Ivan of Russia, the ferocious
ruler, who had men torn to pieces before his eyes, the being who had
forty thousand men, women, and children massacred in cold blood,
regarded himself as the deputy of the Supreme Being. The mad Capet,
who fired the signal which started tho massacre of St. Bartholomew,
believed that he was fulfilling the demands of goodness and orthodoxy.
The deadly inquisitors who roasted unhappy fellow mortals wholesale
believed--or pretended to believe--that they were putting their
victims through a benign ordeal. The heretic was a naughty child;
roast him, and his sin was purged; while the frosty-blooded old men
who murdered him looked to heaven and returned thanks for their own
special allowance of virtue. Conqueror and inquisitor, burglar and
murderer, forger and wife-beater, brutal sea-captain and prowling
thief--all the scoundrels go about their business with a full faith in
their own blamelessness. I do not like to class them as automata,
though the wise and genial Mr. Huxley would undoubtedly do so. What
shall we do with them? Is it fair that a wearied world and a toil-worn
society should maintain them? My own idea is that sentiment, softness,
regrets for severity should be banished, and we should say to the
scoundrel, "Attend, rascal! You say that you are wronged, and that you
are driven to harm your fellow-creatures by the force of external
circumstances; that may be so, but we have nothing to do with the
matter.
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