“If then, it be so difficult, so nearly impossible, in most cases, to determine what is and what is not, vice; and especially if it be so difficult in nearly all cases to determine where virtue ends and where vice begins; and if these questions, which no one can really and truly determine for anybody but himself, are not to be left open and free for experiment by all, each person is deprived of the highest of all his rights as a human being; to wit: his right to inquire, investigate, reason, try experiments, judge and ascertain for himself, what is, to him, virtue, and what is, to him, vice; in other words, what, on the whole, conduces to his happiness, and what, on the whole, tends to his unhappiness. If this great right is not to be left free and open to all, then each man’s whole right as a reasoning human being, to liberty and the pursuit of happiness is denied him.” “It is now obvious, for the reasons already given, that government would be utterly impracticable, if it were to take cognizance of vices and punish them as crimes. Every human being has his, or her, vices. Nearly all men have a great many. And they are of all kinds: physiological, mental, emotional, religious, social, commercial, industrial, economical, etc. If government is to take cognizance of any of these vices, and punish them as crimes, then, to be consistent, it must take cognizance of all and punish all impartially. The consequences would be, that everybody would be in prison for his, or her, vices. There would be no one left to lock the doors upon those within. In fact, courts enough could not be found to try the offenders, nor prisons enough built to hold them. All human industry in the acquisition of knowledge, and even in acquiring the means of subsistence, would be arrested; we should be all under constant trial or imprisonment for our vices. But even if it were possible to imprison all the vicious, our knowledge of human nature tells us that, as a general rule, they would be far more vicious in prison than they ever have been out of it. A government that shall punish all vices impartially, is so obviously an impossibility, that nobody was ever found, or ever will be found, foolish enough to propose it. The most that any one proposes is, that government shall punish some one, or, at most a few, of what he esteems the grossest of them.”