as we think — member of society, but the next day this man might cease to be dangerous and his imprisonment might be for nothing.

I see that a man I know to be a ruffian is pursuing a young girl. I have a gun in my hand — I kill the ruffian and save the girl. But the death or the wounding of the ruffian has positively taken place, while what would have happened if this had not been I cannot know. And what an immense mass of evil must result, and indeed does result, from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen. Ninety-nine per cent of the evil of the world is founded on this reasoning — from the Inquisition to dynamite bombs, and the executions or punishments of tens of thousands of political criminals.

A fourth, still more refined, reply to the