Yes. To an observer looking in this spirit upon the affairs of men, there will be no difficulty in approving and condemning those who, in the same light as he himself enjoys, conform to or contemn what he acknowledges as the highest Law. The two extremes of virtue and crime fall distinctly and decisively under the test which he recognises. The nature of the merit, the nature of the Guilt, of those who in the highest degree conform to this Law, and of those who most audaciously trample upon it, cannot be mistaken. SEWARD. But between these there are infinite degrees, to which it may often be extremely difficult to apply the same rule of Moral Estimation. NORTH. Alas! alas! He who looks forth from himself with the views of human perfection which I have described, must regard the world with sorrow and compassion, perceiving how much the great body of mankind are departed from the happiest and fittest condition of their nature—how they are become immersed in passions and pursuits which disguise from their own knowledge the very capacities of their being, and degrade and destroy their powers by withholding from them even the prospect of their original destination! SEWARD. Such must, indeed, be his melancholy view of mankind at large, comparing them, as he needs must do, with the idea of that excellence of which they are capable, and which they ought to attain. NORTH. But when he descends from that height of contemplation, and, mixing with them, makes himself more intimate with their actual condition, he will look on them in some degree in a different light; for, my good Seward, he will then consider, not so much what they _want_ of perfection, as those _tendencies towards_ it, which are still actually undestroyed among them, and which are continually found exerting themselves—with irregular impulses, indeed, and with uncertain and variable direction; but which still do exert themselves, throwing gleams over human nature of its true happiness, and maintaining to Man, in the midst of all his errors, the name and dignity of a Moral Being. TALBOYS.