given up its more dignified
work, the punishment of powerful traitors in the State and powerful
heresiarchs in the Church. The moderns say we must not punish heretics.
My only doubt is whether we have a right to punish anybody else."

"But this is absurd!" cried the policeman, clasping his hands with an
excitement uncommon in persons of his figure and costume, "but it is
intolerable! I don't know what you're doing, but you're wasting your
life. You must, you shall, join our special army against anarchy. Their
armies are on our frontiers. Their bolt is ready to fall. A moment more,
and you may lose the glory of working with us, perhaps the glory of
dying with the last heroes of the world."

"It is a chance not to be missed, certainly," assented Syme, "but still
I do not quite understand. I know as well as anybody that the modern
world is full of lawless little men and mad little movements. But,
beastly as they are, they generally have the one merit of disagreeing
with each other. How can you talk of their leading one army or hurling
one bolt. What is this anarchy?"

"Do not confuse it," replied the constable, "with those chance dynamite
outbreaks from Russia or from Ireland, which are really the outbreaks
of oppressed, if mistaken, men. This is a vast philosophic movement,
consisting of an outer and an inner ring. You might even call the outer
ring the laity and the inner ring the priesthood. I prefer to call the
outer ring the innocent section, the inner ring the supremely guilty
section. The outer ring--the main mass of their supporters--are merely
anarchists; that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have
destroyed human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of
human crime are the results of the system that has called it crime. They
do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe that
the punishment has created the crime. They believe that if a man seduced
seven women he would naturally walk away as blameless as the flowers of
spring. They believe that if a man picked a pocket he would naturally
feel exquisitely good. These I call the innocent section."

"Oh!" said Syme.

"Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming';
'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice
and the bondage of virtue,' and so on. And so also the men of the inner
circle speak--the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding
crowds of the happiness of th