46 DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS: 



The point of all which is that the so-called vices and defects whether 

 we regard them as limitations or whether we regard them as raw materials 

 of character, whether we regard them in the individual solely or whether 

 we regard them in their relation to society are necessary elements of 

 human life, elements without which the so-called virtues could not exist ; 

 and that therefore it is quite impossible to separate vices and virtues into 

 distinct classes with the latent idea involved that one class may be re- 

 tained and the other in course of time got rid of. Defects and bad qual- 

 ities will not be treated so they clamor for their rights and will not be 

 denied ; they effect a lodgment in us, and we have to put up with them. 

 Like the grain of sand in the oyster, we are forced to make pearls of them. 



These are the precipices and chasms which give form to the mountain. 

 Who wants a mountain sprawling indifferently out on all sides, without 

 angle or break, like the oceanic tide-wave of which one cannot say 

 whether it is a hill or a plain ? And if you want to grow a lily, chastely 

 white and filling the air with its fragrance, will you not bury the bulb of 

 it deep in the dirt to begin with ? 



Acknowledging, then, that it is impossible to hold permanently to any 

 line of distinction between good and bad passions, there remains nothing 

 for it but to accept both, and to make use of them redeeming them, both 

 good and bad, from their narrowness and limitation by so doing to make 

 use of them in the service of humanity. For as dirt is only matter in the 

 wrong place, so evil in man consists only in actions or passions which are 

 uncontrolled by the human within him, and undedicated to its service. 

 The evil consists not in the actions or passions themselves, but in the fact 

 that they are inhumanly used. The most unblemished virtue erected into 

 a barrier between one-self and a suffering brother or sister the whitest 

 marble image, howsoever lovely, set up in the Holy Place of the temple 

 of Man, where the spirit alone should dwell becomes blasphemy and a 

 pollution. 



Wherein exactly this human service consists is another question. It 

 may be, and, as the reader would gather, probably is, a matter which at 

 the last eludes definition. But though it may elude exact statement, that 

 is no reason why approximations should not be made to the statement of 

 it ; nor is its ultimate elusiveness of intellectual definition any proof that 

 it may not become a real and vital force within the man, and underlying 

 inspiration of his actions. To take the two considerations in order. In 

 the first place, as we saw from the beginning, the experience of society is 

 continually leading it to classify actions into beneficial and harmful, good 

 and bad ; and thus moral codes are formed which eat their way from 

 the outside into the individual man and become part of him. These 

 codes may be looked upon as approximations in each age to a statement 

 of human service ; but, as we have seen, they are by the nature of the 

 case very imperfect ; and since the very conditions of the problem are 

 continually changing, it seems obvious that a final and absolute solution 



