Among other things, Dostoievsky's insight is proved by the profound separation he indicates between "morality" and "religion." To many of us it comes with something of a shock to find harlots and murderers and robbers and drunkards and seducers and idiots expressing genuine and passionate religious faith, and discussing with desperate interest religious questions. But it is _our_ psychology that is shallow and inhuman, not his, and the presence of real religious feeling in a nature obsessed with the maddest lusts is a phenomenon of universal experience. It may, indeed, be said that what is most characteristically Russian in his point of view--he has told us so himself--is the substitution of what might be called "sanctity" for what is usually termed "morality," as an ideal of life. The "Christianity" of which Dostoievsky has the key is nothing if not an ecstatic invasion of regions where ordinary moral laws, based upon prudence and self-preservation, disappear, and give place to something else. The secret of it, beyond repentance and remorse, lies in the transforming power of "love;" lies, in fact, in "vision" purged by pity and terror; but its precise nature is rather to be felt than described.
It is in connection with this Christianity of his, a Christianity completely different from what we are accustomed to, that we find the explanation of his extraordinary interest in the "weak" as opposed to the "strong." The association between Christianity and a certain masterful, moral, self-assertive energy, such as we feel the presence of in England and America, might well tend to make it difficult for us to understand his meaning. It is precisely this sort of thing that makes it difficult for us to understand Russia and the Russian religion.
But as one reads Dostoievsky it is impossible to escape a suspicion that we Western nations have as yet only touched the fringe of what the Christian Faith is capable of, whether considered as a cosmic secret or as a Nepenthe for human suffering.
He saw, with clairvoyant distinctness, how large a part of the impetus of life's movement proceeds from the mad struggle, always going on, between the strong and the weak. It was his emphasis upon this struggle that helped Nietzsche to those withering exposures of "the tyranny of the weak" which cleared the path for his terrific transvaluations. It was Dostoievsky's demonic insight into the pathological sub-soil of the Religion of Pity which helped Nietzsche to forge his flashing counterblasts, but though their vision of the "general situation" thus coincided, their conclusions were diametrically different. For Nietzsche the hope of humanity is found in the strong; for Dostoievsky it is found in the weak. Their only ground of agreement is that they both refute the insolent claims of mediocrity and normality.