annot tell why. He can only attack and demolish. "What
justification have you all in the sight of God? Why do you live?" he
demands of the conclave of merchants, of life's successes. "You have not
constructed life--you have made a cesspool! You have disseminated filth
and stifling exhalations by your deeds. Have you any conscience? Do you
remember God? A five-kopek piece--that is your God! But you have
expelled your conscience!"

Like the cry of Isaiah, "Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your
misfortunes that shall come upon you," is Foma's: "You blood-suckers!
You live on other people's strength; you work with other people's hands!
For all this you shall be made to pay! You shall perish--you shall be
called to account for all! For all--to the last little tear-drop!"

Stunned by this puddle of life, unable to make sense of it, Foma
questions, and questions vainly, whether of Sofya Medynsky in her
drawing-room of beauty, or in the foulest depths of the first chance
courtesan's heart. Linboff, whose books contradict one another, cannot
help him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the verse writers
and harlots in dives and boozingkens. And so, wondering, pondering,
perplexed, amazed, whirling through the mad whirlpool of life, dancing
the dance of death, groping for the nameless, indefinite something, the
magic formula, the essence, the intrinsic fact, the flash of light
through the murk and dark--the rational sanction for existence, in
short--Foma Gordyeeff goes down to madness and death.

It is not a pretty book, but it is a masterful interrogation of life--not
of life universal, but of life particular, the social life of to-day. It
is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays the
book down sick at heart--sick for life with all its "lyings and its
lusts." But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of social
disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, that
its tendency cannot but be strongly for good. It is a goad, to prick
sleeping human consciences awake and drive them into the battle for
humanity.

But no story is told, nothing is finished, some one will object. Surely,
when Sasha leaped overboard and swam to Foma, something happened. It was
pregnant with possibilities. Yet it was not finished, was not decisive.
She left him to go with the son of a rich vodka-maker. And all that was
best in Sofya Medynsky was quickened w