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- J02 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
were a long while trying to discover why the accused man
should tell a lie about this, when about everything else he had
made a truthful and straightforward confession. Finally some
of the lawyers more versed in psychology admitted that it was
possible he had really not looked into the purse, and so didn't
know what was in it when he hid it under the stone. But they
immediately drew the deduction that the crime could only
have been committed through temporary mental derangement,
through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit of gain.
This fell in with the most recent fashionable theory of tem-
porary insanity, so often applied in our days in criminal cases.
Moreover Raskolnikov's hypochondriacal condition was proved
by many witnesses, by Dr. Zossimov, his former fellow students,
his landlady and her servant. All this pointed strongly to the
conclusion that Raskolnikov was not quite like an ordinary
murderer and robber, but that there was another element in
the case.
To the intense annoyance of those who maintained this opin-
ion, the criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself. To the
decisive question as to what motive impelled him to the murder
and the robbery, he answered very clearly with the coarsest
frankness that the cause was his miserable position, his poverty
and helplessness, and his desire to provide for his first steps in
life by the help of the three thousand roubles he had reckoned
on finding. He had been led to the murder through his shallow
and cowardly nature, exasperated moreover by privation and
failure. To the question what led him to confess, he answered
that it was his heartfelt repentance. All this was almost
coarse. . . .
The sentence however was more merciful than could have
been expected, perhaps partly because the criminal had not tried
to justify himself, but had rather shown a desire to exaggerate
his guilt. All the strange and peculiar circumstances of the
crime were taken into consideration. There could be no doubt of
the abnormal and poverty-stricken condition of the criminal at
the time. The fact that he had made no use of what he had
stolen was put down partly to the effect of remorse, partly to his
abnormal mental condition at the time of the crime. Inciden-
tally the murder of Lizaveta served indeed to confirm the last
hypothesis: a man commits two miurders and forgets that the
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