The power of the word by which the outcast was cast out heralded a rejection of all moral doubt, all sympathy with the abyss, a renunciation of the leniency implicit in the homily claiming that to understand is to forgive, and what was under way here, indeed, what had come to pass was the “miraculous rebirth of impartiality,” which surfaced a short time later with a certain mysterious urgency in one of the author’s dialogues.
