Defence of Criminals 



the vices (so-called), not to separate the black 

 horse and the white horse, but to find out what 

 is the relation of the one to the other — to see the 

 character as a whole, and the mutual interdepen- 

 dence of its different parts — to find out what 

 that power is which constitutes it a unity, whose 

 presence and control makes the man and all his 

 actions " right," and in whose absence (if it is 

 really possible for it to be entirely absent) the 

 man and his actions must be " wrong." 



What we call vices, faults, defects, appear often 

 as a kind of limitation : cruelty, for instance, as 

 a limitation of human sympathy, prejudice as a 

 blindness, a want of discernment ; but it is just 

 these limitations — in one form or another — which 

 are the necessary conditions of the appearance of 

 a human being in the world. If we are to act or 

 live at all we must act and live under limits. There 

 must be channels along which the stream is forced 

 to run, else it will spread and lose itself aimlessly 

 in all directions — and turn no mill-wheels. One 

 man is disagreeable and unconciliatory — the direc- 

 tions in which his sympathy goes out to others are 

 few and limited — yet there are situations in life 

 (and everyone must know them) when a man who 

 is able and zvilling to make himself disagreeable 

 is invaluable : when a Carlyle is worth any number 

 of Balaams. 



Sometimes again vices, etc., appear as a kind 

 of raw material from which the other qualities have 

 to be formed, and without which, in a sense, they 

 could not exist. Sensuality, for instance, underlies 



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