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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. But it does not follow from that that

Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal

every day in the market. Then, I remember, I maintain in my

article that all... well, legislators and leaders of men, such as

Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without

exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a new law,

they transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their

ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not stop

short at bloodshed either, if that bloodshed--often of innocent

persons fighting bravely in defence of ancient law--were of use

to their cause.