John T. Noonan Jr. the reflections of Prince Myshkin, is "the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence." Feodor Dostoevsky, "The Idiot", 292 (Alan Myers, trans.) (1991). In the vernacular, compassion is trumps. No one can read the accounts of the sufferings of the deceased plaintiffs supplied by their declarations, or the accounts of the sufferings of their patients supplied by the physicians, without being moved by them. No one would inflict such sufferings on another or want them inflicted on himself; and since the horrors recounted are those that could attend the end of life anyone who reads of them must
Prince Myshkin and actions. —Nastásya Filíppovna Baráshkova (Настасья Филипповна Барашкова) It is in the character of Nastasya Filippovna that the capacity of the Prince to affect an other's interior dialogue is most marked. Viewed by both society and her self as a 'fallen woman' because of years of sexual exploitation by Totsky, Nastasya Filippovna often embraces the sharp-tongued, destructive persona of a cynical courtesan. Myshkin understands that this persona grows out of an internalisation of the abuse she suffered and the unjust moral condemnation consequent upon it, and from their first meeting lets her know that it is not who she really