Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of.

“And how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!—and

for everyone knows everything about it already, and all that is secret is made open. And I accept it all, not with contempt, but with humility.

Moreover, in order to understand any man one must be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterward.

they hope for the best and will see nothing wrong, and although they have an inkling of the other side of the picture, yet they won’t face the truth till they are forced to; the very thought of it makes them shiver; they thrust the truth away with both hands, until the man they deck out in false colors puts a fool’s cap on them with his own hands.

She understands the man, of course, but she will have to live with the man. Why! she’d live on black bread and water, she would not sell her soul, she would not barter her moral freedom for comfort;

It’s clear enough: for herself, for her comfort, to save her life she would not sell herself, but for someone else she is doing it! For one she loves, for one she adores, she will sell herself! That’s what it all amounts to; for her brother, for her mother, she will sell herself! She will sell everything! In such cases, ‘we overcome our moral feeling if necessary,’ freedom, peace, conscience even, all, all are brought into the market. Let my life go, if only my dear ones may be happy!

That’s as it should be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year go . . . that way . . . to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain chaste, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory. . . . Once you’ve said ‘percentage’ there’s nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word . . . maybe we might feel more uneasy. .

In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.

“Lord,” he prayed, “show me my path—I renounce that accursed . . . dream of mine.”

Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange—it’s simple arithmetic!

“When reason fails, the devil helps!” he thought with a strange grin. This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily.

He was flinging himself on his knees to pray, but broke into laughter—not at the idea of prayer, but at himself.

“No one has been here. That’s the blood crying in your ears. When there’s no outlet for it and it gets clotted, you begin fancying things.

“What’s the most offensive is not their lying—one can always forgive lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth—what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.

‘We have facts,’ they say. But facts are not everything—at least half the business lies in how you interpret them!”

And it’s my notion that you observe and learn most by watching the younger generation. And I confess I am delighted . .

he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We’ve grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us.

At that moment other steps were heard; the crowd in the passage parted, and the priest, a little, gray old man, appeared in the doorway bearing the sacrament. A policeman had gone for him at the time of the accident. The doctor changed places with him, exchanging glances with him.

This sensation might be compared to that of a man condemned to death who has suddenly been pardoned.

Strength, strength is what one wants, you can get nothing without it, and strength must be won by strength—that’s what they don’t know,”

“you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err!

“that your complete recovery depends solely on yourself.

“In that sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with the slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we must draw a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among dozens—perhaps hundreds of thousands—hardly one is to be met with.”

He is a man of intelligence, but to act sensibly, intelligence is not enough. It all shows the man

“Come, strike me openly, don’t play with me like a cat with a mouse. It’s hardly civil,

(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 discoveries of Kepler 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 hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity.

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 out of 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 mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to it.

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 world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me—and vive la guerre éternelle—till the New Jerusalem, of course!”

“Simply from humanity.” “If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment—as well as the prison.”

I was in a hurry to overstep. . . . I didn’t kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the principle, but I didn’t overstep, I stopped on this side. . . . I was only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn’t even capable of that . . . Principle?

But you’ve only to assume that I, too, am a man et nihil humanum . . . in a word, that I am capable of being attracted and falling in love (which does not depend on our will), then everything can be explained in the most natural manner. The question is, am I a monster, or am I myself a victim?

the more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one’s contact with that other world, so that as soon as the man dies he steps straight into that world. I thought of that long ago. If you believe in a future life, you could believe in that, too.”

“To my thinking, you, with all your virtues, are not worth the little finger of that unfortunate girl at whom you throw stones.”

but now if you love me, give me up . . . else I shall begin to hate you, I feel it. . . . Good-bye!”

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity,”

“It was not because of your dishonor and your sin I said that of you, but because of your great suffering. But you are a great sinner, that’s true,” he added almost solemnly, “and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

“But can that be true?” he cried to himself. “Can that creature who has still preserved the purity of her spirit be consciously drawn at last into that sink of filth and iniquity? Can the process already have begun? Can it be that she has only been able to bear it till now, because vice has begun to be less loathsome to her? No, no, that cannot be!” he cried, as Sonia had just before. “No, what has kept her from the canal till now is the idea of sin and they, the children. . . . And if she has not gone out of her mind . . . but

“Jesus wept.

The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book.

but let him know or at least suspect every moment that I know all about it and am watching him day and night, and if he is in continual suspicion and terror, he’ll be bound to lose his head.

It’s not merely that he has nowhere to run to, he is psychologically unable to escape me, he-he! What an expression! Through a law of nature he can’t escape me if he had anywhere to go.

It’s a duty of every man to work for enlightenment and propaganda and the more harshly, perhaps, the better. I might drop a seed, an idea. . . . And something might grow up from that seed. How should I be insulting them? They might be offended at first, but afterward they’d see I’d done them a service.

Everything which is of use to mankind is honorable. I only understand one word: useful

And Katerina Ivanovna was not broken-spirited; she might have been killed by circumstance, but her spirit could not have been broken, that is, she could not have been intimidated, her will could not be crushed.

who has made me a judge to decide who is to live and who is not to live?”

And suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter hatred for Sonia passed through his heart. As it were wondering and frightened of this sensation, he raised his head and looked intently at her; but he met her uneasy and painfully anxious eyes fixed on him; there was love in them; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It was not the real feeling; he had taken the one feeling for the other.

“As though that could be the truth! Good God!” “I’ve only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful creature.” “A human being—a louse!” “I too know it wasn’t a louse,” he answered, looking strangely at her.

Sonia felt that his gloomy creed had become his faith and code.

“You turned away from God and God has smitten you, has given you over to the devil!”