Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/67

 purify a river, would filter it by bucketsful, if he could dam off the polluting drain higher up? The two reforms, to which I have reduced this vast problem, are simply a universal change to perfection of nature and human nature: of which I think that we as men should enterprise the latter first. The radical reform of human nature consists merely in this, that every human being shall put off the seven cardinal with all the minor sins, follies and defects, and shall at once in lieu thereof put on the seven cardinal with all the minor virtues, wisdoms and graces; or, in other words, that each shall annihilate in self the imperfect human nature, and create in self a perfect divine nature. When every human being has performed this easy double operation (of which the second part follows as naturally on the first as a step of the right foot one of the left), I am inclined to believe that the great work of the extinction of evil and misery, and the establishment of universal good and felicity, will be more than half accomplished. The radical reform of nature consists merely in this, that the universe shall be made altogether and exactly such as the perfect men shall require. With this second reform, I am further inclined to believe that the pilgrimage of man from hell on earth to heaven on earth will be completed; that evil and misery, both as suffering and vice, will be extinct beyond resurrection; that everybody will be good and happy everywhere evermore.

Some people, who have not bestowed upon this problem such long and painful thought as the writer, may at first sight deem that the radical universal reform of human nature, though of the utmost simplicity (being, indeed, but as putting off one suit of clothes and putting on another), will not be very easy to effect. But a little candid thought will prove to them that it must certainly be much less difficult than any of the merely partial and superficial reforms which