1 0 The Brothers Karamazov
ral; 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 fa-
ther’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 pris-
oner.’ 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 clue on
the floor, and two minutes later, when he has killed another
man, we are entitled to assume the most heartless and cal-
culating 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,