There is no crime

“There is no crime” is a recurring expression through which Septimus Warren Smith tries to give shape to a revelation about human life. It begins as a message he believes should be made known, joins his visions of trees and universal love, and becomes a truth he cannot reliably convey to the people around him. Its recurrence makes the phrase both a claim of moral transformation and a measure of the distance between Septimus’s inner convictions and others’ understanding.

The Revelation and Its Record

Septimus connects the expression to a command to change the world. He writes that no one kills from hatred and that the message should be made known, recording revelations on the backs of envelopes. The phrase is therefore not only a private thought: he treats it as something consequential that must be preserved and transmitted, even as its meaning comes to him through experiences that others do not share.

The surrounding revelation joins human conduct to the life of trees. Septimus insists that trees must not be cut down, and his thoughts turn to a sparrow’s song, which he hears as carrying the truth that there is no crime. When another sparrow joins it, the song seems to affirm that truth in a larger, shared chorus. The expression emerges within this vision of a living world in which violence and separation might be overcome; it is not presented as a legal judgment about a particular offense.

A Message Made Difficult to Speak

The phrase returns when Septimus tries to explain what he has learned. He imagines that the supreme secret must be told to the Cabinet, beginning with the claims that trees are alive and there is no crime, and continuing toward universal love. The scale of the imagined audience contrasts with the difficulty of speaking: these truths seem profound and require an immense effort to put into words.

His sense of revelation is bound up with isolation. As he struggles to express the message, he understands himself as alone and as having been summoned to hear a truth before other people can receive it. The expression thus carries an expectation of communication but also exposes its failure: Septimus believes the message could change the world, yet the passage shows how hard it is for him to make it intelligible beyond his own experience.

The Lost Message

When Sir William Bradshaw encourages Septimus to answer, the ideas return in fragments: love, trees, and the absence of crime. Asked what his message is, Septimus cannot remember it and stammers instead. The earlier certainty that the truth must be made known gives way to a painful gap between the conviction and its verbal delivery.

This loss does not erase the expression’s importance. Its return across the narrative traces a movement from written revelation, to an expansive vision of universal love, to an attempted explanation that cannot be completed. “There is no crime” remains a compact statement of the transformed, less violent world Septimus imagines, while its repeated failure to reach an audience makes communication itself part of the expression’s meaning.