“To me,” I said, “it seems a wonderful thing that the sense of beauty and fitness should be so strong in the mind of man, should so far outrun his impulses and his body, that he creates for himself laws and regulations which he then tries to follow, as one sets up a ladder which he afterward tries to climb. Of course, we no longer believe in revelation, in the old Biblical sense, but to us it means revelation from within. We do not believe that God dictated his laws to Moses, but that Moses created his laws from his own sense of love and beauty. Man made his own laws. And his laws outrun him.” “Some people,” said Ruth, “make laws for the other people, who are not up to them.” “No,” Henry said; “isn’t it really all the people making laws for themselves?” “Yes,” I answered, “for finally it is the few making laws for all, for themselves, too. It is humanity making laws for humanity. Every time a man does wrong and knows he is doing wrong, he is breaking one of his self-made or self-chosen laws. His mind outruns his powers. When Coleridge wanted to break himself of the opium-eating habit, he used to hire men to stand in front of the drug-stores and prevent his going in. He tried to overcome himself with himself.” “I like Coleridge,” said Virginia. “I like people with weaknesses, who try to overcome them.” I said I liked them, too, that there was no sight so stimulating as that of fights and conquests, as seeing the very thing we longed for, the opposition beaten, the difficulties overcome. “But even the weak people who fail to win,” said Virginia; “I like them, too.” “So do I,” I answered; “the fight itself, even the failure, the human longing, is worth while. “But I want you to see clearly one thing about all laws and regulations, and that is that they are substitutes. They are substitutes for understanding love, or, rather, they are the forerunners of understanding love, the path of beauty and fitness which the mind makes for itself before all our desires are strong and harmonious enough to fulfil the supreme desire. Laws are the framework on which the house of love shall be built. But when the house is finished, the framework shall no more be seen; nor is it of value in itself, but only as that which upholds the house. I would like to talk with you of certain special laws of this kind. And the first is justice.” “I was just going to say that,” said Ruth; “it was on my lips.” “I was thinking of it, too,” said Henry. “I am sorry,” I answered, “that I did not give you the chance.” We talked of this subject, and agreed that although justice, the sense of equity, was a great and necessary virtue and a serviceable tool, it was but the tool of love, and less than love, and that if our understanding, our sympathy and possession of life were complete, we would no longer think of justice, nor praise it; that the rigid laws of justice, which must oftentimes change, were forever at the service of love, which made changes and overcame laws.