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

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I agree that ‘dog eat dog’ is the order of the world and it could not possibly have been arranged in any other way; I’d even agree to admit that I haven’t got the faintest clue what this arrangement is all about; but if there’s one thing I do know for certain, it is this: Once I’d been given to understand that ‘I am’, what concern is it of mine that there are mistakes in the way the world has been arranged, and that there’s no other way in which it can be kept going? Who will sit in judgement over me after that and for what? Please yourselves, but all this is hard to understand and unfair. “That said, I have never – and this despite my best endeavours – been able to imagine that there’s no future life and no providence. The likelihood is that both exist, but that we simply haven’t got a clue what future life is all about or what the laws are that govern it. Now, if this is so difficult and goes way beyond all understanding, how can I possibly be held responsible for not having grasped the incomprehensible? True, they will say – and of course the Prince amongst them – that that’s precisely where humility comes in, that I must submit without