"Your advice on the subject would have been of inestimable value to me," 
Judge Fang said, "as this aspect of the case was particularly troublesome for 
a Confucian judge. If the item of stolen property had been anything other than 
a book, it would have been confiscated. But a book is different—it is 
not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and 
thence to a well-ordered society, as the Master stated many times."