The Hermit and Justice

Private conscience drawn with public accounting, which the tradition treats as two different courts. The Hermit works it out alone by lamplight; Justice weighs it in the open against a standard everyone can see. The pair is about a matter where the two verdicts may not match.

Associated with knowing privately that something was wrong before anybody says so. The pair regards the private verdict as the more useful one.

Read for personal standards against formal ones. The pair notes that the formal one is the enforceable one.

Settle it with yourself first. A private verdict you have not reached will not survive the public one either way.