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- CRIME AND PUNISHME N'T 247
Raskolnikov smiled again. He saw the point at once, and
knew where they wanted to drive him. He decided to take up
the challenge.
"That wasn't quite my contention," he began simply and
modestly. "Yet I admit that you have stated it almost cor-
rectly; perhaps, if you like, perfectly so." (It almost gave him
pleasure to admit this.) "The only difference is that I don't
contend that extraordinary people are always bound to commit
breaches of morals, as you call it. In fact, I doubt whether such
an argument could be published. I simply hinted that an 'ex-
traordinary' man has the right . . . that is not an official right,
but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep . . .
certain obstacles, and only in caSe it is essential for the practical
fulfilment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the
whole of humanity). You say that my article isn't definite; I
am ready to make it as clear as I can. Perhaps I am right in
thinking you want me to; very well. I maintain that if the dis-
coveries ofKepler and Newton could not have been made
known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred,
or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed
have been in duty bound ... to eliminate the dozen or the hun-
dred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the
whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that New-
ton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal
every day in the market. Then, I remember, I maintain in my
article that all . . . well, legislators and leaders of men, such as
Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all with-
out exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a new
law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their
ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not stop
short at bloodshed either, if that bloodshed — often of innocent
persons fighting bravely in defence of ancient law — were of use
to their cause. It's remarkable, in fact, that the majority, indeed,
of these benefactors and leaders of humanity were guilty of ter-
rible carnage. In short, I maintain that all great men or even
men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving
some new word, must from their very nature be criminals —
more or less, of course. Otherwise it's hard for them to get outof the common rut; and to remain in the common rut is what
they can't submit to, from their very nature again, and to my
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