But still. You are not satisfied. Some of you, at any rate, still frown and set your teeth hard. Logic or no logic, he has murdered a baby. There stands my clerical friend, with knitted brows, and fire in his eyes. But that his calling checks his fierce old Saxon heredity this parson would echo the stern speech of Carlyle to the criminal: "Scoundrel! Know that we for ever hate thee!" Ah! I thought so. The cloud begins to clear from the face of my clerical friend: the crowd look hopeful. Grim old Thomas appeals to you. The prisoner _is_ a scoundrel, and you _do_ hate him. Nothing I have said, so far, has shaken that feeling. He is a scoundrel, and you hate him. What is more, you cannot forgive me for not hating him. You cannot believe that I am a natural man. I _ought_ to hate him. Well, my friends, how do we feel about a shark? I think you will find that men hate a shark. And I think you will find that they hate him more bitterly than they hate a tiger. And I think you will find that they believe they hate the shark because he is cruel. But that seems to me a mistake. The shark is not so cruel as a cat; it is not so cruel as a shrike; it is nothing like so cruel as a European lady. For though the shark will devour any animals it can reach, it does not deliberately torture them. Now the cat tortures the mouse, the shrike impales flies or beetles upon a thorn, and leaves them to die, and the European lady eats lobster, which has, to her knowledge, been boiled, alive. But the shark kills human beings. So do tigers, so do lions, and so do men. But the shark is horrible. Yes; now we are getting nearer the real root of our hatred. The shark is horrible. And so is the murderer. But there is a difference between horror and hate. The murderer is horrible to me, far more horrible than the shark, just as a mad man is more horrible than a mad dog; just as a human corpse is more awful than the carcase of a deer. The criminal makes me shudder, he makes my flesh creep; my whole nature recoils from him. But I do not hate him, and I do not blame him. Which of us does not admire and honour an innocent, graceful, and charming girl? To all of us, men and women, her presence is more delightful than a garden of sweet flowers. Think of some such amiable and gentle creature. Then imagine that we meet her ten years hence, and find her a drunken harlot, wallowing in the gutter. Think of her then so hideous, filthy, and obscene; think of her debased, indecent, treacherous; think of her incapable of honesty, of gratitude, of truth; think of her sullied and broken and so vile that she would betray her only friend for a glass of gin: think of her well, and ask yourselves how should we feel towards her. Some of us would blame her: some of us would pity her: some of us would try to befriend her: but hardly one of us could endure her touch, her speech, her gaze. She has become a horror in the light of the day.