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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: when the peace of the heart is assured, and the future is radiantly
beckoning to them,--that any man should choose such victims for
such crimes was too preposterous an idea long to be entertained.
Unless the man were mad, the idea was inconceivable; and even a
monomaniac must betray himself in such a course, because he would
necessarily conceive himself to be accomplishing some supreme act
of justice.
It was thus I argued; and indeed I should much have preferred to
believe that one maniac were involved, rather than the contagion of
crime,--since one maniac must inevitably be soon detected; whereas
there were no assignable limits to the contagion of imitation. And
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