The same impression of a desire to conceal, to pass in silence, what
I attempted so carefully to express in my book, has been produced on
me by the criticisms upon it.
When my book appeared, it was, as I had expected, prohibited, and
according to the law it ought to have been burned. But, instead of
being burned, it was distributed among the officials, and it was
disseminated in a large number of written copies and lithographic
reprints, and in translations printed abroad. Very soon there
appeared criticisms upon the book, not only by the clergy, but also
by the laity, which the government not only sanctioned, but even
encouraged, so that the refutation of the book, which was assumed to
be unknown to any one, was made a theme for theological essays in
the academies.
The critics upon my books, both the Russian and the foreign critics,
can be divided into two classes: into the religious critics,--people
who consider themselves to be believers,--and lay critics, who are
freethinkers.