This was just the beginning of his journey of the ultimate punishment. During this period, many of his friends and family visited him feeling pity for the unknown murderer. One of them, who went by Razumihin, had formerly been in school with Raskolnikov at the time Raskolnikov had written an essay about the motives of crime. This essay dealt with how all the great leaders had to commit crimes, and if they could not commit the crime, they were not worthy of being a hero. For Raskolnikov all men are divided into two categories: ordinary and extraordinary. The ordinary man is inferior, a must live in submission and has no right to transgress the law because he is ordinary. However the extraordinary man "has the right that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfillment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity)" (Page 242). Raskolnikov's punishment began with the realization that he was not an extraordinary man because he felt pain and anguish, and especially, he felt fear. Raskolnikov had to suffer through a mental punishment. This mental punishment, for the few weeks he was free, was by far more extreme then the physical punishment he was forced to go through in the prisons of Siberia. Raskolnikov wants to be caught. He is torn between keeping his deeds inside, which are slowly eating away at his conscious and putting everything out in the open. His conscious mind wants to stay hidden as long as possible, while his subconscious leaves the clues mentioned above for the investigators. As the story progresses and this battle is waged in his mind, he finds himself in conflict with his theory. He slowly moves away from it, until his confession to Sonia, where he flat out declares that his theory was only an excuse "I did the murder for myself, for myself alone" (Page 387).
