ling at his mother's knee is the following: That the more a
man looks at a thing, the less he can see it, and the more a man learns
a thing the less he knows it. The Fabian argument of the expert,
that the man who is trained should be the man who is trusted would be
absolutely unanswerable if it were really true that a man who studied
a thing and practiced it every day went on seeing more and more of its
significance. But he does not. He goes on seeing less and less of its
significance. In the same way, alas! we all go on every day, unless we
are continually goading ourselves into gratitude and humility, seeing
less and less of the significance of the sky or the stones.

.....

Now it is a terrible business to mark a man out for the vengeance of
men. But it is a thing to which a man can grow accustomed, as he can to
other terrible things; he can even grow accustomed to the sun. And
the horrible thing about all legal officials, even the best, about all
judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and policemen, is not
that they are wicked (some of them are good), not that they are stupid
(several of them are quite intelligent), it is simply that they have got
used to it.

Strictly they do not see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is
the usual man in the usual place. They do not see the awful court of
judgment; they only see their own workshop. Therefore, the instinct
of Christian civilisation has most wisely declared that into their
judgments there shall upon every occasion be infused fresh blood and
fresh thoughts from the streets. Men shall come in who can see the court
and the crowd, and coarse faces of the policeman and the professional
criminals, the wasted faces of the wastrels, the unreal faces of the
gesticulating counsel, and see it all as one sees a new picture or a
play hitherto unvisited.

Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining
the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to
trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who
know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt
in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system
discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up specialists. But when
it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of
the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember
right, by the Founder of Christianity.