daughter. Why should
"Carnage" be,--especially as God has put it in our heads to get rid of
it?

I am aware of what may be said on these occasions, to "puzzle the will;"
and I concede of course, that mankind may entertain false views of their
power to change anything for the better. I concede, that all change may
be only in appearance, and not make any real difference in the general
amount of good and evil; that evil, to a certain invariable amount, may
be necessary to the amount of good (the overbalance of which, with a
most hearty and loving sincerity, I ever acknowledge); and finally, that
all which the wisest of men could utter on any such subject, might
possibly be nothing but a jargon,--the witless and puny voice of what
we take to be a mighty orb, but which, after all, is only a particle in
the starry dust of the universe.

On the other hand, all this may be something very different from what we
take it to be, setting aside even the opinions which consider mind as
everything, and time and space themselves as only modifications of it,
or breathing-room in which it exists, weaving the thoughts which it
calls life, death, and materiality.

But be his metaphysical opinions what they may, who but some fantastic
individual, or ultra-contemplative scholar, ever thinks of subjecting to
them his practical notions of bettering his condition! And how soon is
it likely that men will leave off endeavouring to secure themselves
against the uneasier chances of vicissitude, even if Providence ordains
them to do so for no other end than the preservation of vicissitude
itself, and not in order to help them out of the husks and thorns of
action into the flowers of it, and into the air of heaven? Certain it
is, at all events, that the human being is incited to increase his
amount of good: and that when he is endeavouring to do so, he is at
least not fulfilling the worst part of his necessity. Nobody tells us,
when we attempt to put out a fire and to save the lives of our
neighbours, that Conflagration is God's daughter, or Murder God's
daughter. On the contrary, these are things which Christendom is taught
to think ill off, and to wish to put down; and therefore we should put
down war, which is murder and conflagration by millions.

To those who tell us that nations would grow cowardly and effeminate
without war, we answer, "Try a reasonable condition of peace first, and
then prove it. Try a state of things which mankind have ne