we must.  But what if your oldest boy had been stolen from his cradle and bred in a North-Street cellar?  What if you are drinking a little too much wine and smoking a little too much tobacco, and your son takes after you, and so your poor grandson’s brain being a little injured in physical texture, he loses the fine moral sense on which you pride yourself, and doesn’t see the difference between signing another man’s name to a draft and his own?

I suppose the study of automatic action in the moral world (you see what I mean through the apparent contradiction of terms) may be a dangerous one in the view of many people.  It is liable to abuse, no doubt.  People are always glad to, get hold of anything which limits their responsibility.  But remember that our moral estimates come down to us from ancestors who hanged children for stealing forty shillings’ worth, and sent their souls to perdition for the sin of being born,—­who punished the unfortunate families of suicides, and in their eagerness for justice executed one innocent person every three years, on the average, as Sir James Mackintosh tells us.

I do not know in what shape the practical question may present itself to you; but I will tell you my rule in life, and I think you will find it a good one.  Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane.  They are in-sane, out of health, morally.  Reason, which is food to sound minds, is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless administered with the greatest caution; perhaps, not at all.  Avoid collision with them, so far as you honorably can; keep your temper, if you can,—­for one angry man is as good as another; restrain them from violence, promptly, completely, and with the least possible injury, just as in the case of maniacs,—­and when you have got rid of them, or got them tied hand and foot so that they can do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably, remembering that nine tenths of their’ perversity comes from outside influences, drunken ancestors, abuse in childhood, bad company, from which you have happily been preserved, and for some of which you, as a member of society, may be fractionally responsible.  I think also that there are special influences which work in the brood lake ferments, and I have a suspicion that some of those curious old stories I cited may have more recent parallels.  Have you ever met with any cases which admitted of a solution like that which I have mentioned?

Yours very truly,
_____________   _____________

Bernard Langdon to Philip Staples. 
My dear Philip,—­