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 CHAPTER XII

DOSTOEVSKY AND THE RELIGION OF HUMAN SUFFERING

I

T is one of the favourite methods of modern criticism which explains a writer's work and personality by his circumstances and surroundings. But there are some literary miracles which refuse to be explained. There are some writers who rise superior to circumstances, and who challenge their surroundings. The subject of the present chapter was preeminently such a writer. Dostoevsky seems to have been sent into the world by a special decree of Providence to assert the supremacy of the indomitable human spirit over adverse fate. Small and frail and haggard and miserably poor, he yet accomplished prodigies of labour. Diseased in mind and body, a bundle of twitching nerves, suffering from epilepsy, he yet preserved balance of judgment and sanity of doctrine. Sentenced to death, and the victim of a monstrous miscarriage of justice, he