36 The Morality of Nature 



In fact, the robber's action is a crime, only if, and because, 

 he is a member of a society or a race, in which property, as 

 a right, has been estabhshed by mutual agreement. It is 

 no crime for a vulture to take part of the prey of another, 

 nor for the shepherd to take the fleece from his sheep, nor 

 for a starving tiger to attack a man. Injury to the victim 

 does not alone constitute the criminality of an act. There 

 is no crime unless the motive and knowledge of the doer is 

 criminal, and no wrong unless the injury is opposed to duty. 

 Even then the situation of the victim is essentially the same, 

 whether crime, or accident, or natural impulse, have brought 

 about the event. The conduct of an assailant may provoke 

 resentment and he may be overwhelmed in retributive jus- 

 tice; yet the conduct of his victim may not even be involved 

 in that chain of circumstances. The victim, however great 

 the consequence of the crime may be, is not thereby re- 

 instated. He is injured as he might have been by wild 

 beasts, and his conduct is in question in the same way as it 

 would then have been, which is in regard to his efforts to 

 save himself, and their effective value and goodness. His 

 conduct is in question. Under this stress of circumstances 

 with what ability does he act and with what measure of 

 success? He was an individual, isolated in responsibility 

 and situated in an adverse hostile world, and the assailant 

 was in a separate isolation with a different environment. 

 The two were in no sense participants in single or similar 

 conduct where the penalizing of one must be a compensa- 

 tion to the other. 



Any action to be reviewed as an effect of conduct must 

 therefore be viewed from a different standpoint for each 



