What makes Dostoevsky's claim remarkable is that he doesn't call compassion a virtue we ought to *cultivate*—he names it as the structural law itself, the operating principle underneath everything we do. Most people think of compassion as optional, something to practice when we're at our best, but Dostoevsky suggests it's already woven into what makes us human, and we suffer precisely when we ignore it. A physician might prescribe antibiotics while feeling irritated at a patient's questions, technically doing her job while violating this law; but a nurse who sits with a confused elderly man for ten minutes, learning his daughter's name, is operating in alignment with how we're actually meant to function. The question isn't whether to be compassionate—it's whether we'll stop fighting against our own nature.