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picture? As a rule, between two extremes one has to find the
mean, but in the present case this is not true. The probabil-
ity is that in the first case he was genuinely noble, and in the
second as genuinely base. And why? Because he was of the
broad Karamazov character — that’s just what I am lead-
ing up to — capable of combining the most incongruous
contradictions, and capable of the greatest heights and of
the greatest depths. Remember the brilliant remark made
by a young observer who has seen the Karamazov family at
close quarters — Mr. Rakitin: ‘The sense of their own deg-
radation is as essential to those reckless, unbridled natures
as the sense of their lofty generosity.’ And that’s true, they
need continually this unnatural mixture. Two extremes at
the same moment, or they are miserable and dissatisfied
and their existence is incomplete. They are wide, wide as
mother Russia; they include everything and put up with ev-
erything.
‘By the way, gentlemen of the jury, we’ve just touched
upon that three thousand roubles, and I will venture to an-
ticipate things a little. Can you conceive that a man like that,
on receiving that sum and in such a way, at the price of such
shame, such disgrace, such utter degradation, could have
been capable that very day of setting apart half that sum,
that very day, and sewing it up in a little bag, and would have
had the firmness of character to carry it about with him for
a whole month afterwards, in spite of every temptation and
his extreme need of it! Neither in drunken debauchery in
taverns, nor when he was flying into the country, trying to
get from God knows whom, the money so essential to him

11 The Brothers Karamazov