n god, and if they have at last flung their
Roman god into the abyss and plunged into atheism, which, for the time
being, they call socialism, it is solely because socialism is, anyway,
healthier than Roman Catholicism. If a great people does not believe
that the truth is only to be found in itself alone (in itself alone
and in it exclusively); if it does not believe that it alone is fit and
destined to raise up and save all the rest by its truth, it would at
once sink into being ethnographical material, and not a great people. A
really great people can never accept a secondary part in the history
of Humanity, nor even one of the first, but will have the first part. A
nation which loses this belief ceases to be a nation. But there is only
one truth, and therefore only a single one out of the nations can have
the true God, even though other nations may have great gods of their
own. Only one nation is 'god-bearing,' that's the Russian people,
and... and... and can you think me such a fool, Stavrogin," he yelled
frantically all at once, "that I can't distinguish whether my words at
this moment are the rotten old commonplaces that have been ground out in
all the Slavophil mills in Moscow, or a perfectly new saying, the last
word, the sole word of renewal and resurrection, and... and what do I
care for your laughter at this minute! What do I care that you utterly,
utterly fail to understand me, not a word, not a sound! Oh, how I
despise your haughty laughter and your look at this minute!"

He jumped up from his seat; there was positively foam on his lips.

"On the contrary Shatov, on the contrary," Stavrogin began with
extraordinary earnestness and self-control, still keeping his seat, "on
the contrary, your fervent words have revived many extremely powerful
recollections in me. In your words I recognise my own mood two years
ago, and now I will not tell you, as I did just now, that you have
exaggerated my ideas. I believe, indeed, that they were even more
exceptional, even more independent, and I assure you for the third time
that I should be very glad to confirm all that you've said just now,
every syllable of it, but..."

"But you want a hare?"

"Wh-a-t?"

"Your own nasty expression," Shatov laughed spitefully, sitting down
again. "To cook your hare you must first catch it, to believe in God
you must first have a god. You used to say that in Petersburg, I'm told,
like Nozdryov, who tried to catch a hare by his hind l