Clarence Darrow

Crime Clarence Darrow

Book Excerpt: ...g behind or go in front, he may travel to the right or to the left, he may be better or worse, but his fate is the same. The beaten path, however formed or however unscientific, has some right to exist. On the whole it has tended to preserve life, and it is the way of least resistance for the human race. On the other hand it is not the best, and the way has ever been made easier by those who have violated precepts and defied some of the concepts of the time. Both ways are right and both ways are wrong. The conflict between the two ways is as old as the human race. Paths and customs and institutions are forever changing. So are ideas of right and wrong, and so, too, are statutes. The law, no doubt, makes it harder for customs and habits to be changed, for it adds to the inertia of the existing thing. Is there, then, nothing in the basis of right and wrong that answers to the common conception of these words? There are some customs that have been forbidden longer and which, it seems, must nClose...