"Let me give you some advice, Captain," he said. "Yes, "It may help you make some sense of the world." "Sir. believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people," said the man. "You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides." He waved his thin hand toward the city and walked over to the window. "A great rolling sea of evil" he said, almost proprietarily. "Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!" He slapped Vimes good- naturedly on the back. "Down there" he said, "are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the realy high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, buta sort of mass- produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace or originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they dont say no. I'm sorry if this offends you,' he added, patting the captain's shoulder.