卡裏·紀伯倫/Kahil Gibran
It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind, That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself. And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed.
Like the ocean is your god-self, it remains forever undefiled, and like the ether it lifts but the winged, even like the sun is your god-self, it knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent.
But your god-self dwells not alone in your being—much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man, but a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening.
And of the man in you would I now speak, for it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime. Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he we're not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree. So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all. Like a procession you walk together towards your god self. You are the way and the wayfarers. And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.
And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hears: the murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder, and the robbed is not blameless in being robbed. The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked, and the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.
Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured, and still more often the condemned is the burden bearer for the guiltless and unblamed. You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked; for they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together. And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.