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- 248 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to it. You see that there
is nothing particularly new in all that. The same thing has been
printed and read a thousand times before. As for my division of
people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge that it's
somewhat arbitrary, but I don't insist upon exact numbers. I
only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided
by a law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary),
that is, so to say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind,
and men who have the gift or the talent to utter a new word.
There are, of course, innumerable sub-divisions, but the dis-
tinguishing features of both categories are fairly well marked.
The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in
temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love
to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty to be con-
trolled, because that's their vocation, and there is nothing
humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress
the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according
to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative
and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the
destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such
a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse
or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself,
in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood — that
depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. It's only in
that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article (you re-
member itbegan with the legal question) . There's no need for
such anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this
right, they punish them or hang them (more or less), and in
doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative vocation. But the
same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next genera-
tion and worship them (more or less) . The first category is
always the man of the present, the second the man of the future.
The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the
yorld and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to
txist. In fact, all have equal rights with me — and vive la guerre
eternelle — till the New Jerusalem, of course!"
"Then you believe in the New Jerusalem, do you?"
"I do," Raskolnikov answered firmly; as he said these words
and dvu-ing the whole preceding tirade he kept his eyes on one
spot on the carpet.
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