With regard to the further point, the “prophetic soul” which speaks in this book is perhaps that which is its most remarkable quality. The book was some thirty years ahead of its time: ahead of its time in the same way that Wagner’s music was ahead of its time,--and this was not only on account of the characters and the state of things which it divined and foreshadowed, but also on account of the ideas and the flashes of philosophy which abound in its pages. When the book was published, it was treated as a gross caricature, and even a few years ago, when Professor Brückner first published his _History of Russian Literature_, he talked of this book as being a satire not of Nihilism itself, but of the hangers-on, the camp-followers which accompany every army. “Dostoievsky,” he says, “did not paint the heroes but the Falstaffs, the silly adepts, the half and wholly crazed adherents of Nihilism. He was indeed fully within his rights. Of course there were such Nihilists, particularly between 1862 and 1869, but there were not only such: even Nechaev, the prototype of Petrushka, impressed us by a steel-like energy and a hatred for the upper classes which we wholly miss in the wind-bag and intriguer Petrushka.” There is a certain amount of truth in this criticism. It is true that Dostoievsky certainly painted the Falstaffs and the half-crazy adherents of Nihilism. But I am convinced that the reason he did not paint the heroes was that he did not believe in their existence: he did not believe that the heroes of Nihilism were heroes; this is plain not only from this book, but from every line which he wrote about the people who played a part in the revolutionary movement in Russia; and so far from the leading personage in his book being merely a wind-bag, I would say that one is almost more impressed by the steel-like energy of the character, as drawn in this book, than by the sayings and doings of his prototype--or rather his prototypes in real life. The amazing thing is that even if a few years ago real life had not furnished examples of revolutionaries as extreme both in their energy and in their craziness as Dostoievsky paints them, real life has done so in the last four years. Therefore, Dostoievsky not only saw with prophetic divination that should circumstances in Russia ever lead to a general upheaval, such characters might arise and exercise an influence, but his prophetic insight has actually been justified by the facts.