Socrates, as reported by Xenophon, put my case in a nutshell. When a friend complained to Socrates that a man whom he had saluted had not saluted him in return, the father of philosophy replied: "It is an odd thing that if you had met a man ill-conditioned in body you would not have been angry; but to have met a man rudely disposed in mind provokes you."
This is sound philosophy, I think. If we pity a man with a twist in his spine, why should we not pity the man with a twist in his brain? If we pity a man with a stiff wrist, why not the man with a stiff pride? If we pity a man with a weak heart, why not the man with the weak will? If we do not blame a man for one kind of defect, why blame him for another?
But it does not follow that because we neither hate nor blame a criminal we should allow him to commit crime.
We do not blame a rattlesnake, nor a shark. These creatures only fulfil their natures. The shark who devours a baby is no more sinful than the lady who eats a shrimp. We do not blame the maniac who burns a house down and brains a policeman, nor the mad dog who bites a minor poet. But, none the less, we take steps to defend ourselves against snakes, sharks, lunatics, and mad dogs.
The Clarion does not hate a cruel sweater, nor a tyrannous landlord, nor a shuffling Minister of State, nor a hypocritical politician: it pities such poor creatures. Yet the Clarion opposes sweating and tyranny and hypocrisy, and does its best to defeat and to destroy them.
If a tiger be hungry he naturally seeks food. I do not blame the tiger; but if he endeavoured to make his dinner off our business manager, and if I had a gun, I should shoot the tiger.
We do not hate nor blame the blight that destroys our roses and our vines. The blight is doing what we do: he is trying to live. But we destroy the blight to preserve our roses and our grapes.
So we do not blame an incendiary. But we are quite justified in protecting life and property. Dangerous men must be restrained. In cases where they attempt to kill and maim innocent and useful citizens, as, for instance, by dynamite outrages, they must, in the last resort, be killed.
"But," you may say, "the dynamiter knows it is wrong to wreck a street and murder inoffensive strangers, and yet he does it. Is not that free will? Is he not blameworthy?"
And I answer that when a man does wrong he does it because he knows no better, or because he is naturally vicious.