The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
philosophical belief, and he said, "If one believed
it strongly enough."
And I asked him about Nietzsche. He said he
knew something of Nietzsche, something of his re-
sponsibility for the war, for which he perhaps was
not responsible. He said he knew something about
his doctrines. I asked him what became of him,
and he said he was insane for fifteen years just before
the time of his death. His very doctrine is a species
of insanity.
Here is a man, a wise man — perhaps not wise,
but brilliant — a thoughtful man who has made his
impress upon the world. Every student of philosophy
knows him. His own doctrines made him a
maniac. And here is a young boy, in the adolescent
age, harassed by everything that harasses children,
who takes this philosophy and believes it liter-
ally.
Do you suppose this mad act could have been
done by him in any other way? What could he
have to win from this homicide? A boy with a
beautiful home, with automobiles, a graduate of
college, going to Europe, and then to study law
at Harvard; as brillant in intellect as any boy that
you could find; a boy with every prospect that life
might hold out to him; and yet he goes out and com-
mits this strange, wild act, that he may die on the
gallows or live in a prison cell until he dies of old
age or disease. He did it, obsessed of an idea, per-
haps to some extent influenced by what has not been
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