ain for the pleasure of inflicting
it--only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his!
A sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with
liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he
get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine cases out of ten he
prefers the wrong. There shouldn't be any wrong; and without the Moral
Sense there couldn't be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature
that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the
bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession. Are you
feeling better? Let me show you something."

Chapter 6

In a moment we were in a French village. We walked through a great
factory of some sort, where men and women and little children were
toiling in heat and dirt and a fog of dust; and they were clothed in
rags, and drooped at their work, for they were worn and half starved,
and weak and drowsy. Satan said:

"It is some more Moral Sense. The proprietors are rich, and very holy;
but the wage they pay to these poor brothers and sisters of theirs is
only enough to keep them from dropping dead with hunger. The work-hours
are fourteen per day, winter and summer--from six in the morning till
eight at night--little children and all. And they walk to and from the
pigsties which they inhabit--four miles each way, through mud and slush,
rain, snow, sleet, and storm, daily, year in and year out. They get
four hours of sleep. They kennel together, three families in a room, in
unimaginable filth and stench; and disease comes, and they die off like
flies. Have they committed a crime, these mangy things? No. What have
they done, that they are punished so? Nothing at all, except getting
themselves born into your foolish race. You have seen how they treat a
misdoer there in the jail; now you see how they treat the innocent
and the worthy. Is your race logical? Are these ill-smelling innocents
better off than that heretic? Indeed, no; his punishment is trivial
compared with theirs. They broke him on the wheel and smashed him
to rags and pulp after we left, and he is dead now, and free of your
precious race; but these poor slaves here--why, they have been dying for
years, and some of them will not escape from life for years to come. It
is the Moral Sense which teaches the factory proprietors the difference
between right and wrong--you perceive the result. They think themselves
better than d