' And to the point,
I remember one of our discussions. I said it was a dangerous error
not to admit there were bad people; he, that it was only a
confession of blindness on our part, and that we probably called
others bad only so far as we were wrapped in ourselves and lacking
in the transmigratory forces of imagination. I undertook to
describe to him three persons irredeemably bad and whom he should
admit to be so. In the first case, he denied my evidence: 'You
cannot judge a man upon such testimony,' said he. For the second,
he owned it made him sick to hear the tale; but then there was no
spark of malice, it was mere weakness I had described, and he had
never denied nor thought to set a limit to man's weakness. At my
third gentleman, he struck his colours. 'Yes,' said he, 'I'm
afraid that is a bad man.' And then looking at me shrewdly: 'I
wonder if it isn't a very unfortunate thing for you to have met
him.' I showed him radiantly how it was the world we must know,
the world as it was, not a world expurgated and prettified with
optimistic rainbows.
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