Here Ippolit Kirillovich’s speech was interrupted by applause. They liked the liberalism of his depiction of the Russian troika. True, only two or three claps broke out, so that the presiding judge did not even find it necessary to address the public with a threat to “clear the court” and merely gave the clappers a stern look. But Ippolit Kirillovich was encouraged: never had he been applauded before! For so many years no one had wanted to listen to the man, and suddenly there came an opportunity to speak out for all Russia to hear!

“Indeed,” he went on, “what is this Karamazov family that has suddenly gained such sad notoriety all over Russia? Perhaps I am greatly exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain basic, general elements of our modern-day educated society shine through, as it were, in the picture of this nice little family—oh, not all the elements, and they shine only microscopically, like to the sun in a small water-drop,’^[341] yet something has been reflected, something has betrayed itself. Look at this wretched, unbridled, and depraved old man, this ‘paterfamilias,’ who has so sadly ended his existence. A nobleman by birth, starting out his career as a poor little sponger, who through an accidental and unexpected marriage grabs a small capital as a dowry, at first a petty cheat and flattering buffoon with a germ of mental capacity, a far from weak one, by the way, and above all a usurer. As the years go by—that is, as his capital grows— he gets bolder. Self-deprecation and fawning disappear, only a jeering and wicked cynic and sensualist remains. The whole spiritual side has been scrapped, but there is an extraordinary thirst for life. In the end he sees nothing in life apart from sensual pleasure, and thus he teaches his children. Of the spiritual sort of fatherly duties—none at all. He laughs at them, he brings his little children up in the backyard and is glad when they are taken away from him. He even forgets about them altogether. The old man’s whole moral rule is—après moi le déluge.^[342]Everything contrary to the idea of a citizen, a complete, even hostile separation from society: ‘Let the whole world burn, so long as I am all right. ‘ And he is all right, he is perfectly content, he wants to live like that for another twenty or thirty years. He cheats his own son, and with the son’s money, his maternal inheritance, which he does not want to give him, he takes his own son’s mistress away. No, I have no intention of handing over the defense of the accused to the highly talented attorney from Petersburg. I myself can speak the truth, I myself understand the sum total of indignation he has stored up in his son’s heart. But enough, enough of that unfortunate old man, he has his reward. Let us recall, however, that he is a father, and one of our modern-day fathers. Shall I offend society if I say that he is even one of many modern-day fathers? Alas, so many modern-day fathers simply do not speak their minds as cynically as this one did, for they are better bred, better educated, but essentially they are of almost the same philosophy as he. But allow that I am a pessimist, allow that I am. You will forgive me: that was our arrangement. Let us settle it beforehand: do not believe me, do not believe me, I shall speak, but do not believe me. But still let me speak my mind, still you may remember a little something of what I say. Now, however, we come to the children of this old man, this paterfamilias: one of them stands before us in the dock, we shall have much to say of him later; the others I shall mention only in passing. The elder of the two is one of our modern young men, brilliantly educated, with quite a powerful mind, who, however, no longer believes in anything, who has already scrapped and rejected much, too much in life, exactly as his father had done. We have all heard him, he was received amicably in our society. He did not conceal his opinions, even the opposite, quite the opposite, which now emboldens me to speak of him somewhat frankly, not as a private person, of course, but only as a member of the Karamazov family. Yesterday a certain sick idiot died here, on the outskirts of our town, by suicide; a person much involved in the present case, the former servant and, perhaps, illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovich, Smerdyakov. In the preliminary investigation he told me, with hysterical tears, how this young Karamazov, Ivan Fyodorovich, had horrified him with his spiritual unrestraint. ‘Everything, according to him, is permitted, whatever there is in the world, and from now on nothing should be forbidden—that’s what he kept teaching me about.’ It seems that this thesis, which he was taught, ultimately caused the idiot to lose his mind, though, of course, his mental disorder was also affected by his falling sickness, and by this whole terrible catastrophe that had broken out in their house. But this idiot let drop one very, very curious remark, which would do honor even to a more intelligent observer, and that is why I am mentioning it now: ‘If,’ he said to me, ‘any one of the sons most resembles Fyodor Pavlovich in character, it is him, Ivan Fyodorovich!’ At this remark I shall interrupt the characterization I have begun, considering it indelicate to continue further. Oh, I do not want to draw any further conclusions and, like the raven, only croak ruin over a young fate. We have just seen, here in this hall, that the direct force of the truth still lives in his young heart, that the feeling of family loyalty has not yet been stifled in him by unbelief and moral cynicism, acquired more as an inheritance than through real mental suffering. Now the other son—oh, still a youth, pious and humble, who, in contrast to the dark, corrupting world view of his brother, seeks to cling to ‘popular foundations,’ so to speak, or to what goes by that clever name among us in certain theoretical corners of our thinking intelligentsia. He clung to the monastery, you see; he all but became a monk himself. In him, it seems to me, unconsciously, as it were, and so early on, there betrayed itself that timid despair that leads so many in our poor society, fearing its cynicism and depravity, and mistakenly ascribing all evil to European enlightenment, to throw themselves, as they put it, to the ‘native soil,’ so to speak, into the motherly embrace of the native earth, like children frightened by ghosts, who even at the dried-up breast of a paralyzed mother wish only to fall peacefully asleep and even to sleep for the rest of their lives, simply not to see the horrors that frighten them. For my part, I wish the good and gifted young man all the best, I hope that his youthful brightheartedness and yearning for popular foundations will not turn later, as so often happens, into dark mysticism on the moral side, and witless chauvinism on the civic side^[343]—two qualities that perhaps threaten more evil for the nation than even the premature corruption owing to a falsely understood and gratuitously acquired European enlightenment from which his elder brother suffers.”

Mysticism and chauvinism again drew two or three claps. And of course Ippolit Kirillovich had gotten carried away, and all this scarcely suited the present case, to say nothing of its being rather vague, but this consumptive and embittered man had too great a desire to speak his whole mind at least once in his life. It was said afterwards that in characterizing Ivan Fyodorovich, he had even been prompted by an indelicate feeling, because the young man had publicly snubbed him once or twice in argument, and Ippolit Kirillovich, remembering it, now desired to have his revenge. But I do not know that it is possible to draw such a conclusion. In any event, all this was merely a preamble, and further on the speech became more direct and to the point. “But now we have the third son of this father of a modern-day family,” Ippolit Kirillovich continued. “He is in the dock, he stands before us. Before us also stand his deeds, his life and acts: the hour has come, and everything has been unfolded, everything has been revealed. In contrast to the ‘Europeanism’ and the ‘popular foundations’ of his brothers, he seems to represent ingenuous Russia—oh, not all, not all, and God forbid it should be all! Yet she is here, our dear mother Russia, we can smell her, we can hear her. Oh, we are ingenuous, we are an amazing mixture of good and evil, we are lovers of enlightenment and Schiller, and at the same time we rage in taverns and tear out the beards of little drunkards, our tavern mates. Oh, we can also be good and beautiful, but only when we are feeling good and beautiful ourselves. We are, on the contrary, even possessed—precisely possessed—by the noblest ideals, but only on condition that they be attained by themselves, that they fall on our plate from the sky, and, above all, gratuitously, gratuitously, so that we need pay nothing for them. We like very much to get things, but terribly dislike having to pay for them, and so it is with everything. Oh, give us, give us all possible good things in life (precisely all, we won’t settle for less) and, more particularly, do not obstruct our character in any way, and then we, too, will prove that we can be good and beautiful. We are not greedy, no, but give us money, more and more money, as much money as possible, and then you will see how generously, with what scorn for filthy lucre, we can throw it away in one night of unrestrained carousing. And if we are not given any money, we will show how we manage to get it anyway when we want it badly enough. But of that later—let us take things in order. First of all, we see a poor, neglected boy, ‘in the backyard, without any shoes,’ as it was just put by our venerable and respected citizen—alas, of foreign origin! Once more I repeat, I yield to no one in defending the accused. I am prosecutor, but also defender. Yes, we, too, are human and are able to weigh the influence on a man’s character of the earliest impressions of childhood and the parental nest. But then the boy becomes a youth, a young man, an officer; for riotous conduct, for a challenge to a duel, he is exiled to one of the remote frontier towns of our bounteous Russia. There he serves, there he carouses, and of course a big ship needs a big sea. We need money, money above all, and so, after a long dispute, he and his father agree on a final six thousand, which is sent to him. Note that he signed this document, that this letter exists in which he all but renounces everything, and on payment of this six thousand ends his dispute with his father over the inheritance. Here occurs his encounter with a young girl of lofty character and development. Oh, I dare not repeat the details, you have only just heard them: here is honor, here is selflessness, I shall say no more. The image of a young man, thoughtless and depraved, who nonetheless bows to true nobility, to a lofty idea, flashed before us extremely sympathetically. But suddenly, after that, in this same courtroom, the other side of the coin followed quite unexpectedly. Again I dare not venture to guess, and will refrain from analyzing, why it followed thus. And yet there were reasons why it followed thus. This same person, all in tears from her long-concealed indignation, declares to us that he, he himself, was the first to despise her for her perhaps imprudent and impetuous, but all the same lofty and magnanimous impulse. It was in him, in this girl’s fiancé, before anyone else, that this derisive smile flashed, which from him alone she could not endure. Knowing that he had already betrayed her (betrayed her in the prior conviction that now she must bear with him in everything, even in his betrayal), knowing this, she deliberately offers him three thousand roubles, and clearly, all too clearly, lets him understand that she is offering him money to betray her: ‘Well, will you take it or not, will you be so cynical?’ she says to him silently with her probing and accusing eyes. He looks at her, he understands her thoughts perfectly (he himself confessed here before you that he understood everything), and without reservation he appropriates the three thousand and squanders it in two days with his new sweetheart! What are we to believe, then? The first legend—the impulse of a lofty nobility giving its last worldly means and bowing down before virtue, or the other side of the coin, which is so repugnant? It is usually so in life that when there are two opposites one must look for truth in the middle; in the present case it is literally not so. Most likely in the first instance he was sincerely noble, and in the second just as sincerely base. Why? Precisely because we are of a broad, Karamazovian nature—and this is what I am driving at—capable of containing all possible opposites and of contemplating both abysses at once, the abyss above us, an abyss of lofty ideals, and the abyss beneath us, an abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation. Recall the brilliant thought expressed earlier by a young observer who has profoundly and closely contemplated the whole Karamazov family, Mr. Rakitin: ‘A sense of the lowness of degradation is as necessary for these unbridled, unrestrained natures as the sense of the loftiest nobility’— and it is true: they precisely need this unnatural mixture, constantly and ceaselessly. Two abysses, two abysses, gentlemen, in one and the same moment—without that we are wretched and dissatisfied, our existence is incomplete. We are broad, broad as our whole mother Russia, we will embrace everything and get along with everything! Incidentally, gentlemen of the jury, we have now touched on these three thousand roubles, and I shall take the liberty of getting somewhat ahead of myself. Simply imagine him, this broad nature, having obtained this money—in such a way, through such shame, such disgrace, such uttermost humiliation—simply imagine him supposedly being capable that same day of setting aside half of it, of sewing it into an amulet, and being firm enough after that to carry it around his neck for a whole month, despite all temptations and extreme needs! Not while drinking riotously in the taverns, not when flying out of town to get, God knows from whom, the money he so badly needed to save his sweetheart from seduction by his rival, his own father—would he venture to touch this amulet. But if only precisely not to leave her to the seduction of the old man of whom he was so jealous, he ought to have opened his amulet and stayed home to keep relentless watch over his sweetheart, waiting for the moment when she would finally say to him: ‘I am yours,’ and he would fly off with her somewhere far away from the present fatal situation. But no, he would not touch his talisman, and on what pretext? The original pretext was, we have said, precisely so that when he was told: ‘I am yours, take me wherever you like,’ he would have the wherewithal to take her. But this first pretext, according to the defendant’s own words, paled beside the second one. As long as I carry this money on myself, he said, ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a thief,’ for I can always go to my insulted fiancée and, laying before her this half of the whole sum I fraudulently appropriated, I can always say to her: ‘You see, I squandered half of your money, and proved thereby that I am a weak and immoral man, a scoundrel if you like’ (I am using the defendant’s own language), ‘but even if I am a scoundrel, I am still not a thief, for if I were a thief, I would not have brought you this remaining half of the money, but would have appropriated it as I did the first half.’ An astonishing explanation of the fact! This most violent but weak man, who was unable to resist the temptation of accepting the three thousand roubles along with such disgrace—this same man suddenly finds in himself such stoic firmness that he can carry thousands of roubles around his neck without venturing to touch them! Is this even slightly congruous with the character we are analyzing? No, and I shall permit myself to tell you how the real Dmitri Karamazov would have acted in such a case, even if he had indeed decided to sew his money into an amulet. At the very first temptation—say, again to provide some entertainment for this same new sweetheart with whom he had already squandered the first half of the money—he would undo his amulet and take out, well, maybe just a hundred roubles to begin with, for why should he need to return exactly half, that is, fifteen hundred—fourteen hundred will do, it comes to the same thing: ‘a scoundrel, but not a thief, because I’ve at least brought back fourteen hundred, and a thief would have taken it all and brought back nothing.’ Then in a little while he would undo the amulet again, and take out a second hundred, then a third, then a fourth, and by no later than the end of the month he would have taken out all but the last hundred: so I’ll bring back a hundred, it comes to the same thing: ‘a scoundrel, but not a thief. I squandered twenty-nine hundred, but I’ve brought back one at least, a thief would not have done that. ‘ And finally, having squandered all but the last hundred, he would look at that last hundred and say to himself: ‘But there’s really no point in giving a hundred back—why don’t I squander this, too!’ That is how the real Dmitri Karamazov, as we know him, would have acted. But as for the legend of this amulet— it is hard even to imagine anything more contrary to reality. One can suppose anything but that. But we shall come back to that later.”