Readers by Heart

Eeverybody knows you may bump into a creepiest person or strangest notion in Dostoevsky but you forget all the time. Remember "Crime and Punishment", we all read sometimes but have you ever stop to think about a weird passage between Raskolnikov and Svidrigaliov about the possibility (or existence) of ghosts . I have to copy/paste here since i've read it in my own language but before that just meditate on that theory, you can see it can't be completely wrong, Here is the link http://www.bartleby.com/318/41.html. Here is the passage :

“You should go to a doctor.” 73
“I know I am not well, without your telling me, though I don’t know what’s wrong; I believe I am five times as strong as you are. I didn’t ask you whether you believe that ghosts are seen, but whether you believe that they exist.” 74
“No, I won’t believe it!” Raskolnikov cried, with positive anger. 75
“What do people generally say?” muttered Svidrigaïlov, as though speaking to himself, looking aside and bowing his head. “They say, ‘You are ill, so what appears to you is only unreal fantasy.’ But that’s not strictly logical. I agree that ghosts only appear to the sick, but that only proves that they are unable to appear except to the sick, not that they don’t exist.” 76
“Nothing of the sort,” Raskolnikov insisted irritably. 77
“No? You don’t think so?” Svidrigaïlov went on, looking at him deliberately. “But what do you say to this argument (help me with it): ghosts are as it were shreds and fragments of other worlds, the beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them, because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is broken, one begins to realise the possibility of another world; and the more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one’s contact with that other world, so that as soon as the man dies he steps straight into that world. I thought of that long ago. If you believe in a future life, you could believe in that, too.” 78
“I don’t believe in a future life,” said Raskolnikov. 79
Svidrigaïlov sat lost in thought. 80
“And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort,” he said suddenly. 81
“He is a madman,” thought Raskolnikov.