For the minute he was trying to convince Teddy of the righteousness of punishment. He had been drawn to the boy partly because of his youth and good looks, but mainly on account of his callousness to his crime. He seemed to have no conscience, no notion of the difference between right and wrong. "A moral moron" was what he labeled him. The lack of ethical consciousness was the more astonishing because his antecedents had apparently been good.
"You see," he was pointing out, "you can't break the laws by which society protects itself and yet escape the moral and physical results."
But in his long, solitary hours Teddy had been thinking this out.
"Doesn't that depend upon the laws? If the law's wrong--"
The parson smiled--his weary, spiritual smile.
"If the citizen was allowed to judge of that--"
"If he wasn't," Teddy broke in, with the impetuosity born of his beginning to think for himself, "if he wasn't, there'd be no such country as the United States. Most of the fireworks in American history are over the fine thing it is to beat the law to it when the law isn't just."
"Ah, but there's a distinction between individual action and great popular movements."
"Great popular movements must be made up of individual actions, mustn't they? If individuals didn't break the laws, each guy on his own account, you wouldn't get any popular movements at all."
"All the same, there are certain laws that among all peoples and at all times have been considered fundamental. Human society can't permit a man to steal--"
"Then human society shouldn't put a man in a position where he either has to steal or starve to death."
There was a repetition of the thin, ghostly smile.
"Oh, well, no one who's ordinarily honest and industrious ever--"
"Ever starves to death? That's a lie. Excuse me," he added, apologetically, "but that kind of talk just gets my goat. My father practically starved to death--he died from lack of proper nourishment, the doctor said--and there never was a more industrious or an honester man born. He gave everything he had to human society, and when he had no more to give, human society kicked him out. It has the law on its side, too, and because"--he gulped--"I came to his help in the only way I knew how they've chucked me into this black hole."
