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STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

place, has to classify sins as the secular legislator classifies crimes. This act, says the legislator, is murder; that, only manslaughter. The law must define, that it may not be arbitrary; it must define by external or tangible facts because the judge cannot look into the heart; and it must define actions taken by themselves, and apart from the life-history of each particular agent. Deliberate killing under certain conditions is murder, whoever commits the action and whatever his motive. It follows that actions of the most varying moral quality must be classed together. Murder, that is, deliberate killing by any one not legally authorised, may imply the deepest depravity or admit of palliation to an indefinite degree. To assign the moral guilt implied by the criminal act you would have to take into account all the concrete circumstances of the case—the man's whole character, position, training, and intellectual capacity; in other words, to consider precisely the aspects which the legislator is compelled to neglect. It follows that the criminal law can only correspond in a rough way, or on the average of cases, to the moral law. But then the legislator does not profess to identify his law with morals. When, however, you profess, as the casuists professed,