Dostoievski himself was such a light and such a saint. His works reflect the character of the Russian clearly and faithfully as it is: “In the Russian man of the people one must discriminate between his innate beauty and the product of barbarism. Owing to the events of the whole history of Russia, the Russian has been at the mercy of every depraving influence, he has been so abused and tortured that it is a miracle that he has preserved the human countenance, let alone his beauty. But he has actually retained his beauty ... and in all the Russian people there is not one swindler or scoundrel who does not know that he is mean and vile.” Dostoievski further adds: “No! The Russian people must not be judged by _what they are_, but by _what they aspire to be_. The strong and sacred ideals, which have been their salvation from the age of suffering, are deeply rooted in the Russian soul from the very beginning, and these ideals have endowed this soul for all time with simplicity and honesty, with sincerity, and a broad, receptive good sense,—all in perfect harmony.” Concerning the part the Russian people are destined to play in the world, Dostoievski wrote the following: “The Russian people is a strange phenomenon in the history of mankind. Their character is so different from that of the other peoples of Europe that to this day Europeans have failed to understand it, and misconstrue it at every turn. All Europeans move towards the same goal. But they differ in their fundamental interests, which involve them in collisions and antagonisms, whereby they are driven to go different ways. The ideal of a universal humanity is steadily fading from among them. The Russian people possess a notable advantage over the other European nations,—a remarkable peculiarity. The Russians possess the synthetic faculty in a high degree—the gift of feeling _at one_ with the universe and a universal humanity. _The Russian has none of the European angularity, he possesses the gift of discernment and of generosity of soul._ He can adapt himself to anything and he can _understand_. He has a feeling for all that is human, _regardless of race_, _nationality_ or _fundamental ideas_. He finds and readily admits reasonableness in all that contains even a vestige of true human instinct. By this instinct he can trace the human element in other nationalities even in exceptional cases. He accepts them at once, seeks to approximate them to his own ideas, ‘places’ them in his own mind, and often succeeds in finding a starting-point for reconciling the conflicting ideas of two different European nations.”[4]