humanity he aspires to outstrip is his own. In short: to one and the same problem Nietzsche and Dostoevsky propose different, radically opposed solutions. Nietzsche advocates the affirmation of the personality--for him it is the one possible aim in life: Dostoevsky postulates its surrender. Nietzsche presupposes the heights of achievement where Dostoevsky prophesies utter ruin. At the darkest hour of the War, I read in the letters of a Red Cross orderly (his modesty forbids me to name him), living in the midst of agonizing sufferings and hearing but the voice of despair, “Ah, if only they could make a sacrifice of their sufferings!”--a thought so luminous that all commentary were a matter for reproach. I shall only compare it with this sentence from _The Possessed_: