Especially he delighted in discovering, or flattering himself he had discovered, the hollow full of dead men's bones under the flowery lawn of seeming goodness.

Nor as yet had he, so far as he knew, or at least was prepared to allow, ever failed.

And this he called the study of human nature, and quoted Pope.

Truly, next to God, the proper study of mankind is man; but how shall a man that knows only the evil in himself, nor sees it hateful, read the thousandfold-compounded heart of his neighbor?
To rake over the contents of an ash-pit, is not to study geology.

There were motives in Redmain's own being, which he was not merely incapable of understanding, but incapable of seeing, incapable of suspecting.
The game had for him all the pleasure of keenest speculation; nor that alone, for, in the supposed discovery of the evil of another, he felt himself vaguely righteous.
One more point in his character I may not in fairness omit: he had naturally a strong sense of justice; and, if he exercised it but little in some of the relations of his life, he was none the less keenly alive to his own claims on its score; for chiefly he cried out for fair play on behalf of those who were wicked in similar fashion to himself.