fire to things which a man has a right to burn, so far as they
alone are concerned, why, on principle, should it not be the
effect of any other act which is equally likely under the
surrounding circumstances to cause the same harm. /1/ Cases may
easily be imagined where firing a gun, or making a chemical
mixture, or piling up oiled rags, or twenty other things, might
be manifestly dangerous in the highest degree and actually lead
to a conflagration. If, in such cases, the crime is held to have
been committed, an external standard is reached, and the analysis
which has been made of murder applies here.

There is another class of cases in which intent plays an
important part, for quite different reasons from those which have
been offered to account for the law of malicious mischief. The
most obvious examples of this class are criminal attempts.
Attempt and intent, of course, are two distinct things. Intent to
commit a crime is not itself criminal. There is no law against a
man's intending to commit a murder the day after tomorrow. The
law only deals with conduct. An attempt is an overt act. It
differs from the attempted crime in this, that the act has failed
to bring about the result which would have given it the character
of the principal crime. If an attempt to murder results in death
within a year and a day, it is murder. If an attempt to steal
results in carrying off the owner's goods, it is larceny.

If an act is done of which the natural and probable [66] effect
under the circumstances is the accomplishment of a substantive
crime, the criminal law, while it may properly enough moderate
the severity of punishment if the act has not that effect in the
particular case, can hardly abstain altogether from punishing it,