suddenly. "I am stupid and awkward, but
let my name perish in ignominy! Let me repeat your leading idea.... Oh,
only a dozen lines, only the conclusion."

"Repeat it, if it's only the conclusion...." Stavrogin made a movement
to look at his watch, but restrained himself and did not look.

Shatov bent forward in his chair again and again held up his finger for
a moment.

"Not a single nation," he went on, as though reading it line by line,
still gazing menacingly at Stavrogin, "not a single nation has ever
been founded on principles of science or reason. There has never been
an example of it, except for a brief moment, through folly. Socialism
is from its very nature bound to be atheism, seeing that it has from the
very first proclaimed that it is an atheistic organisation of society,
and that it intends to establish itself exclusively on the elements of
science and reason. Science and reason have, from the beginning of time,
played a secondary and subordinate part in the life of nations; so it
will be till the end of time. Nations are built up and moved by another
force which sways and dominates them, the origin of which is unknown and
inexplicable: that force is the force of an insatiable desire to go on
to the end, though at the same time it denies that end. It is the force
of the persistent assertion of one's own existence, and a denial of
death. It's the spirit of life, as the Scriptures call it, 'the river of
living water,' the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse.
It's the aesthetic principle, as the philosophers call it, the ethical
principle with which they identify it, 'the seeking for God,' as I call
it more simply. The object of every national movement, in every people
and at every period of its existence is only the seeking for its god,
who must be its own god, and the faith in Him as the only true one.
God is the synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its
beginning to its end. It has never happened that all, or even many,
peoples have had one common god, but each has always had its own. It's
a sign of the decay of nations when they begin to have gods in common.
When gods begin to be common to several nations the gods are dying and
the faith in them, together with the nations themselves. The stronger
a people the more individual their God. There never has been a nation
without a religion, that is, without an idea of good and evil. Every
people has its own conception of good and