A smart reverberation from the human echoes:  “Smith! am I a laborer?” “Jones! am I a sailor?”

“Pray let us not be personal, gentlemen,” said Sir Patrick.  “I am speaking generally, and I can only meet extreme objections by pushing my argument to extreme limits.  The laborer and the sailor have served my purpose.  If the laborer and the sailor offend you, by all means let them walk off the stage!  I hold to the position which I advanced just now.  A man may be well born, well off, well dressed, well fed—­but if he is an uncultivated man, he is (in spite of all those advantages) a man with special capacities for evil in him, on that very account.  Don’t mistake me!  I am far from saving that the present rage for exclusively muscular accomplishments must lead inevitably downward to the lowest deep of depravity.  Fortunately for society, all special depravity is more or less certainly the result, in the first instance, of special temptation.  The ordinary mass of us, thank God, pass through life without being exposed to other than ordinary temptations.  Thousands of the young gentlemen, devoted to the favorite pursuits of the present time, will get through existence with no worse consequences to themselves than a coarse tone of mind and manners, and a lamentable incapability of feeling any of those higher and gentler influences which sweeten and purify the lives of more cultivated men.  But take the other case (which may occur to any body), the case of a special temptation trying a modern young man of your prosperous class and of mine.  And let me beg Mr. Delamayn to honor with his attention what I have now to say, because it refers to the opinion which I did really express—­as distinguished from the opinion which he affects to agree with, and which I never advanced.”

Geoffrey’s indifference showed no signs of giving way.  “Go on!” he said—­and still sat looking straight before him, with heavy eyes, which noticed nothing, and expressed nothing.

“Take the example which we have now in view,” pursued Sir Patrick—­“the example of an average young gentleman of our time, blest with every advantage that physical cultivation can bestow on him.  Let this man be tried by a temptation which insidiously calls into action, in his own interests, the savage instincts latent in humanity—­the instincts of self-seeking and cruelty which are at the bottom of all crime.  Let this man be placed toward some other person, guiltless of injuring him, in a position which demands one of two sacrifices:  the sacrifice of the other person, or the sacrifice of his own interests and his own desires.  His neighbor’s happiness, or his neighbor’s life, stands, let us say, between him and the attainment of something that he wants.  He can wreck the happiness, or strike down the life, without, to his knowledge, any fear of suffering for it himself.  What is to prevent him, being the man he is, from going straight to his end, on those conditions?