Now what is this that a man knows not at all? Surely, the heart; the secret thoughts of his neighbour. And yet how eager is he to dip the fingers of his curiosity in this covered dish reserved for the Great Master. And what is it that a man knows best of all, or at least ought to know? Surely, his own heart; his own secret thoughts. Nevertheless, he fears to enter into himself, and to stand in his own presence as a criminal before his judge. He dreads above aught besides the implacable tribunal of his own conscience, itself alone more surely convicting than a thousand witnesses. Our Blessed Father pictures very vividly this kind of injustice in his Philothea, where he says: "It is equally necessary in order to escape being judged that we both judge ourselves, and that we refrain from judging others. Our Lord forbids the latter[3] and His Apostle commands the former. If we would judge ourselves we should not be judged.[4] Our way is the very reverse. What is forbidden to us we are continually doing. Judging our neighbour on all possible occasions, and what is commanded us, namely, to judge ourselves, that the last thing we think of."[5] "A certain woman" (Blessed Francis continued with a smile), "all her life long had on principle done exactly the contrary to what her husband wanted her to do. In the end she fell into a river and was drowned. Her husband tried to recover the body, but was found fault with for going up the stream, since she must, necessarily, float down with the current. 'And do you really imagine,' he exclaimed, 'that even her dead body could do anything else but contradict me?' We are, most of us, very like that woman," said the Saint. "Yet it is written: _Judge not, and you shall not be judged; condemn not, and you shall not be condemned._"[6] How, then, you will say, is it lawful to have judges and courts of justice, since man may not judge our neighbour? I answer this objection in Blessed Francis' own words: "But may we, then, under no circumstances judge our neighbour? Under no circumstances whatever--for in a court of justice it is God, Philothea, not man, who judges and pronounces sentence. It is true that He makes use of the voice of the magistrate, but only to render His own sentence audible to us. Earthly judges are His spokesmen and interpreters, nor ought they to decide anything but as they have learnt from Him of Whom they are the oracles. It is when they do otherwise, and follow the lead of their own passions, that they, and not God, judge, and that consequently they themselves will be judged. In fact, it is forbidden to men, _as_ men, to judge others.[7] This is why Scripture gives the name of gods[8] to judges, because when judging they hold the place of God, and Moses for that reason is called the god of Pharaoh."[9]