[nickcarraway]

You see, it is just like our Russia. Those devils or demons coming out of the sick and entering into the swine—they are all the festering sores, all the poisonous vapors, all the filth, all the demons and the petty devils accumulated for centuries and centuries in our great, dear, sick Russia.... But the Great Idea and the Great Will protects her from up above, just as it did that other madman possessed by demons, and all those demons, all that filth festering on the surface, will themselves beg to be allowed to enter the swine. Indeed, they may have entered them already! It's us, us and the others—my son Peter and those around him, and we'll hurl ourselves from the cliff into the sea, and I'll be the first perhaps, and all of us, mad and raving, will drown and it will serve us right because that's all we're fit for. But the sick man will recover and will sit at the feet of Jesus (The Possessed, trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew (New York, signet edition, 1962), p. 671)

[HumanaeVitae]

Nick--

I have a more current translation (Pevear), but look up Kirillov's dialogue right before his suicide. That's the most gripping--and relevant--passage in the book. Explaining why he wishes to commit suicide. It's in the chapter "A Toilsome Night", I believe (I don't have the book handy).