It's an
axiom, I think, that to heighten a nation's wisdom you
must lower its franchise.
I often have my doubts, Bertie, if there is such a
thing as the existence of evil? If we could honestly
convince ourselves that there was not, it would help us
so much in formulating a rational religion. But don't
let us strain truth even for such an object as that. I
must confess that there are some forms of vice, cruelty
for example, for which it is hard to find any
explanation, save indeed that it is a degenerate survival
of that war-like ferocity which may once have been of
service in helping to protect the community. No; let me
be frank, and say that I can't make cruelty fit into my
scheme. But when you find that other evils, which seem
at first sight black enough, really tend in the long run
to the good of mankind, it may be hoped that those which
continue to puzzle us may at last be found to serve the
same end in some fashion which is now inexplicable.
It seems to me that the study of life by the
physician vindicates the moral principles of right and
wrong. But when you look closely it is a question
whether that which is a wrong to the present community
may not prove to have been a right to the interests of
posterity. That sounds a little foggy; but I will make
my meaning more clear when I say that I think right
and wrong are both tools which are being wielded by those
great hands which are shaping the destinies of the
universe, that both are making for improvement; but that
the action of the one is immediate, and that of the other
more slow, but none the less certain.
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