Bergan could not help looking the astonishment that he did not express.
"It is true," said the doctor, answering the look. "I studied law, and practised it for about two years. But it did not suit me."
"Would it be impertinent to ask why?"
"Not at all. It gave too much scope, or too little, to my natural antagonism of mind;—too little for mental satisfaction, too much for material advantage. For instance, I was always possessed with an insane desire to clear the guilty man, whether he were my client, or no."
"Yet you deny to yourself the credit of generous impulses!"
"Stay a little. I was often assailed with an equally insane desire to convict the innocent one—when he was not my client. Do not look so horrified, for the same motive was at the bottom of both. It was because I saw so clearly that, with an exchange of circumstances,—inherited traits, education, temptation, and so forth,—there would also be an exchange of persons."
"In that case, it would seem that neither should be convicted."
"Exactly. But it was Society that needed to be convicted and punished. There was a real satisfaction in reversing its unrighteous judgments."
Bergan felt that he was sinking in a kind of mental quicksand. "But," he objected, catching hold of the first twig of support that offered itself, "you count the man's will for nothing."
"With most men, it does count for nothing. Where one man performs either a good or a bad action deliberately, looking behind and before him, nine hundred and ninety-nine do it because of the pressure of outward circumstance."