WE are to ask whether it is true that everything a man does is the only
thing he could do, at the instant of his doing it.
This is a very important question, because if the answer is yes, all
praise and all blame are undeserved.
_ALL_ PRAISE AND _ALL_ BLAME.
Let us take some revolting action as a test.
A tramp has murdered a child on the highway, has robbed her of a few
coppers, and has thrown her body into a ditch.
"Do you mean to say that tramp could not help doing that? Do you mean to
say he is not to blame? Do you mean to say he is not to be punished?"
Yes. I say all those things; and if all those things are not true this
book is not worth the paper it is printed on.
Prove it? I have proved it. But I have only instanced venial acts, and
now we are confronted with murder. And the horror of murder drives men
almost to frenzy, so that they cease to think: they can only feel.
Murder. Yes, a brutal murder. It comes upon us with a sickening shock.
But I said in my first chapter that I proposed to defend those whom God
and man condemn, and to demand justice for those whom God and man have
wronged. I have to plead for the _bottom_ dog: the lowest, the most
detested, the worst.
The tramp has committed a murder. Man would loathe him, revile him, hang
him: God would cast him into outer darkness.
"Not," cries the pious Christian, "if he repent."