“There are seconds--they come five or six at a time--when you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony perfectly attained. It’s something not earthly--I don’t mean in the sense that it’s heavenly--but in that sense that man cannot endure it in his earthly aspect. He must be physically changed or die. This feeling is clear and unmistakable; it’s as though you apprehend all nature and suddenly say, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ God, when He created the world, said at the end of each day of creation, ‘Yes, it’s right, it’s good.’ It--it’s not being deeply moved, but simply joy. You don’t forgive anything, because there is no more need of forgiveness. It’s not that you love--oh, there’s something in it higher than love--what’s most awful is that it’s terribly clear and such joy. If it lasted more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and must perish. In those five seconds I live through a lifetime, and I’d give my whole life for them, because they are worth it. To endure ten seconds one must be physically changed. I think man ought to give up having children--what’s the use of children, what’s the use of evolution when the goal has been attained? In the Gospel it is written that there will be no child-bearing in the resurrection, but that man will be like the angels of the Lord....”[121] “‘Kirillov, does this often happen?’ “‘Once in three days, or once a week.’ “‘Don’t you have fits, perhaps?’ “‘No.’ “‘Well, you will. Be careful, Kirillov. I’ve heard that’s just how fits begin. An epileptic described exactly that sensation before a fit, word for word as you’ve done. He mentioned five seconds too, and said that more could not be endured. Remember Mahomet’s pitcher from which no drop of water was spilt while he circled Paradise on his horse. That was a case of five seconds too; that’s too much like your eternal harmony, and Mahomet was an epileptic. Be careful, Kirillov, it’s epilepsy.’ “‘It won’t have time.’ Kirillov smiled gently.”[122] In _The Idiot_ we hear Prince Myshkin connect this condition of euphoria, familiar to him too, with the epileptic attacks to which he is subject. So there we have Prince Myshkin an epileptic, Kirillov an epileptic, Smerdiakov an epileptic. There is an epileptic in each of Dostoevsky’s great works. We know Dostoevsky himself was thus afflicted, and his persistence in making epilepsy intervene as a factor in his novels sufficiently indicates the rôle he assigned this disease in moulding his ethical conceptions and directing the course of his thought. If we seek far enough, we shall invariably find the genesis of every serious moral reform in some physiological enigma, some non-satisfaction of the flesh, irritation, or anomaly. Forgive me for quoting myself again, but if I am to express my idea as explicitly as before, I must use the same phraseology as on that previous occasion.