But law must value every man alike, And cannot save one man, or thousand men, From future evil, only possible, By greatest evil to another man, In its own view of justice. Nor can crime Meet punishment, at mortal hands, by right, For murder’s murder, done by one or twelve, And legal murder’s done in colder blood, Whose stains are chalked by vain authority. Authority! the child of numbers and self-love! Regard for rights of things, indeed, when beasts And birds must yield their right of life that man May please his right of taste. When, during Lent, The holy-days of fasting and of prayer, The scaly victims crowd the Bishop’s board, Their flesh unfleshed by Conscience’ pliant rule, Our palates must be for a moment pleased, Though costing something agonies of death; And worse than robbers, what we cannot give, We dare to take. They have no souls, say you? Nor after death exist? That nothing’s lost, Philosophy maintains as axiom truth. An object disappears, but somewhere lives In other form. The water-pool to mist Is changed, the powder into flame and smoke. My pointer dies, his body, decomposed, The air, the soil, and vegetation feeds; Yet still exists, although disintegrate. For there was something, while the pointer lived, That was not body, but that governed it, A spirit, essence, call it what you will, A something seen but through phenomena, And by them proved most clearly to exist. A something, not the feet that made them run, A something, not the eyes, but knew they saw, A something, without which the eyes could see As much as glasses can without the eye, The something, “Carlo” named, that knew the name. The pointer dies, and we dissect the flesh. All there, none missing, to the tiniest nerve; Yet something’s gone, the more important part, And can you say that it has ceased to be, When th’ flesh, inferior to it, still exists? The spirit, if existent, must be whole, Nor can be parted till material proven. That Carlo lives, seems plain as I shall live; He lived for self, and so did I; we fare Alike in after-life, we differ here In consciousness of immortality. But I digress. Where is the right and wrong? This is the Gordian knot no sword can cut, All sages of the world, with wisdom-teeth, Have gnawed this file without the least effect. The thousand savants of old Greece and Rome Proclaimed a thousand theories of good, That each, successive, proud devoid of truth. A myriad moderns have advanced their views, Each gained a few disciples, who avowed their truth, And each, by some one else, been proven wrong. A Bentham marches out utility, A moral test from benefit or harm. As if the good depended on effect,