The Brothers Karamazov

As for our presiding judge, one can simply say of him that he was an educated and humane man, with a practical knowledge of his task, and with the most modern ideas. He was rather vain, but not overly concerned with his career. His chief goal in life was to be a progressive man. He had a fortune and connections besides. He took, as it turned out later, a rather passionate view of the Karamazov case, but only in a general sense. He was concerned with the phenomenon, its classification, seeing it as a product of our social principles, as characteristic of the Russian element, and so on and so forth. But his attitude towards the personal character of the case, its tragedy, as well as towards the persons of the participants, beginning with the defendant, was rather indifferent and abstract, as, by the way, it perhaps ought to have been.