The local legal lights gradually lost faith in Magistrate 

 Darwin's peculiar brand of justice — he had n't much 

 respect for law, and once -when a lawyer cited him the 

 criminal code, he said, "Tut, tut, that was made a 

 hundred years ago!" Then he fined the man five 

 shillings, and paid the fine himself, w^hen he should 

 have sent him to the ^vorkhouse for six months. 



LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



*HE men ^vho have benefited the world 

 most, have, almost "without exception, 

 been looked dow^n upon and depreciated 

 by the priestly class. That is to say, the 

 men upon whose tombs society now 

 carves the word Savior, were outcasts 

 and criminals in their day. 



In a society "where the priest is regarded as the mouth- 

 piece of divinity — and therefore the highest type of 

 man — the artist, the inventor, the discoverer, the gen- 

 ius — the man of truth — has always been regarded as a 

 criminal. Society advances as it doubts the priest, dis- 

 trusts his oracles, and loses faith in his institution. 

 In the priest, at first, was deposited all human knowl- 

 edge, and what he did not knovi^ he pretended to know. 

 He was the guardian of mind and morals, and the cure 

 of souls. To question him was to die here and be 

 damned for eternity. 



The problem of civilization has been to get the truth 

 past the preacher to the people — he has forever barred 

 and blocked the "way, and until he w^as shorn of his 



177 



