ing punishment; this
breaks the hearts of his family--which is a heavy one. They comfortably
jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent wife and family to
starve.

Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an
intuitive perception of good and evil?

O.M. Adam hadn't it.

Y.M. But has man acquired it since?

O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He gets ALL his
ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. I keep repeating this, in
the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to
observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false.

Y.M. Where did you get your own aggravating notions?

O.M. From the OUTSIDE. I did not invent them. They are gathered from a
thousand unknown sources. Mainly UNCONSCIOUSLY gathered.

Y.M. Don't you believe that God could make an inherently honest man?

O.M. Yes, I know He could. I also know that He never did make one.

Y.M. A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that "an honest
man's the noblest work of God."

O.M. He didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity. It is windy,
and sounds well, but it is not true. God makes a man with honest and
dishonest POSSIBILITIES in him and stops there. The man's ASSOCIATIONS
develop the possibilities--the one set or the other. The result is
accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one.

Y.M. And the honest one is not entitled to--

O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? HE is not the architect
of his honesty.

Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training
people to lead virtuous lives. What is gained by it?

O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the
main thing--to HIM. He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a
damage to them--and so THEY get an advantage out of his virtues. That is
the main thing to THEM. It can make this life comparatively comfortable
to the parties concerned; the NEGLECT of this training can make this
life a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned.

Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the man
HIMSELF, for it makes him what he is.

O.M. I said training and ANOTHER thing. Let that other thing pass, for
the moment. What were you going to say?

Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty-two years. Her
service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful. We
are all fond of her; we all recognize that