Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/635

Rh efficiently than the former. We cry peace when there is no peace. would the world, however, be better if it were otherwise? Is the Nirvana a pleasing prospect? Sleep, though not without its troubles and internal antagonism, is our nearest approach to it, but we should hardly wish to be always asleep.

Shakespeare not only knew something about gravitation, but he also knew something about antagonism. He says, by the mouth of Agamemnon:

 Sith every action that bath gone before Whereof we have record, trial did draw Bias and thwart, not answering the aim, And that unbodied figure of the thought That gav't surmised shape."

In no case is the friction of life shown more than in the performance of "duty," i. e., an act of self-resistance, a word very commonly used: but the realization of it is by no means so frequent. Indeed, faith in its performance so yields to skepticism that it is said that, when a man talks of doing his duty, he is meditating some knavish trick.

The words good and evil are correlative: they are like height and depth, parent and offspring. You can not, as far as I can see, conceive the existence of the one without involving the conception of the other. In their common acceptation they represent the antagonism between what is agreeable or beneficial and what is painful or injurious. An old anecdote will give us the notion of good and evil in a slenderly educated mind. A missionary having considered that he had successfully inculcated good principles in the mind of a previously untutored savage, produced him for exhibition before a select audience, and began his catechism by asking him the nature of good and evil. "Evil," the pupil answered, "is when other man takes my wife." "Right," said the missionary, "now give me an example of good." The answer was, "Good is when me takes other man's wife." The answer was not exactly what was expected, but was not far in disaccord with modern views among ourselves and other so-called civilized races. I don't mean as to running away with other men's wives! But we still view good and evil very much as affecting our own interests. At the commencement of a war each of the opposing parties view victory—i. e., the destruction of their enemies—as good, and being vanquished as evil. Congregations pray for this. Statesmen invoke the god of battles. Those among you who are old enough will call to mind the Crimean War. Each combatant nation gives thanks for the destruction of the enemy, each side possibly believing that they respectively are in the right, but in reality not troubling themselves much about that minor question. We (