Page 484 - the-idiot

manner, but with a suggestion of ‘chaff’ behind every word,
as though he were laughing in his sleeve at his own non-
sense—‘a fact, the discovery of which, I believe, I may claim
to have made by myself alone. At all events, no other has
ever said or written a word about it; and in this fact is ex-
pressed the whole essence of Russian liberalism of the sort
which I am now considering.
‘In the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally,
but an attack (whether mistaken or reasonable, is quite an-
other question) upon the existing order of things? Is this
so? Yes. Very well. Then my ‘fact’ consists in this, that RUS-
SIAN liberalism is not an attack upon the existing order of
things, but an attack upon the very essence of things them-
selves—indeed, on the things themselves; not an attack on
the Russian order of things, but on Russia itself. My Rus-
sian liberal goes so far as to reject Russia; that is, he hates
and strikes his own mother. Every misfortune and mishap
of the mother-country fills him with mirth, and even with
ecstasy. He hates the national customs, Russian history, and
everything. If he has a justification, it is that he does not
know what he is doing, and believes that his hatred of Rus-
sia is the grandest and most profitable kind of liberalism.
(You will often find a liberal who is applauded and esteemed
by his fellows, but who is in reality the dreariest, blindest,
dullest of conservatives, and is not aware of the fact.) This
hatred for Russia has been mistaken by some of our ‘Rus-
sian liberals’ for sincere love of their country, and they boast
that they see better than their neighbours what real love of
one’s country should consist in. But of late they have grown,