One time, when a prosecuting attorney complained because he had discharged a prisoner, Darwin, who might have fined the impudent attorney for contempt of court, merely said: "Why, he's as good as we are. If tempted in the same way I am sure that I would have done as he has done. We can't blame a man for doing what he has to do!" This was poor reasoning from a legal point of view. Darwin afterward admitted that he didn't hear much of the evidence, as his mind was full of orchids, but the fellow looked sorry, and he really couldn't punish anybody who had simply made a mistake. The local legal lights gradually lost faith in Magistrate Darwin's peculiar brand of justice; he hadn't much respect for law, and once when a lawyer cited him the criminal code he said, "Tut, tut, that was made a hundred years ago!" Then he fined the man five shillings, and paid the fine himself, when he should have sent him to the workhouse for six months. * * * * * The men who have most benefited the world have, almost without exception, been looked down upon by the priestly class. That is to say, the men upon whose tombs society now carves the word Savior were outcasts and criminals in their day. In a society where the priest is regarded as the mouthpiece of divinity, and therefore the highest type of man, the artist, the inventor, the discoverer, the genius, the man of truth, has always been regarded as a criminal. Society advances as it doubts the priest, distrusts his oracles, and loses faith in his institution. In the priest, at first, was deposited all human knowledge, and what he did not know he pretended to know. He was the guardian of mind and morals, and the cure of souls. To question him was to die here and be damned for eternity. The problem of civilization has been to get the truth past the preacher to the people: he has forever barred and blocked the way, and until he was shorn of his temporal power there was no hope. The prisons were first made for those who doubted the priest; behind and beneath every episcopal residence were dungeons; the ferocious and delicate tortures that reached every physical and mental nerve were his. His anathemas and curses were always quickly turned upon the strong men of mountain or sea who dared live natural lives, said what they thought was truth, or did what they deemed was right. Science is a search for truth, but theology is a clutch for power. Nothing is so distasteful to a priest as freedom: a happy, exuberant, fearless, self-sufficient and radiant man he both feared and abhorred. A free soul was regarded by the Church as one to be dealt with. The priest has ever put a premium on pretense and hypocrisy. Nothing recommended a man more than humility and the acknowledgment that he was a worm of the dust. The ability to do and dare was in itself considered a proof of depravity.