Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/65

 the old young years, when I could still wonder at things which are human, I now and then wondered how it came to pass that while so many learned and subtle treatises had been written to solve the question of the origin of evil; treatises doubtless of great value if only the question would kindly condescend to be soluble; there had yet been so few essays towards the extinction of the said evil. It seemed to me that the doctors were letting the sick man perish before their eyes, while they discussed at length the remote origin of his maladies, instead of the present condition and the treatment instantly required. And it seemed to me that even those who did concern themselves with the present condition of the patient, the charitable associations and philanthropists generally, acted not as doctors who hoped to cure, but were rather as kind nurses who tried to soothe the sufferer and lessen the pangs of his certain perishing; they moistened his parched lips and wiped his damp brow, smoothed his pillow, tidied up his room, gave him narcotics and anodynes, humoured his sick caprices, spoke cheering words, and smiled vain hopes; but with the horrible, devouring, mortal cancer they did not even try to contend. I have since heard that in recent times, say within the last hundred years, projects for the universal reform and beatification of mankind have begun to abound; but as none of these (to the best of my knowledge) has been thoroughly realised, it follows that even if any of them are theoretically perfect they still remain practically imperfect, and that, therefore, the spacious ground is still to-let for system-building purposes. And I may modestly add that the said projects, in so far as I know anything of them, appear to derive from what I cannot but think a wrong principle; so that in my own poor judgment (which naturally is for me the one best judgment in the world) I am bound to prefer my own proposals, which derive from what I must esteem the true principle.