Crime and Punishment

they might have a thrashing sometimes for letting their fancy run away
with them and to teach them their place, but no more; in fact, even
this isn’t necessary as they castigate themselves, for they are very
conscientious: some perform this service for one another and others
chastise themselves with their own hands.... They will impose various
public acts of penitence upon themselves with a beautiful and edifying
effect; in fact you’ve nothing to be uneasy about.... It’s a law of
nature.”

“Well, you have certainly set my mind more at rest on that score; but
there’s another thing worries me. Tell me, please, are there many people
who have the right to kill others, these extraordinary people? I am
ready to bow down to them, of course, but you must admit it’s alarming
if there are a great many of them, eh?”

“Oh, you needn’t worry about that either,” Raskolnikov went on in the
same tone. “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for
saying something _new_, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily
so in fact. One thing only is clear, that the appearance of all these
grades and sub-divisions of men must follow with unfailing regularity
some law of nature. That law, of course, is unknown at present, but I am