Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

‘I reduce God to an attribute of nationality?’ Shatov shouted. ‘On the contrary, I raise the people up to God. Why, has it ever been otherwise? The people are the body of God. Every people is a people only as long as it has its special God and excludes all the other gods in the world without any compromise, as long as it has faith that it will triumph through its own God and will drive all the other gods from the world. That is what everyone has believed from the beginning of time, all the great peoples, at least all those who were in any way singled out, all who stood at the head of humanity. You can’t go against facts. The Hebrews lived only in anticipation of the coming of the true God, and they left the true God to the world. The Greeks attempted to deify nature and bequeath their religion to the world, that is, philosophy and art. Rome did deify the people in the form of the state, and bequeathed the state to other peoples. France, in the course of its long history, was merely the incarnation and development of the idea of the Roman god, and if they ended by casting their Roman god into the abyss and going all out for atheism, which they call socialism for the time being, then that’s only because atheism is, after all, healthier than Roman Catholicism. If a great people does not have faith that it alone embodies the truth (in itself alone, and in it exclusively), if it does not have faith that it alone has the ability and is called to resurrect all peoples and save th...