The Idiot: Newly Translated and Annotated (Alma Classics Evergreens)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Credit can at least bring about universal solidarity and a balance of interests,” Ptitsyn observed. “And that is all, all it can do! Its only moral basis is the satisfaction of personal egoism and material need. Universal freedom, universal happiness – out of necessity! Do I, if I may be so bold as to ask, understand you correctly, my kind sir?” “But surely the universal need to live, eat and drink in the face of a firm scientific conviction that it will not be satisfied other than by universal solidarity and balance of interests is, to my mind, a sufficiently powerful argument to serve as a point of departure and a source of life for future generations,” Ganya declared with passionate conviction. “Need to eat and drink, in other words, merely instinct of self-preservation—” “Well, isn’t instinct of self-preservation by itself not enough? Surely instinct of self-preservation is a fundamental law of nature—” “Who told you that?” Yevgeny Pavlovich suddenly called out. “Law – that’s true enough, but fundamental only in as much as the law of destruction, or say, self-destruction is fundamental. Do you really imagine that the basic law of nature is founded on self-preservation alone?”