Ambivalent points on human nature

Raskolnikov smiled again. He realised all at once what the point was and where he was being led; he remembered his article. He decided to accept the challenge.

"This isn't quite how I have it," he began, simply and modestly. "I admit, however, that your summary is almost correct, even perfectly correct, if you like..."(It was as if he were pleased to agree that it was perfectly correct.)”The only difference is that I do not insist at all that extraordinary people absolutely must and are duty bound at all times to do all sorts of excesses, as you say. I even think that such an article would never be accepted for publication. I merely suggested that an 'extraordinary' man has the right...that is, not the official right, but his own right, to allow his conscience to...step over certain obstacles, and then only in the event that the fulfilment of his idea - sometime perhaps salutary for the whole of mankind - calls for it. You have been pleased to say that my article is unclear; I am prepared to clarify it for, as far as I can. I will perhaps not be mistaken in supposing that that seems to be just what you want. As you please, sir. In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, Kepler's or Newton's discoveries could become known to people in no other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would even be his duty...to remove those ten or a hundred people, in order to make his discoveries known to all mankind. it by no means follows from this, incidentally, that Newton should have the right to kill anyone he pleases, whomever happens along, or to steal from the market every day. Further, I recall developing in my article the idea that all...well, let's say, the lawgivers and founders of mankind, starting from the most ancient and going on to the Lycurguses, the Solons, the Muhamads, the Napoleons, and so forth, that all of them to a man were criminals, from the fact alone that in giving a new law they thereby violated the old one, held sacred by society and passed down from their fathers, and they certainly did not stop at shedding blood either, if it happened that blood (sometimes quite innocent and shed valiantly for the ancient law) could help them. it is even remarkable that most of these benefactors and founders of mankind were especially terrible blood-shedders. in short, I deduce that all, not only great men, but even those who are a tiny bit capable of saying something new - by their very nature cannot fail to be criminals - more or less to be sure. Otherwise it would be hard for them to get off the beaten track, and, of course, they cannot consent to stay on it, again by nature, and in my opinion it is even their duty not to consent. In short, you see that so far there is nothing especially new here. It has been printed and read a thousand times. As for my dividing people in ordinary and extraordinary, I agree that it is somewhat arbitrary, but I don't really insist on exact numbers. I only believe in my main idea. It consists precisely in people being divided generally, according to the law of nature, into two categories: a lower or, so to speak, material category (the ordinary), serving solely for the reproduction of their own kind: and people proper - that is those who have the gift or talent of speaking a new word in their environment. The subdivisions here are naturally endless, but the distinctive features of both categories are quite marked: people of the first, or material, category are by nature conservative, staid, live in obedience, and like being obedient. In my opinion they even must be obedient, because that is their purpose, and for them there is decidedly nothing humiliating in it. Those of the second category all transgress the law, are destroyers or inclined to destroy, depending on their abilities. The crimes of these people, naturally, are relative and variegated; for the most part they call, in quite diverse declarations, for the destruction of the present in the name of the better. But if such a one needs, for the sake of his idea, to step even over a dead body, over blood, then within himself, in his conscience, he can, in my opinion, allow himself to step over blood - depending, however, on the idea and its scale - make note of that. It is only in this sense that I speak in my article of their right to crime. (You recall we began with the legal question.) However, there's not much cause of alarm: the masses hardly ever acknowledge this right in them; they punish them and hang them (more or less), thereby quite rightly fulfilling their conservative purpose; yet, for all that, in subsequent generations these same masses place the punished ones on a pedestal and worship them (more or less). The first category is always master of the present; the second - master of the future. The first preserves the world and increases it numerically; the second moves the world and leads it towards a goal. Both the one and the other have perfectly equal right to exist."

Directly quoted from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (p.259-261: Vintage Classics)

PS: Any ideas?