Part 28

CCCXXI

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.

CCCXXII

The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.

CCCXXIII

Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigour and capacity.

CCCXXIV

We have heard a great deal lately about the physical disabilities of women. Some of these alleged impediments, no doubt, are really inherent in their organization, but nine-tenths of them are artificial--the products of their modes of life. I believe that nothing would tend so effectually to get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness, and that "over stimulation of the emotions" which, in plainer-spoken days, used to be called wantonness, than a fair share of healthy work, directed towards a definite object, combined with an equally fair share of healthy play, during the years of adolescence; and those who are best acquainted with the acquirements of an average medical practitioner will find it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily intelligent and well-educated young woman.

CCCXXV

The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a seance.

CCCXXVI

I ask myself--suppose you knew that by inflicting prolonged pain on 100 rabbits you could discover a way to the extirpation of leprosy, or consumption, or locomotor ataxy, or of suicidal melancholia among human beings, dare you refuse to inflict that pain? Now I am quite unable to say that I dare. That sort of daring would seem to me to be extreme moral cowardice, to involve gross inconsistency.

For the advantage and protection of society, we all agree to inflict pain upon man--pain of the most prolonged and acute character--in our prisons, and on our battlefields. If England were invaded, we should have no hesitation about inflicting the maximum of suffering upon our invaders for no other object than our own good.

But if the good of society and of a nation is a sufficient plea for inflicting pain on men, I think it may suffice us for experimenting on rabbits or dogs.

At the same time, I think that a heavy moral responsibility rests on those who perform experiments of the second kind.

The wanton infliction of pain on man or beast is a crime; pity is that so many of those who (as I think rightly) hold this view, seem to forget that the criminality lies in the wantonness and not in the act of inflicting pain per se.

CCCXXVII

The one condition of success, your sole safeguard, is the moral worth and intellectual clearness of the individual citizen. Education cannot give these, but it can cherish them and bring them to the front in whatever station of society they are to be found, and the universities ought to be and may be, the fortresses of the higher life of the nation.

CCCXXVIII

As a matter of fact, men sin, and the consequences of their sins affect endless generations of their progeny. Men are tempted, men are punished for the sins of others without merit or demerit of their own; and they are tormented for their evil deeds as long as their consciousness lasts.

CCCXXIX

I find that as a matter of experience, erroneous beliefs are punished, and right beliefs are rewarded--though very often the erroneous belief is based upon a more conscientious study of the facts than the right belief.

CCCXXX

If we are to assume that anybody has designedly set this wonderful universe going, it is perfectly clear to me that he is no more entirely benevolent and just in any intelligible sense of the words, than that he is malevolent and unjust. Infinite benevolence need not have invented pain and sorrow at all--infinite malevolence would very easily have deprived us of the large measure of content and happiness that falls to our lot. After all, Butler's "Analogy" is unassailable, and there is nothing in theological dogmas more contradictory to our moral sense, than is to be found in the facts of nature. From which, however, the Bishop's conclusion that the dogmas are true doesn't follow.

CCCXXXI

It appears to me that if every person who is engaged in an industry had access to instruction in the scientific principles on which that industry is based; in the mode of applying these principles to practice; in the actual use of the means and appliances employed; in the language of the people who know as much about the matter as we do ourselves; and lastly, in the art of keeping accounts, Technical Education would have done all that can be required of it.

CCCXXXII

Though under-instruction is a bad thing, it is not impossible that over-instruction may be worse.