The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
our own end, and consequently to the means to accom-
plish that.
A great man, a man that nature has built up and invented
in a grand style, is colder, harder, less cautious
and more free from the fear of public opinion. He does
not possess the virtues which are compatible with re-
spectability, with being respected, nor any of those
things which are counted among the virtues of the hard.
Nietzsche held a contemptuous, scornful atti-
tude to all those things which the young are taught
as important in life; a fixing of new values which
are not the values by which any normal child has
ever yet been reared — a philosophical dream, con-
taining more or less truth, that was not meant by
anyone to be applied to life.
Counsel have said that because a man believes in
murder that does not excuse him. Quite right. But
this is not a case like the Anarchists Case, where a
number of men, perhaps honestly believing in revo-
lution and knowing the consequences of their act
and knowing its illegal character, were held respon-
sible for murder. Of course the books are full of
statements that the fact that a man believes in com-
mitting a crime does not excuse him.
That is not this case, and counsel must know that
it is not this case. Here is a boy at sixteen or seven-
teen becoming obsessed with these doctrines. There
isn't any question about the facts. Their own wit-
nesses tell it and our witnesses tell it. It was not a
casual bit of philosophy with him; it was his life.
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