Love without God which is the antithesis of Christian love, a love which does not come from the essence of Being but from a contempt of being, which is not an affirmation of everlasting life but a making-the-most of the passing hour of earthly existence. It is nothing but a fantastic illusion; mankind without God can know no such love but rather will achieve the kind described in The Possessed. But Versilov's utopia, such as it is, is interesting in that it develops Dostoevsky's ideas about love. A godless mankind must end in savagery and massacre, bringing man down to the level of a mere means. If a man loves his neighbour in God, that love strengthens his notions of eternity: it is the only real love, Christian love, linked to the soul's immortality, an affirmation of it. True love is bound up with personality, and personality with immortality: that is Dostoyevsky’s essential idea and it is as valid for love between the sexes as for any other kind of human affection.

— Dostoevsky, by Nicholas Berdyaev