evil, and its own good and
evil. When the same conceptions of good and evil become prevalent
in several nations, then these nations are dying, and then the very
distinction between good and evil is beginning to disappear. Reason
has never had the power to define good and evil, or even to distinguish
between good and evil, even approximately; on the contrary, it has
always mixed them up in a disgraceful and pitiful way; science has even
given the solution by the fist. This is particularly characteristic
of the half-truths of science, the most terrible scourge of humanity,
unknown till this century, and worse than plague, famine, or war. A
half-truth is a despot.. such as has never been in the world before.
A despot that has its priests and its slaves, a despot to whom all do
homage with love and superstition hitherto inconceivable, before which
science itself trembles and cringes in a shameful way. These are your
own words, Stavrogin, all except that about the half-truth; that's my
own because I am myself a case of half-knowledge, and that's why I hate
it particularly. I haven't altered anything of your ideas or even of
your words, not a syllable."

"I don't agree that you've not altered anything," Stavrogin observed
cautiously. "You accepted them with ardour, and in your ardour have
transformed them unconsciously. The very fact that you reduce God to a
simple attribute of nationality..."

He suddenly began watching Shatov with intense and peculiar attention,
not so much his words as himself.

"I reduce God to the attribute of nationality?" cried Shatov. "On the
contrary, I raise the people to God. And has it ever been otherwise? The
people is the body of God. Every people is only a people so long as it
has its own god and excludes all other gods on earth irreconcilably; so
long as it believes that by its god it will conquer and drive out of
the world all other gods. Such, from the beginning of time, has been
the belief of all great nations, all, anyway, who have been specially
remarkable, all who have been leaders of humanity. There is no going
against facts. The Jews lived only to await the coming of the true
God and left the world the true God. The Greeks deified nature and
bequeathed the world their religion, that is, philosophy and art. Rome
deified the people in the State, and bequeathed the idea of the State to
the nations. France throughout her long history was only the incarnation
and development of the Roma