1 0 The Brothers Karamazov
that, it’s the Gospel precept, measure to others according
as they measure to you. How can we blame children if they
measure us according to our measure?
‘Not long ago a servant girl in Finland was suspected
of having secretly given birth to a child. She was watched,
and a box of which no one knew anything was found in the
corner of the loft, behind some bricks. It was opened and
inside was found the body of a new-born child which she
had killed. In the same box were found the skeletons of two
other babies which, according to her own confession, she
had killed at the moment of their birth.
‘Gentlemen of the jury, was she a mother to her children?
She gave birth to them, indeed; but was she a mother to
them? Would anyone venture to give her the sacred name
of mother? Let us be bold, gentlemen, let us be audacious
even: it’s our duty to be so at this moment and not to be
afraid of certain words and ideas like the Moscow women
in Ostrovsky’s play, who are scared at the sound of certain
words. No, let us prove that the progress of the last few years
has touched even us, and let us say plainly, the father is not
merely he who begets the child, but he who begets it and
does his duty by it.
‘Oh, of course, there is the other meaning, there is the
other interpretation of the word ‘father,’ which insists that
any father, even though he be a monster, even though he
be the enemy of his children, still remains my father sim-
ply because he begot me. But this is, so to say, the mystical
meaning which I cannot comprehend with my intellect, but
can only accept by faith, or, better to say, on faith, like many