ld have earned a
livelihood, for people would have eagerly read his experiences; but he
preferred thieving--and then he turned round and blamed other people for
hounding him on to theft.

There are wrong-doers and wrong-doers; there are men who do ill in the
world because they are entirely harmful by nature, and they seek to hurt
their fellows--there are others who err only from weakness of will. I
make no excuse for the weaklings; a man or woman who is weak may do more
harm than the vilest criminal, and, when I hear any one talk about that
nice man who is nobody's enemy but his own, I am instantly forced to
remember a score or thereabouts of beings whom I know to have been the
deadliest foes of those whom they should have cherished. Let us help
those who err; but let us have no maudlin pity.

Moralists in general have made a somewhat serious error in supposing
that one has only to show a man the true aspect of any given evil in
order to make sure of his avoiding it. Of late so many sad things have
been witnessed in public and private life that one is tempted to doubt
whether abstract morality is of any use whatever in the world. One may
tell a man that a certain course is dangerous or fatal; one may show by
every device of logic and illustration that he should avoid the said
course, and he will fully admit the truth of one's contentions; yet he
is not deterred from his folly, and he goes on toward ruin with a sort
of blind abandonment. "Blind," I say. That is but a formal phrase; for
it happens that the very men and women who wreck their lives by doing
foolish things are those who are keenest in detecting folly and wisest
in giving advice to others. "Educate the people, and you will find that
a steady diminution of vice, debauchery, and criminality must set in." I
am not talking about criminality at present; but I am bound to say that
no amount of enlightenment seems to diminish the tendency toward forms
of folly which approach criminality. It is almost confounding to see how
lucid of mind and how sane in theoretical judgment are the men who
sometimes steep themselves in folly and even in vice. A wicked man
boasted much of his own wickedness to some fellow-travellers during a
brief sea-voyage. He said, "I like doing wrong for the sake of doing it.
When you know you are outraging the senses of decent people there is a
kind of excitement about it." This contemptible cynic told with glee
stories of his own vileness which