ilde's allusion, the Redeemer bewildered
His assailants. Stephan Trophinovitch reading the Miracle of the
Swine with his female Colporteur; Raskolnikoff reading the Miracle
of the Raising of Lazarus with his prostitute Sonia, are scenes that
might strike an English mind as mere melodramatic sentiment, but
those who have entered into the Dostoievsky secret know how much
more than that there is in them, and how deep into the mystery of
things and the irony of things they go. One is continually coming
upon passages in Dostoievsky the strange and ambiguous nature of
which leads one's thought far enough from Evangelical simplicities;
passages that are, indeed, at once so beautiful and so sinister that
they make one think of certain demonic sayings of Goethe or
Spinoza; and yet even these passages do no more than throw new
and formidable light upon the "old situations," the old "cross-roads."
Dostoievsky is not content with indicating how weakness and
disease and suffering can become organs of vision; he goes very
far--further than anyone--in his recognition of the secret and perverted
cruelty that drives certain persons on to lacerate themselves with all
manner of spiritual flagellation.

He understands, better than anyone else, how absurd the
philosophical utilitarians are with their axiom that everyone
pursueshis own happiness. He exposes over and over again, with
nerve-rending subtlety, how intoxicating to the human spirit is the mad
lust of self-immolation, of self-destruction. It is really from him that
Nietzsche learnt that wanton Dionysic talisman which opens the
door to such singular spiritual orgies.

Nothing is more characteristic of Dostoievsky's method than his
perpetual insistence upon the mania which certain curious human
types display for "making fools of themselves." The more sacred
aspects of this deliberate self-humiliation require no comment. It is
obviously good for our spirit's salvation to be made Fools in Christ.
What one has to observe further, under his guidance, is the strange
passion that certain derelicts in the human vortex have for being
trampled upon and flouted. These queer people--but there are more
of them than one would suppose--derive an almost sensual pleasure
from being abominably treated. They positively lick the dust before
their persecutors. They run to "kiss the rod." It is this type of person
who, like the hero in that story in "L'Esprit Souterrain," deliberately
rushes into emba