For example, here are you, wanting to wean man from his old habits, and to correct his will in line with the demands of science and common sense. But how do you know that man not only could but ought to adapt himself in this way? What has led you to conclude that it is absolutely necessary for human desire to be altered? In a few words, how do you know that this reform will really be to man's advantage?
Dostoevsky 32)
Dostoevsky, also clearly believed some of what he was saying in his work of fiction, as in a letter to his niece in 1870 he writes, "For want of great conceptions, even science has sunk into arid materialism; what does a passing blow signify in face of that?"
Dostoevsky 207) Even science, can be corrupted, as he rightly mused in his satire,...
Later in 1878 he writes to a friend, "Humanity as a whole is, of course, no less than an organism."
Dostoevsky 233) Dostoevsky, like many others of his time, was indoctrinated to question everything, including that which was said to liberate humanity, science. His peculiar life circumstances, no
doubt influenced his take on how science would simply become one more way that individuals, could legitimately act with cruelty. Ina sense his words are foreshadowing of many times to come, such as in the case of the German "scientific" adaptation that convinced millions to take the lives of innocents in WWII.
Works Cited
Coulson, Jessie. Dostoevsky: A Self-Portrait. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends. Trans. Ethel Colburn Mayne. New York: Horizon Press, 1961.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground, and the Gambler. Trans. Jane Kentish. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
