One class of men has always been anxious to keep step with the crowd.  The way is easier and the rewards more certain.  Another class has been skeptical and resentful of the crowd.  These men have refused to follow down the beaten path; they strayed into the wilderness seeking new and better ways.  Sometimes others have followed and a shorter path was made.  Often they have perished because they left the herd.  In the sight of the organized unit and the society of the time and place, the man who kept the path did right.  The man who tried to make a new path and left the herd did wrong.  In its last analysis, the criminal is the one who leaves the pack.  He may lag 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 necessarily be longer prohibited; but the origin of all is the same.  A changing world has shown how the most shocking crimes punished by the severest penalties have been taken from the calendar and no longer even bear the suspicion of wrong.  Religious differences, witchcraft and sorcery have probably brought more severe punishments than any other acts; yet a change of habit and custom and belief has long since abolished all such crimes.  So, too, crimes come and go with new ideals, new movements and conditions.  The largest portion of our criminal code deals with the rights of property; yet nearly all of this is of comparatively modern growth.  A new emotion may take possession of man which will result in the repeal of many if not all of these statutes, and place some other consideration above property, which seems to be the controlling emotion of today.

Crime, strictly speaking, is only such conduct or acts as are forbidden by the law and for which penalties are prescribed.  The classification of the act does not necessarily have relation to moral conduct.  This cannot be fixed by any exact standard.  There is no straight clear line between the good and bad, the right and wrong.  The general ways of determining good and bad conduct are of little value.  The line between the two is always uncertain and shifting.  And, in the last analysis, good or bad conduct rests upon the “folk-ways,” the habits, beliefs and customs of a community.  While this is the real basis of judging conduct, it is always changing, and from the nature of things, if it could be made stable, it would mean that society was stratified and all hope of improvement dead.