by all those who judged and punished them.  This class made up, according to Nekhludoff’s observations, more than one-half of all the prisoners.  To the third class belonged those who committed, according to their own ideas, the most indifferent or even good acts, but which were considered criminal by people—­entire strangers to them—­who were making the laws.  To this class belonged all those who carried on a secret trade in wine, or were bringing in contraband goods, or were picking herbs, or gathering wood, in private or government forests.  To this class also belonged the predatory mountaineers.

The fourth class consisted of people who, according to Nekhludoff, were reckoned among the criminals only because they were morally above the average level of society.  Among these the percentage of those who resisted interference with their affairs, or were sentenced for resisting the authorities, was very large.

The fifth class, finally, was composed of people who were more sinned against by society than they sinned themselves.  These were the helpless people, blunted by constant oppression and temptation, like that boy with the mats, and hundreds of others whom Nekhludoff saw both in and out of prison, and the conditions of those whose lives systematically drove them to the necessity of committing those acts which are called crimes.  To these people belonged, according to Nekhludoff’s observations, many thieves and murderers, with some of whom Nekhludoff had come in contact.  Among these Nekhludoff found, on close acquaintance, those spoiled and depraved people whom the new school calls the criminal type, and the existence of which in society is given as the reason for the necessity of criminal law and punishment.  These so-called depraved types, deviating from the normal, were, according to Nekhludoff, none other than those very people who have sinned less against society than society has sinned against them, and against whom society has sinned, not directly, but through their ancestors.

Nekhludoff’s attention was attracted by a habitual thief, Okhotin, who came under this head.  He was the son of a fallen woman; had grown up in lodging-houses, and till the age of thirty had never met a moral man.  In childhood he had fallen in with a gang of thieves, but he possessed a humorous vein which attracted people to him.  While asking Nekhludoff for aid he jested at himself, the judges, the prison and all the laws, not only criminal, but even divine.  There was also a fine-looking man, Fedorff, who, in company with a gang of which he was the leader, had killed and robbed an old official.  This one was a peasant whose father’s house had been illegally taken from him, and who, while in the army, suffered for falling in love with an officer’s mistress.  He was attractive and passionate.  His sole desire in life was to enjoy himself, and he had never met any people who, out of any consideration, tempered their passions, nor had he ever heard that there was