feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_14_part_10.txt
feat_book_id: The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 10
feat_summary_id: book 12, chapter 10
feat_summary: {"name": "book 12, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section15/", "summary": "The Defense Attorney's Speech. A Stick with Two Ends Fetyukovich counters by pointing out the flimsiness of all the evidence against Dmitri. Apart from circumstance and the conjecture of unreliable witnesses, there is no proof that Dmitri is guilty", "analysis": ""}
text: Chapter X. The Speech For The Defense. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways
  
  
  All was hushed as the first words of the famous orator rang out. The eyes
  of the audience were fastened upon him. He began very simply and directly,
  with an air of conviction, but not the slightest trace of conceit. He made
  no attempt at eloquence, at pathos, or emotional phrases. He was like a
  man speaking in a circle of intimate and sympathetic friends. His voice
  was a fine one, sonorous and sympathetic, and there was something genuine
  and simple in the very sound of it. But every one realized at once that
  the speaker might suddenly rise to genuine pathos and "pierce the heart
  with untold power." His language was perhaps more irregular than Ippolit
  Kirillovitch's, but he spoke without long phrases, and indeed, with more
  precision. One thing did not please the ladies: he kept bending forward,
  especially at the beginning of his speech, not exactly bowing, but as
  though he were about to dart at his listeners, bending his long spine in
  half, as though there were a spring in the middle that enabled him to bend
  almost at right angles.
  
  At the beginning of his speech he spoke rather disconnectedly, without
  system, one may say, dealing with facts separately, though, at the end,
  these facts formed a whole. His speech might be divided into two parts,
  the first consisting of criticism in refutation of the charge, sometimes
  malicious and sarcastic. But in the second half he suddenly changed his
  tone, and even his manner, and at once rose to pathos. The audience seemed
  on the look-out for it, and quivered with enthusiasm.
  
  He went straight to the point, and began by saying that although he
  practiced in Petersburg, he had more than once visited provincial towns to
  defend prisoners, of whose innocence he had a conviction or at least a
  preconceived idea. "That is what has happened to me in the present case,"
  he explained. "From the very first accounts in the newspapers I was struck
  by something which strongly prepossessed me in the prisoner's favor. What
  interested me most was a fact which often occurs in legal practice, but
  rarely, I think, in such an extreme and peculiar form as in the present
  case. I ought to formulate that peculiarity only at the end of my speech,
  but I will do so at the very beginning, for it is my weakness to go to
  work directly, not keeping my effects in reserve and economizing my
  material. That may be imprudent on my part, but at least it's sincere.
  What I have in my mind is this: there is an overwhelming chain of evidence
  against the prisoner, and at the same time not one fact that will stand
  criticism, if it is examined separately. As I followed the case more
  closely in the papers my idea was more and more confirmed, and I suddenly
  received from the prisoner's relatives a request to undertake his defense.
  I at once hurried here, and here I became completely convinced. It was to
  break down this terrible chain of facts, and to show that each piece of
  evidence taken separately was unproved and fantastic, that I undertook the
  case."
  
  So Fetyukovitch began.
  
  "Gentlemen of the jury," he suddenly protested, "I am new to this
  district. I have no preconceived ideas. The prisoner, a man of turbulent
  and unbridled temper, has not insulted me. But he has insulted perhaps
  hundreds of persons in this town, and so prejudiced many people against
  him beforehand. Of course I recognize that the moral sentiment of local
  society is justly excited against him. The prisoner is of turbulent and
  violent temper. Yet he was received in society here; he was even welcome
  in the family of my talented friend, the prosecutor."
  
  (N.B. At these words there were two or three laughs in the audience,
  quickly suppressed, but noticed by all. All of us knew that the prosecutor
  received Mitya against his will, solely because he had somehow interested
  his wife--a lady of the highest virtue and moral worth, but fanciful,
  capricious, and fond of opposing her husband, especially in trifles.
  Mitya's visits, however, had not been frequent.)
  
  "Nevertheless I venture to suggest," Fetyukovitch continued, "that in
  spite of his independent mind and just character, my opponent may have
  formed a mistaken prejudice against my unfortunate client. Oh, that is so
  natural; the unfortunate man has only too well deserved such prejudice.
  Outraged morality, and still more outraged taste, is often relentless. We
  have, in the talented prosecutor's speech, heard a stern analysis of the
  prisoner's character and conduct, and his severe critical attitude to the
  case was evident. And, what's more, he went into psychological subtleties
  into which he could not have entered, if he had the least conscious and
  malicious prejudice against the prisoner. But there are things which are
  even worse, even more fatal in such cases, than the most malicious and
  consciously unfair attitude. It is worse if we are carried away by the
  artistic instinct, by the desire to create, so to speak, a romance,
  especially if God has endowed us with psychological insight. Before I
  started on my way here, I was warned in Petersburg, and was myself aware,
  that I should find here a talented opponent whose psychological insight
  and subtlety had gained him peculiar renown in legal circles of recent
  years. But profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways."
  (Laughter among the public.) "You will, of course, forgive me my
  comparison; I can't boast of eloquence. But I will take as an example any
  point in the prosecutor's speech.
  
  "The prisoner, running away in the garden in the dark, climbed over the
  fence, was seized by the servant, and knocked him down with a brass
  pestle. Then he jumped back into the garden and spent five minutes over
  the man, trying to discover whether he had killed him or not. And the
  prosecutor refuses to believe the prisoner's statement that he ran to old
  Grigory out of pity. 'No,' he says, 'such sensibility is impossible at
  such a moment, that's unnatural; he ran to find out whether the only
  witness of his crime was dead or alive, and so showed that he had
  committed the murder, since he would not have run back for any other
  reason.'
  
  "Here you have psychology; but let us take the same method and apply it to
  the case the other way round, and our result will be no less probable. The
  murderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a precaution, whether
  the witness was alive or not, yet he had left in his murdered father's
  study, as the prosecutor himself argues, an amazing piece of evidence in
  the shape of a torn envelope, with an inscription that there had been
  three thousand roubles in it. 'If he had carried that envelope away with
  him, no one in the world would have known of that envelope and of the
  notes in it, and that the money had been stolen by the prisoner.' Those
  are the prosecutor's own words. So on one side you see a complete absence
  of precaution, a man who has lost his head and run away in a fright,
  leaving that clew on the floor, and two minutes later, when he has killed
  another man, we are entitled to assume the most heartless and calculating
  foresight in him. But even admitting this was so, it is psychological
  subtlety, I suppose, that discerns that under certain circumstances I
  become as bloodthirsty and keen-sighted as a Caucasian eagle, while at the
  next I am as timid and blind as a mole. But if I am so bloodthirsty and
  cruelly calculating that when I kill a man I only run back to find out
  whether he is alive to witness against me, why should I spend five minutes
  looking after my victim at the risk of encountering other witnesses? Why
  soak my handkerchief, wiping the blood off his head so that it may be
  evidence against me later? If he were so cold-hearted and calculating, why
  not hit the servant on the head again and again with the same pestle so as
  to kill him outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the witness?
  
  "Again, though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he left
  another witness on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken from the
  two women, and which they could always recognize afterwards as theirs, and
  prove that he had taken it from them. And it is not as though he had
  forgotten it on the path, dropped it through carelessness or haste, no, he
  had flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen paces from where
  Grigory lay. Why did he do so? Just because he was grieved at having
  killed a man, an old servant; and he flung away the pestle with a curse,
  as a murderous weapon. That's how it must have been, what other reason
  could he have had for throwing it so far? And if he was capable of feeling
  grief and pity at having killed a man, it shows that he was innocent of
  his father's murder. Had he murdered him, he would never have run to
  another victim out of pity; then he would have felt differently; his
  thoughts would have been centered on self-preservation. He would have had
  none to spare for pity, that is beyond doubt. On the contrary, he would
  have broken his skull instead of spending five minutes looking after him.
  There was room for pity and good-feeling just because his conscience had
  been clear till then. Here we have a different psychology. I have
  purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you
  can prove anything by it. It all depends on who makes use of it.
  Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite
  unconsciously. I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen."
  
  Sounds of approval and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor, were
  again audible in the court. I will not repeat the speech in detail; I will
  only quote some passages from it, some leading points.
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: book 12, Chapter 10
target: The Defense Attorney's Speech. A Stick with Two Ends Fetyukovich counters by pointing out the flimsiness of all the evidence against Dmitri. Apart from circumstance and the conjecture of unreliable witnesses, there is no proof that Dmitri is guilty