INTRODUCTION
like Rembrandt's portraits, they make the living people, who stand looking at them, absurdly grey and lifeless by comparison! Baburin is a Nihilist before the times of Nihilism, he is a type of the strong characters that arose later in the movement of the 'eighties.'
A pre-Nihilistic type is also the character of Sophie in A Strange Story. But the chief value of this last psychological study is that it gives the English mind a clue to the fundamental distinction that marks off the Russian people from the peoples of the West. Sophie's words—'You spoke of the will—that's what must be broken' (p. 61)—define most admirably the deepest aspiration of the Russian soul. To be lowly and suffering, to be despised, sick, to be under the lash of fate, to be trampled under foot by others, to be unworthy, all this secret desire of the Russian soul implies that the Russian has little will, that he finds it easier to resign himself than to make the effort to be powerful, triumphant, worthy. It is from the resignation and softness of the Russian nature that all its characteristic virtues spring. Whereas religion with the English mind is largely an anxiety to be moral, to be right and righteous, to be 'a chosen vessel of the Lord,' religion
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