This practical code of behavior is our common-sense maturity it appreciates ideal standards of behavior but it has another standard of behavior for day-to-day living. And, we also know, as Myshkin does not, to avoid neurotics and potential murderers. Also, we learn not to trust, as Myshkin trusts, proven liars and hypocrites. Myshkin is impulsively honest we admire his honesty but we learn early when to be honest and how to be truthful we learn the art of telling the truth and of being tactful. Myshkin is another of those heroes from Western literature and from the Bible whom we are taught to admire, yet whom we learn - from experience - not to emulate too closely if we are to survive. Myshkin's behavior and his attitudes are as close to being ideal as were those of knights-errant - or Christ but knights (Don Quixote, for example) and Christ are figures incompatible with the real world of basic, animal self-interest and passion. Myshkin is indeed "perfectly good," but the question of whether or not he is truly a man is at the core of the book's tragedy. Dostoevsky was almost successful in creating the "perfectly good man" in The idiot.
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