‘I didn’t do the murder to gain wealth and power and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it; I did the murder for myself alone, and whether I became a benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider catching men in my web and sucking the life out of them, I couldn’t have cared at that moment…And it was not the money I wanted Sonia, when I did it. It was not so much the money I wanted but something else…I know it all now. I wanted to find out then and quickly; whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick it up, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right….’
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Crime and Punishment”.
