[349] Let us, too, not destroy a human soul! What is a father, I was asking just now, and exclaimed that it is a great word, a precious appellation. But, gentlemen of the jury, one must treat words honestly, and I shall allow myself to name a thing by the proper word, the proper appellation: such a father as the murdered old Karamazov cannot and does not deserve to be called a father. Love for a father that is not justified by the father is an absurdity, an impossibility. Love cannot be created out of nothing: only God creates out of nothing. ‘Fathers, provoke not your children,’ writes the apostle,[350] from a heart aflame with love. I quote these holy words now not for the sake of my client, but as a reminder to all fathers. Who has empowered me to teach fathers? No one. But as a man and a citizen I call out—vivos voco![351] We are not long on this earth, we do many evil deeds and say many evil words. And therefore let us all seize the favorable moment of our being together in order to say a good word to each other as well. And so I do; while I am in this place, I make the best of my moment. Not in vain is this tribune given us by a higher will—from here we can be heard by the whole of Russia. I speak not only to fathers here, but to all fathers I cry out: ‘Fathers, provoke not your children!’ Let us first fulfill Christ’s commandment ourselves, and only then let us expect the same of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers but enemies of our children, and they are not our children but our enemies, and we ourselves have made them our enemies! ‘With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you’[352]—it is not I who say this, it is the Gospel precept: measure with the same measure as it is measured to you. How can we blame our children if they measure to us with our own measure? Recently in Finland a girl, a servant, was suspected of secretly giving birth to a baby. They began watching her, and in the attic of the house, in a corner, behind some bricks, found her chest, which no one knew about, opened it, and took out of it the little body of a newborn baby that she had killed. In the same chest were found two skeletons of babies she had given birth to previously and killed at the moment of birth, as she confessed. Gentlemen of the jury, was she a mother to her children? Yes, she gave birth to them, but was she a mother to them? Would any one of us dare pronounce over her the sacred name of mother? Let us be brave, gentlemen of the jury, let us even be bold, it is even our duty to be so in the present moment and not to be afraid of certain words and ideas, like Moscow merchants’ wives who are afraid of ‘metal’ and ‘brimstone.’[353] No, let us prove, on the contrary, that the progress of the past few years has touched our development as well, and let us say straight out: he who begets is not yet a father; a father is he who begets and proves worthy of it. Oh, of course, there is another meaning, another interpretation of the word ‘father,’ which insists that my father, though a monster, though a villain to his children, is still my father simply because he begot me. But this meaning is, so to speak, a mystical one, which I do not understand with my reason, but can only accept by faith, or, more precisely, on faith, like many other things that I do not understand, but that religion nonetheless tells me to believe. But in that case let it remain outside the sphere of real life. While within the sphere of real life, which not only has its rights, but itself imposes great obligations—within this sphere, if we wish to be humane, to be Christians finally, it is our duty and obligation to foster only those convictions that are justified by reason and experience, that have passed through the crucible of analysis, in a word, to act sensibly and not senselessly as in dreams or delirium, so as not to bring harm to a man, so as not to torment and ruin a man. Then, then it will be a real Christian deed, not only a mystical one, but a sensible and truly philanthropic deed ...”