Tard's book

Tard's book is a criminological work that Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff reads during his journey to Siberia, hoping to find a rational, scientific answer to the question of why some people are punished by the state. The book represents the theoretical, academic approach to crime and punishment that Nekhludoff, after his direct exposure to the horrors of the prison system, finds profoundly inadequate and even deceptive.

Nekhludoff's Search for Answers

After witnessing the suffering of convicts, including the innocent Katerina Maslova, and the brutal realities of prison life, Nekhludoff is tormented by a fundamental question: why do some people have the right to judge, torment, and exile others? He turns to scientific literature, including Tard's book, which he carries with him in his portmanteau alongside other works on criminality. He reads these texts in snatches, hoping to find a coherent explanation for the institution of criminal law. However, the more he reads, the more disappointed he becomes. The books offer thousands of subtle and ingenious answers to secondary questions—about free will, heredity, skull measurements, and social conditions—but they never address his primary, moral question: by what right do some people punish others?

The Inadequacy of Scientific Theory

Nekhludoff's reading of Tard's book and similar works leads him to a stark conclusion. The scientific theories he encounters all take the necessity of punishment as an axiom, and then build elaborate justifications around it. They do not question the fundamental legitimacy of the penal system itself. This intellectual failure mirrors the moral failure of the officials Nekhludoff encounters, who perform their duties with a quiet conscience, never questioning the cruelty of the system they serve. The book, for all its learning, provides no answer to the simple, devastating question that Nekhludoff's experiences have forced upon him.

Contrast with Direct Experience

The theoretical framework of Tard's book stands in stark contrast to the concrete, visceral reality of the prisons Nekhludoff visits. He sees men dying of sunstroke, women in travail, and children sleeping on the filthy floor of overcrowded cells. He witnesses the flogging of prisoners and the casual brutality of convoy officers. Against this backdrop, the abstract arguments of criminological texts seem not just irrelevant but actively deceptive, serving to obscure the true nature of the violence being perpetrated. Nekhludoff's journey is one from abstract moral theory to concrete, lived experience, and Tard's book represents the intellectual stage he must leave behind.

The Turn to the Gospels

Ultimately, Nekhludoff abandons the search for a scientific answer. The night after Kryltzoff's death, exhausted and despairing, he mechanically opens a copy of the Gospels given to him by an English traveller. It is here, not in Tard's book or any other criminological text, that he finds the answer he has been seeking. The five commandments from the Sermon on the Mount—especially the law of forgiveness, which demands that one forgive without limit because all men are sinners—provide him with a simple, clear, and practical solution to the problem of evil. The scientific books, with their elaborate justifications for punishment, are revealed as part of the very system of violence and deception that the Gospels call upon men to transcend.