| On Crime & Punishment | |
| Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, "Speak to us of Crime and Punishment." | |
| And he answered saying: | |
| It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind, | |
| That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself. | |
| And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed. | |
| Like the ocean is your god-self; | |
| It remains for ever undefiled. | |
| And like the ether it lifts but the winged. | |
| Even like the sun is your god-self; | |
| It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent. | |
| But your god-self does not dwell alone in your being. | |
| Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man, | |
| But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening. | |
| And of the man in you would I now speak. | |
| For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime. | |
| Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. | |
| But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, | |
| So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. | |
| And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, | |
| So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all. | |
| Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self. | |
| You are the way and the wayfarers. | |
| And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. | |
| Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone. | |
| And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts: | |
| The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder, | |
| And the robbed is not blameless in being robbed. | |
| The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked, | |
| And the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon. | |
| Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured, | |
| And still more often the condemned is the burden-bearer for the guiltless and unblamed. | |
| You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked; | |
| For they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together. | |
| And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also. | |
| If any of you would bring judgment the unfaithful wife, | |
| Let him also weight the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurements. | |
| And let him who would lash the offender look unto the spirit of the offended. | |
| And if any of you would punish in the name of righteousness and lay the ax unto the evil tree, let him see to its roots; | |
| And verily he will find the roots of the good and the bad, the fruitful and the fruitless, all entwined together in the silent heart of the earth. | |
| And you judges who would be just, | |
| What judgment pronounce you upon him who though honest in the flesh yet is a thief in spirit? | |
| What penalty lay you upon him who slays in the flesh yet is himself slain in the spirit? | |
| And how prosecute you him who in action is a deceiver and an oppressor, | |
| Yet who also is aggrieved and outraged? | |
| And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds? | |
| Is not remorse the justice which is administered by that very law which you would fain serve? | |
| Yet you cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty. | |
| Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake and gaze upon themselves. | |
| And you who would understand justice, how shall you unless you look upon all deeds in the fullness of light? | |
| Only then shall you know that the erect and the fallen are but one man standing in twilight between the night of his pigmy-self and the day of his god-self, | |
| And that the corner-stone of the temple is not higher than the lowest stone in its foundation. |