Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

they put it all down to being “a prey to one's surroundings”2 – and that's it! It's their favourite expression! From that it follows directly that if only society were to be organized sanely, crime would simply disappear, as there would be nothing to protest about and everyone would become virtuous, just like that. Nature isn't taken into consideration, nature is banished, nature is not supposed to exist. The way they see it, it's not mankind which, moving along a historical, living path of development, will finally transmute itself into a sane society, but rather a social system which, having emanated from some mathematical head, will at once reorganize the whole of mankind and in a single instant make it virtuous and free from sin, more speedily than any living process, bypassing any historical or living path! That is why they have such an instinctive dislike of history: “It's nothing but a catalogue of outrages and follies,” they say – and it can all be explained as the result of stupidity! That's why they have such distaste for the living process of life: they don't want the living soul! The living soul demands to live, the living soul isn't obedient to the laws of mechanics, the living soul is suspicious, the living soul is reactionary! No, what they prefer are souls which can be made out of rubber, even if they do have a smell of corpse-flesh – but at any rate they're not alive, they have no will of their own, they're servile, won't rebel! And as a result they've red...