In sharp contrast to the two elder brothers is the third brother, Alosha, the hero of the book. He is one of the finest and most sympathetic characters that Dostoievsky created. He has the simplicity of “The Idiot,” without his naïveté, and without the abnormality arising from epilepsy. He is a normal man, perfectly sane and sensible. He is the very incarnation of “sweet reasonableness.” He is _Ivan Durak_, Ivan the Fool, but without being a fool. Alosha, Dostoievsky says, was in no way a fanatic; he was not even what most people call a mystic, but simply a lover of human beings; he loved humanity; all his life he believed in men, and yet nobody would have taken him for a fool or for a simple creature. There was something in him which convinced you that he did not wish to be a judge of men, that he did not wish to claim or exercise the right of judging others. One remarkable fact about his character, which is equally true of Dostoievsky’s own character, was that Alosha with this wide tolerance never put on blinkers, or shut his eyes to the wickedness of man, or to the ugliness of life. No one could astonish or frighten him, even when he was quite a child. Every one loved him wherever he went. Nor did he ever win the love of people by calculation, or cunning, or by the craft of pleasing. But he possessed in himself the gift of making people love him. It was innate in him; it acted immediately and directly, and with perfect naturalness. The basis of his character was that he was a _Realist_. When he was in the monastery where he spent a part of his youth, he believed in miracles; but Dostoievsky says, “Miracles never trouble a Realist; it is not miracles which incline a Realist to believe. A true Realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself sufficient strength and sufficient capacity to disbelieve even in a miracle. And if a miracle appears before him as an undeniable fact, he will sooner disbelieve in his senses than admit the fact of the miracle. If, on the other hand, he admits it, he will admit it as a natural fact, which up to the present he was unaware of. The Realist does not believe in God because he believes in miracles, but he believes in miracles because he believes in God. If a Realist believes in God, his realism will necessarily lead him to admit the existence of miracles also.”