ability to remove it there is a world of difference, and although we
may be unable to remedy the defect the defect remains.

But, indeed, human nature does try to produce a world in which such
happenings as those depicted shall either not occur or their
consequences shall be reduced to a minimum. We do not hang a son for
his parents' crime, nor do humane people blame children for the
shortcomings of their parents. To some extent we try to correct the
consequences that follow, and even though the endeavour be futile, that
is in itself an indictment of the existing order. Man does at least try
to correct the injustices his God is said to have created.

It is overlooked also that the evils which follow from wrong actions are
not confined to those immediately connected, and who may conceivably
have their resentment to some extent dulled, if not lessened, by that
fact. People in no way connected, and who can have no perception of the
cause of their suffering, who are unconscious of everything, save the
one fact that they are suffering, feel its consequences. When a great
war spreads devastation all over the world, can it be said that any
useful purpose is served by the sufferings of millions who are not in
the slightest degree aware of the cause of their agony? When a shady
financial operation brings an innocent man to ruin, and effects all the
consequences which Canon Green imagines resulting from the defaulting
parent, how can it be said that the catastrophe admits of ethical
justification? In many cases the thought of the injury experienced acts
itself as a fresh cause of degradation. It creates a rankling and a
bitterness which depresses and inhibits the power to struggle, unless it
be the desire to struggle for revenge against a condition of things of
which the evil results are only too apparent. People are not merely
punished for the evil they do; they are punished for the evil that
others do, and the punishment, so far as we can see, bears no observable
relation to the wrong done. There is no _ethical_ relation between
actions and consequences. Not alone is the incidence of an action
dependent upon personal qualities--some will suffer more from having
accidentally told an untruth than others will suffer from having
committed gross and deliberate fraud--but nature is absolutely careless
of whether what I do is motived by good or bad intentions. If I get a
wetting through going out to help some one in distress, the con