In A.D. 590 Pope Gregory I issued a list of sins against which Christians should especially guard themselves. It was not the first such list. Proverbs, for example, names seven sins that God detests. But "the seven deadly sins" codified for the medieval church-and for our own-the nature of sinful thought, which will surely eventuate in sinful acts. There are no laws against the seven deadly sins themselves; the best our legal system can do is try to restrain the behavior that works out of these crimes of the heart. Greed itself is not illegal, for example, but the frauds, thefts and robberies...