“Oh, no,” they protested, “not ahead of them!” “No,” I answered, “but the man ahead of his time, who is better than his time, may appear to be a criminal. You must see that the man who believes in the eternal good, who knows that he is going toward unity and complete love, is in a sense above the human law, and must discover his own laws. He may be a criminal in the eyes of others.” “Give us an example,” they said. “Jesus is one example. He was crucified as a criminal.” “Because,” said Henry, “he broke the Roman law. He refused to worship their images, and he called himself King of the Jews.” “And they did not know,” I answered, “in what sense he called himself King, so they had to crucify him as a traitor. Can’t you think of some other example? Of course, there were all the heretics of old times.” Alfred and Henry said that Roosevelt was in a sense an example, because he had been much blamed for exposing the truth and hurting business; but that the hurt was an essential part of progress and good. Ruth said: “Surely it is better to expose the truth and suffer for it, than to go on in falsehood.” I gave as another example the Russians, with whom, a short time ago, it was a crime to educate the peasants; and I told how brave men and women had been sent to Siberia for breaking the law in this respect. “But,” I said, “this is a dangerous subject, and truly, we ought not to have mentioned it until we could probe it to the bottom. For surely in a democratic state one of the essential inner laws is that we shall obey the law which our fellows have made.” “If a law seems wrong to a man,” said Henry, “he can try to change it, but meantime he must obey it. For instance, a man might believe in free trade, but still he would have no right to smuggle in goods.” “One ought to obey school-laws, I suppose,” said Marian. “Surely,” I answered, “for the school is an institution you enter from choice, and if you don’t like the laws you can protest by leaving. But if there were a law unjust to your fellows, you would disobey it. Still, even then, the best way to protest would be by a strike of the students.” They had a long discussion on the great crime of whispering in school, in which I scarcely joined, as I refuse to be a petty preacher to them. But I tried to explain to them why it was so hard for them to obey these little laws. “It is,” I said, “because you did not help to make the laws yourselves, that you are tempted to break them out of mere mischief. Still, you would not lie about it, but rather do it openly, because you feel that truth between individuals is an inner law, the first step toward understanding. You know I believe that, even unconsciously, we have all always striven for this unity, this completeness that now we are going to strive for with open eyes.” “And all bad leads in the same direction, and comes to good,” said Virginia.