Yet, the man who is tempted by the million gives less proof of dishonesty than the man who commits the same crime for a paltry five pounds. Therefore the punishment must be increased, as the wickedness is less. I must first set aside one ambiguity which perplexes this argument. When we speak of a temptation as varying, we may mean one of two very different things. To say that I am more "tempted" than you to commit a given crime, may mean that the gain expected by me is itself greater; or, it may mean that I am more predisposed to the crime. I may be more tempted, let us say, to poison my uncle than you are to poison yours. That may mean that my uncle is a rich old sinner and I am his heir, whereas your uncle is a poor saint and you will get nothing by his death. Or it may mean that I am more tempted because, our uncles being alike, I am spiteful, and you affectionate, by nature. In the first case, to say that I am under the stronger temptation would, perhaps, tend to alleviate the gravity of my crime; in the second, it would simply be another way of saying that I was the greater brute. In both cases, of course, it is true that the greater temptation would require the greater counterpoise. In one case, this only means that the worse the man, the stronger the restraints which he requires; and, if you could make different laws for bad men and good, it would follow that the bad would require the heaviest penalties. But this does not conflict with the moral view. It is no excuse for a murderer to say, "I am so bloodthirsty that I really could not help murdering". No contradiction to morality arises from punishing his crime more severely. In the other case alone,--the case in which we made distinctions founded upon the difference of surrounding circumstances,--it is true that we should, from the point of view of simple deterrence, require heavier penalties where the temptations were greater, and, therefore, the intrinsic malevolence proved to exist less.