Even lust is guided by thought-out distinctions. With one individual it acts within wedlock and stops there; with another it acts towards courtesans, but despises seduction; with still others it permits seduction of girls of other races or of a different social class, but not girls of one’s own class and race; and all these differences between men depend very largely upon the male company one keeps. That is, lust acts by code. Moreover, every permission that any of these codes grants is accompanied by prohibitions also; at every level distinctions are made between better and worse, and customs of regard for the better actually prevail. The passions that sway men in masses are similarly obedient to precedents. You cannot account for lynchings by naming human instincts, nor by this plus a description of the crimes that lynchers seek to avenge, nor yet by adding a color-contrast between lynchers and lynched. Who is to be lynched, by whom, upon what provocation, and by what method depends upon a set of discriminated ideas already present when the provocation occurs. An acquaintance of mine tells me that, being in the vicinity of a town where this summary procedure was threatened, he took means to ascertain just what was done. In this instance--it is doubtless an extreme one, but it is none the less instructive--the populace assembled at a prearranged hour and without tumult; prayer was offered; the victim was calmly hanged from a bridge, and his body was riddled with bullets; after which, this business being attended to, the crowd went about its other business. If most lynchings are less orderly, they nevertheless are ruled by the same sort of traditions; see how alike these crimes are, and how unruffled the surrounding populace can remain.