Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/245

Rh worst of fiends. Long as the sun shone, their love basked beautiful beneath it, and wore smiles of eternal constancy; but when the storm arose, then Hatred, which had been overlooked by Consciousness, arose also, and the place of Love knew it no more. Justice worked well so long as every one got what he himself wanted. But no sooner were the desires of any man thwarted, than Injustice, which Consciousness had laid no restraint upon, stretched out her hand and snatched the gratification of them; while Justice (to employ Lord Bacon's metaphor) went back into the wilderness, and put forth nothing but the blood-red blossoms of Revenge. Generosity and Charity, so long as they were uncrossed and put to no real sacrifice, played their parts to perfection; but so soon as any unpleasant occasion for their exercise arose, then the selfish passions, of which Consciousness had taken no note, broke loose, and Chanty and Generosity were swept away by an avalanche of demons.

Such has invariably been the fate of all those Epicurean attempts to bring forward and cultivate Good as a natural growth of the human heart, instead of first of all endeavouring to realise it as the mere extirpation of evil; and hence we see the necessity of adopting the latter method of procedure. Every attempt to establish or lay hold of good by leaving evil out of our account, by avoiding it, by remaining unconscious of it, by not bringing it home to ourselves,