Page:The plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIII, in defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr., on trial for murder.djvu/94

 can take literally and practice literally and live. So, your Honor, I do not mean to unload this act on that man or this man, or this organization or that organization. I am trying to trace causes. I am trying to trace them honestly. I am trying to trace them with the light I have. I am trying to say to this court that these boys are not responsible for this; and that their act was due to this and this, and this and this; and asking this court not to visit the judgment of its wrath upon them for things for which they are not to blame.

There is something else in this case, your Honor, that is stronger still. There is a large element of chance in life. I know I will die. I don't know when; I don't know how; I don't know where; and I don't want to know. I know it will come. I know that it depends on infinite chances. Do I live to myself? Did I make myself? And control my fate? Can I fix my death unless I suicide—and I cannot do that because the will to live is too strong; I know it depends on infinite chances.

Take the rabbit running through the woods; a fox meets him at a certain fence. If the rabbit had not started when it did, it would not have met the fox and would have lived longer. If the fox had started later or earlier it would not have met the rabbit and its fate would have been different.

My death will depend upon chances. It may be by the taking in of a germ; it may be a pistol; it may be the decaying of my faculties, and all that makes life; it may be a cancer; it may be any one of an indefinite number of things, and where I am at a certain time, and whether I take in that germ, and the condition of my system when I breathe is an accident which is sealed up in the book of fate and which no human being can open.

These boys, neither one of them, could possibly have