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In the ordinary man, injustice rouses a passionate desire for vengeance;
and it has often been said that vengeance is sweet. How many sacrifices
have been made just to enjoy the feeling of vengeance, without any
intention of causing an amount of injury equivalent to what one has
suffered. The bitter death of the centaur Nessus was sweetened by the
certainty that he had used his last moments to work out an extremely
clever vengeance. Walter Scott expresses the same human inclination in
language as true as it is strong: "Vengeance is the sweetest morsel to
the mouth that ever was cooked in hell!" I shall now attempt a
psychological explanation of it.

Suffering which falls to our lot in the course of nature, or by chance,
or fate, does not, _ceteris paribus_, seem so painful as suffering which
is inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another. This is because we
look upon nature and chance as the fundamental masters of the world; we
see that the blow we received from them might just as well have fallen
on another. In the case of suffering which springs from this source, we
bewail the common lot of humanity rather than our own misfortune. But
that it is the arbitrary will of another which inflicts the suffering,
is a peculiarly bitter addition to the pain or injury it causes, viz.,
the consciousness that some one else is superior to us, whether by force
or cunning, while we lie helpless. If amends are possible, amends heal
the injury; but that bitter addition, "and it was you who did that to
me," which is often more painful than the injury itself, is only to be
neutralized by vengeance. By inflicting injury on the one who has
injured us, whether we do it by force or cunning, is to show our
superiority to him, and to annul the proof of his superiority to us.
That gives our hearts the satisfaction towards which it yearns. So where
there is a great deal of pride and vanity, there also will there be a
great desire of vengeance. But as the fulfillment of every wish brings
with it more or less of a sense of disappointment, so it is with
vengeance. The delight we hope to get from it is mostly embittered by
compassion. Vengeance taken will often tear the heart and torment the
conscience: the motive to it is no longer active, and what remains is
the evidence of our malice.

THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

When the Church says that, in the dogmas of religion, reason is totally
incompetent and blind, and its use to be reprehe