IPPOLIT KIRILLOVITCH began his speech, trembling with nervousness,

with cold sweat on his forehead, feeling hot and cold all over by

turns. He described this himself afterwards. He regarded this speech

as his chef-d'oeuvre, the chef-d'oeuvre of his whole life, as his

swan-song. He died, it is true, nine months later of rapid

consumption, so that he had the right, as it turned out, to compare

himself to a swan singing his last song. He had put his whole heart

and all the brain he had into that speech. And poor Ippolit

Kirillovitch unexpectedly revealed that at least some feeling for

the public welfare and "the eternal question" lay concealed in him.

Where his speech really excelled was in its sincerity. He genuinely

believed in the prisoner's guilt; he was accusing him not as an

official duty only, and in calling for vengeance he quivered with a

genuine passion "for the security of society." Even the ladies in thee

audience, though they remained hostile to Ippolit Kirillovitch,

admitted that he made an extraordinary impression on them. He began in

a breaking voice, but it soon gained strength and filled the court

to the end of his speech. But as soon as he had finished, he almost

fainted.

    "Gentlemen of the jury," began the prosecutor, "this case has made

a stir throughout Russia. But what is there to wonder at, what is

there so peculiarly horrifying in it for us? We are so accustomed to

such crimes! That's what's so horrible, that such dark deeds have

ceased to horrify us. What ought to horrify us is that we are so

accustomed to it, and not this or that isolated crime. What are the

causes of our indifference, our lukewarm attitude to such deeds, to

such signs of the times, ominous of an unenviable future? Is it our

cynicism, is it the premature exhaustion of intellect and

imagination in a society that is sinking into decay, in spite of its

youth? Is it that our moral principles are shattered to their

foundations, or is it, perhaps, a complete lack of such principles

among us? I cannot answer such questions; nevertheless they are

disturbing, and every citizen not only must, but ought to be

harassed by them. Our newborn and still timid press has done good

service to the public already, for without it we should never have

heard of the horrors of unbridled violence and moral degradation which

are continually made known by the press, not merely to those who

attend the new jury courts established in the present reign, but to

everyone. And what do we read almost daily? Of things beside which the

present case grows pale, and seems almost commonplace. But what is

most important is that the majority of our national crimes of violence

bear witness to a widespread evil, now so general among us that it

is difficult to contend against it.

    "One day we see a brilliant young officer of high society, at

the very outset of his career, in a cowardly underhand way, without

a pang of conscience, murdering an official who had once been his

benefactor, and the servant girl, to steal his own I O U and what

ready money he could find on him; 'it will come in handy for my

pleasures in the fashionable world and for my career in the future.'

After murdering them, he puts pillows under the head of each of his

victims; he goes away. Next, a young hero 'decorated for bravery'

kills the mother of his chief and benefactor, like a highwayman, and

to urge his companions to join him he asserts that 'she loves him like

a son, and so will follow all his directions and take no precautions.'

Granted that he is a monster, yet I dare not say in these days that he

is unique. Another man will not commit the murder, but will feel and

think like him, and is as dishonourable in soul. In silence, alone

with his conscience, he asks himself perhaps, 'What is honour, and

isn't the condemnation of bloodshed a prejudice?'

    "Perhaps people will cry out against me that I am morbid,

hysterical, that it is a monstrous slander, that I am exaggerating.

Let them say so- and heavens! I should be the first to rejoice if it

were so! Oh, don't believe me, think of me as morbid, but remember

my words; if only a tenth, if only a twentieth part of what I say is

true- even so it's awful! Look how our young people commit suicide,

without asking themselves Hamlet's question what there is beyond,

without a sign of such a question, as though all that relates to the

soul and to what awaits us beyond the grave had long been erased in

their minds and buried under the sands. Look at our vice, at our

profligates. Fyodor Pavlovitch, the luckless victim in the present

case, was almost an innocent babe compared with many of them. And

yet we all knew him, 'he lived among us!'...

    "Yes, one day perhaps the leading intellects of Russia and of

Europe will study the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject

is worth it. But this study will come later, at leisure, when all

the tragic topsy-turvydom of to-day is farther behind us, so that it's

possible to examine it with more insight and more impartiality than

I can do. Now we are either horrified or pretend to be horrified,

though we really gloat over the spectacle, and love strong and

eccentric sensations which tickle our cynical, pampered idleness.

Or, like little children, we brush the dreadful ghosts away and hide

our heads in the pillow so as to return to our sports and merriment as

soon as they have vanished. But we must one day begin life in sober

earnest, we must look at ourselves as a society; it's time we tried to

grasp something of our social position, or at least to make a

beginning in that direction.

    "A great writer* of the last epoch, comparing Russia to a swift

troika galloping to an unknown goal, exclaims, 'Oh, troika, birdlike

troika, who invented thee!' and adds, in proud ecstasy, that all the

peoples of the world stand aside respectfully to make way for the

recklessly galloping troika to pass. That may be, they may stand

aside, respectfully or no, but in my poor opinion the great writer

ended his book in this way either in an excess of childish and naive

optimism, or simply in fear of the censorship of the day. For if the

troika were drawn by his heroes, Sobakevitch, Nozdryov, Tchitchikov,

it could reach no rational goal, whoever might be driving it. And

those were the heroes of an older generation, ours are worse specimens

still...."



    * Gogol.



    At this point Ippolit Kirillovitch's speech was interrupted by

applause. The liberal significance of this simile was appreciated. The

applause was, it's true, of brief duration, so that the President

did not think it necessary to caution the public, and only looked

severely in the direction of the offenders. But Ippolit Kirillovitch

was encouraged; he had never been applauded before! He had been all

his life unable to get a hearing, and now he suddenly had an

opportunity of securing the ear of all Russia.

    "What, after all, is this Karamazov family, which has gained

such an unenviable notoriety throughout Russia?" he continued.

"Perhaps I am exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain

fundamental features of the educated class of to-day are reflected

in this family picture- only, of course, in miniature, 'like the sun

in a drop of water.' Think of that unhappy, vicious, unbridled old

man, who has met with such a melancholy end, the head of a family!

Beginning life of noble birth, but in a poor dependent position,

through an unexpected marriage he came into a small fortune. A petty

knave, a toady and buffoon, of fairly good, though undeveloped,

intelligence, he was, above all, a moneylender, who grew bolder with

growing prosperity. His abject and servile characteristics

disappeared, his, malicious and sarcastic cynicism was all that

remained. On the spiritual side he was undeveloped, while his vitality

was excessive. He saw nothing in life but sensual pleasure, and he

brought his children up to be the same. He had no feelings for his

duties as a father. He ridiculed those duties. He left his little

children to the servants, and was glad to be rid of them, forgot about

them completely. The old man's maxim was Apres moi le deluge.* He

was an example of everything that is opposed to civic duty, of the

most complete and malignant individualism. 'The world may burn for

aught I care, so long as I am all right,' and he was all right; he was

content, he was eager to go on living in the same way for another

twenty or thirty years. He swindled his own son and spent his money,

his maternal inheritance, on trying to get his mistress from him.

No, I don't intend to leave the prisoner's defence altogether to my

talented colleague from Petersburg. I will speak the truth myself, I

can well understand what resentment he had heaped up in his son's

heart against him.



    * After me, the deluge.



    "But enough, enough of that unhappy old man; he has paid the

penalty. Let us remember, however, that he was a father, and one of

the typical fathers of to-day. Am I unjust, indeed, in saying that

he is typical of many modern fathers? Alas! many of them only differ

in not openly professing such cynicism, for they are better

educated, more cultured, but their philosophy is essentially the

same as his. Perhaps I am a pessimist, but you have agreed to

forgive me. Let us agree beforehand, you need not believe me, but

let me speak. Let me say what I have to say, and remember something of

my words.

    "Now for the children of this father, this head of a family. One

of them is the prisoner before us, all the rest of my speech will deal

with him. Of the other two I will speak only cursorily.

    "The elder is one of those modern young men of brilliant education

and vigorous intellect, who has lost all faith in everything. He has

denied and rejected much already, like his father. We have all heard

him, he was a welcome guest in local society. He never concealed his

opinions, quite the contrary in fact, which justifies me in speaking

rather openly of him now, of course, not as an individual, but as a

member of the Karamazov family. Another personage closely connected

with the case died here by his own hand last night. I mean an

afflicted idiot, formerly the servant, and possibly the illegitimate

son, of Fyodor Pavlovitch, Smerdyakov. At the preliminary inquiry,

he told me with hysterical tears how the young Ivan Karamazov had

horrified him by his spiritual audacity. 'Everything in the world is

lawful according to him, and nothing must be forbidden in the

future- that is what he always taught me.' I believe that idiot was

driven out of his mind by this theory, though, of course, the

epileptic attacks from which he suffered, and this terrible

catastrophe, have helped to unhinge his faculties. But he dropped

one very interesting observation, which would have done credit to a

more intelligent observer, and that is, indeed, why I've mentioned it:

'If there is one of the sons that is like Fyodor Pavlovitch in

character, it is Ivan Fyodorovitch.'

    "With that remark I conclude my sketch of his character, feeling

it indelicate to continue further. Oh, I don't want to draw any

further conclusions and croak like a raven over the young man's

future. We've seen to-day in this court that there are still good

impulses in his young heart, that family feeling has not been

destroyed in him by lack of faith and cynicism, which have come to him

rather by inheritance than by the exercise of independent thought.

    "Then the third son. Oh, he is a devout and modest youth, who does

not share his elder brother's gloomy and destructive theory of life.

He has sought to cling to the 'ideas of the people,' or to what goes

by that name in some circles of our intellectual classes. He clung

to the monastery, and was within an ace of becoming a monk. He seems

to me to have betrayed unconsciously, and so early, that timid despair

which leads so many in our unhappy society, who dread cynicism and its

corrupting influences, and mistakenly attribute all the mischief to

European enlightenment, to return to their 'native soil,' as they say,

to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened

children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their

decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the

horrors that terrify them.

    "For my part I wish the excellent and gifted young man every

success; I trust that youthful idealism and impulse towards the

ideas of the people may never degenerate, as often happens, on the

moral side into gloomy mysticism, and on the political into blind

chauvinism- two elements which are even a greater menace to Russia

than the premature decay, due to misunderstanding and gratuitous

adoption of European ideas, from which his elder brother is

suffering."

    Two or three people clapped their hands at the mention of

chauvinism and mysticism. Ippolit Kirillovitch had been, indeed,

carried away by his own eloquence. All this had little to do with

the case in hand, to say nothing of the fact of its being somewhat

vague, but the sickly and consumptive man was overcome by the desire

to express himself once in his life. People said afterwards that he

was actuated by unworthy motives in his criticism of Ivan, because the

latter had on one or two occasions got the better of him in

argument, and Ippolit Kirillovitch, remembering it, tried now to

take his revenge. But I don't know whether it was true. All this was

only introductory, however, and the speech passed to more direct

consideration of the case.

    "But to return to the eldest son," Ippolit Kirillovitch went on.

"He is the prisoner before us. We have his life and his actions,

too, before us; the fatal day has come and all has been brought to the

surface. While his brothers seem to stand for 'Europeanism' and 'the

principles of the people,' he seems to represent Russia as she is. Oh,

not all Russia, not all! God preserve us, if it were! Yet, here we

have her, our mother Russia, the very scent and sound of her. Oh, he

is spontaneous, he is a marvellous mingling of good and evil, he is

a lover of culture and Schiller, yet he brawls in taverns and plucks

out the beards of his boon companions. Oh, he, too, can be good and

noble, but only when all goes well with him. What is more, he can be

carried off his feet, positively carried off his feet by noble ideals,

but only if they come of themselves, if they fall from heaven for him,

if they need not be paid for. He dislikes paying for anything, but

is very fond of receiving, and that's so with him in everything. Oh,

give him every possible good in life (he couldn't be content with

less), and put no obstacle in his way, and he will show that he,

too, can be noble. He is not greedy, no, but he must have money, a

great deal of money, and you will see how generously, with what

scorn of filthy lucre, he will fling it all away in the reckless

dissipation of one night. But if he has not money, he will show what

he is ready to do to get it when he is in great need of it. But all

this later, let us take events in their chronological order.

    "First, we have before us a poor abandoned child, running about

the back-yard 'without boots on his feet,' as our worthy and

esteemed fellow citizen, of foreign origin, alas! expressed it just

now. I repeat it again, I yield to no one the defence of the criminal.

I am here to accuse him, but to defend him also. Yes, I, too, am

human; I, too, can weigh the influence of home and childhood on the

character. But the boy grows up and becomes an officer; for a duel and

other reckless conduct he is exiled to one of the remote frontier

towns of Russia. There he led a wild life as an officer. And, of

course, he needed money, money before all things, and so after

prolonged disputes he came to a settlement with his father, and the

last six thousand was sent him. A letter is in existence in which he

practically gives up his claim to the rest and settles his conflict

with his father over the inheritance on the payment of this six

thousand.

    "Then came his meeting with a young girl of lofty character and

brilliant education. Oh, I do not venture to repeat the details; you

have only just heard them. Honour, self-sacrifice were shown there,

and I will be silent. The figure of the young officer, frivolous and

profligate, doing homage to true nobility and a lofty ideal, was shown

in a very sympathetic light before us. But the other side of the medal

was unexpectedly turned to us immediately after in this very court.

Again I will not venture to conjecture why it happened so, but there

were causes. The same lady, bathed in tears of long-concealed

indignation, alleged that he, he of all men, had despised her for

her action, which, though incautious, reckless perhaps, was still

dictated by lofty and generous motives. He, he, the girl's

betrothed, looked at her with that smile of mockery, which was more

insufferable from him than from anyone. And knowing that he had

already deceived her (he had deceived her, believing that she was

bound to endure everything from him, even treachery), she

intentionally offered him three thousand roubles, and clearly, too

clearly, let him understand that she was offering him money to deceive

her. 'Well, will you take it or not, are you so lost to shame?' was

the dumb question in her scrutinising eyes. He looked at her, saw

clearly what was in her mind (he's admitted here before you that he

understood it all), appropriated that three thousand

unconditionally, and squandered it in two days with the new object

of his affections.

    "What are we to believe then? The first legend of the young

officer sacrificing his last farthing in a noble impulse of generosity

and doing reverence to virtue, or this other revolting picture? As a

rule, between two extremes one has to find the mean, but in the

present case this is not true. The probability is that in the first

case he was genuinely noble, and in the second as genuinely base.

And why? Because he was of the broad Karamazov character- that's

just what I am leading up to- capable of combining the most

incongruous contradictions, and capable of the greatest heights and of

the greatest depths. Remember the brilliant remark made by a young

observer who has seen the Karamazov family at close quarters- Mr.

Rakitin: 'The sense of their own degradation is as essential to

those reckless, unbridled natures as the sense of their lofty

generosity.' And that's true, they need continually this unnatural

mixture. Two extremes at the same moment, or they are miserable and

dissatisfied and their existence is incomplete. They are wide, wide as

mother Russia; they include everything and put up with everything.

    "By the way, gentlemen of the jury, we've just touched upon that

three thousand roubles, and I will venture to anticipate things a

little. Can you conceive that a man like that, on receiving that sum

and in such a way, at the price of such shame, such disgrace, such

utter degradation, could have been capable that very day of setting

apart half that sum, that very day, and sewing it up in a little

bag, and would have had the firmness of character to carry it about

with him for a whole month afterwards, in spite of every temptation

and his extreme need of it! Neither in drunken debauchery in

taverns, nor when he was flying into the country, trying to get from

God knows whom, the money so essential to him to remove the object

of his affections from being tempted by his father, did he bring

himself to touch that little bag! Why, if only to avoid abandoning his

mistress to the rival of whom he was so jealous, he would have been

certain to have opened that bag and to have stayed at home to keep

watch over her, and to await the moment when she would say to him at

last 'I am yours,' and to fly with her far from their fatal

surroundings.

    "But no, he did not touch his talisman, and what is the reason

he gives for it? The chief reason, as I have just said, was that

when she would say' I am yours, take me where you will,' he might have

the wherewithal to take her. But that first reason, in the

prisoner's own words, was of little weight beside the second. While

I have that money on me, he said, I am a scoundrel, not a thief, for I

can always go to my insulted betrothed, and, laying down half the

sum I have fraudulently appropriated, I can always say to her, 'You

see, I've squandered half your money, and shown I am a weak and

immoral man, and, if you like, a scoundrel' (I use the prisoner's

own expressions), 'but though I am a scoundrel, I am not a thief,

for if I had been a thief, I shouldn't have brought you back this half

of the money, but should have taken it as I did the other half!' A

marvellous explanation! This frantic, but weak man, who could not

resist the temptation of accepting the three thousand roubles at the

price of such disgrace, this very man suddenly develops the most

stoical firmness, and carries about a thousand roubles without

daring to touch it. Does that fit in at all with the character we have

analysed? No, and I venture to tell you how the real Dmitri

Karamazov would have behaved in such circumstances, if he really had

brought himself to put away the money.

    "At the first temptation- for instance, to entertain the woman

with whom he had already squandered half the money- he would have

unpicked his little bag and have taken out some hundred roubles, for

why should he have taken back precisely half the money, that is,

fifteen hundred roubles? Why not fourteen hundred? He could just as

well have said then that he was not a thief, because he brought back

fourteen hundred roubles. Then another time he would have unpicked

it again and taken out another hundred, and then a third, and then a

fourth, and before the end of the month he would have taken the last

note but one, feeling that if he took back only a hundred it would

answer the purpose, for a thief would have stolen it all. And then

he would have looked at this last note, and have said to himself,

'It's really not worth while to give back one hundred; let's spend

that, too!' That's how the real Dmitri Karamazov, as we know him,

would have behaved. One cannot imagine anything more incongruous

with the actual fact than this legend of the little bag. Nothing could

be more inconceivable. But we shall return to that later."

    After touching upon what had come out in the proceedings

concerning the financial relations of father and son, and arguing

again and again that it was utterly impossible, from the facts

known, to determine which was in the wrong, Ippolit Kirillovitch

passed to the evidence of the medical experts in reference to

Mitya's fixed idea about the three thousand owing him.