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Page 33
"But don't you fancy the avenger, in the case you supposed, would retain
some bitterness towards his enemy, even though he had forgotten the
offence?"
"I fancy he would always feel a certain cold dislike and aversion for
him," replied the doctor--"an aversion such as one has for an object
or an animal associated with some painful experience; but any active
animosity would be a moral impossibility, if he were quite certain that
there was absolutely no guilty consciousness on the other's part.
"But scarcely any application of the process gives me so much pleasure to
dream about as its use to make forgiving possible, full, free, perfect,
joyous forgiving, in cases where otherwise, however good our intentions,
it is impossible, simply because we cannot forget. Because they cannot
forget, friends must part from friends who have wronged them, even though
they do from their hearts wish them well. But they must leave them, for
they cannot bear to look in their eyes and be reminded every time of
some bitter thing. To all such what good tidings will it be to learn of
my process!
"Why, when the world gets to understand about it I expect that two men or
two women, or a man and a woman, will come in here, and say to me, 'We
have quarrelled and outraged each other, we have injured our friend, our
wife, our husband; we regret, we would forgive, but we cannot, because we
remember. Put between us the atonement of forgetfulness, that we may love
each other as of old,' and so joyous will be the tidings of forgiveness
made easy and perfect, that none will be willing to waste even an hour in
enmity. Raging foes in the heat of their first wrath will bethink
themselves ere they smite, and come to me for a more perfect satisfaction
of their feud than any vengeance could promise."
Henry suddenly stopped in his restless pacing, stepped on tiptoe to the
slightly opened door of the retiring room, and peered anxiously in. He
thought he heard a slight stir. But no; she was still sleeping deeply,
her position quite unchanged. He drew noiselessly back, and again almost
closed the door.
"I suppose," resumed the doctor, after a pause, "that I must prepare
myself as soon as the process gets well enough known to attract attention
to be roundly abused by the theologians and moralists. I mean, of course,
the thicker-headed ones. They'll say I've got a machine for destroying
conscience, and am sapping the foundations of society. I believe that is
the phrase. The same class of people will maintain that it's wrong to
cure the moral pain which results from a bad act who used to think it
wrong to cure the physical diseases induced by vicious indulgence. But
the outcry won't last long, for nobody will be long in seeing that the
morality of the two kinds of cures is precisely the same, If one is
wrong, the other is. If there is something holy and God-ordained in the
painful consequences of sin, it is as wrong to meddle with those
consequences when they are physical as when they are mental. The alleged
reformatory effect of such suffering is as great in one case as the
other. But, bless you, nobody nowadays holds that a doctor ought to
refuse to set a leg which its owner broke when drunk or fighting, so that
the man may limp through life as a warning to himself and others.
"I know some foggy-minded people hold in a vague way that the working of
moral retribution is somehow more intelligent, just, and equitable than
the working of physical retribution. They have a nebulous notion that the
law of moral retribution is in some peculiar way God's law, while the law
of physical retribution is the law of what they call nature, somehow not
quite so much God's law as the other is. Such an absurdity only requires
to be stated to be exposed. The law of moral retribution is precisely as
blind, deaf, and meaningless, and entitled to be respected just as
little, as the law of physical retribution. Why, sir, of the two, the
much-abused law of physical retribution is decidedly more moral, in the
sense of obvious fairness, than the so-called law of moral retribution
itself. For, while the hardened offender virtually escapes all pangs of
conscience, he can't escape the diseases and accidents which attend vice
and violence. The whole working of moral retribution, on the contrary, is
to torture the sensitive-souled, who would never do much harm any way,
while the really hard cases of society, by their very hardness, avoid all
suffering. And then, again, see how merciful and reformatory is the
working of physical retribution compared with the pitilessness of the
moral retribution of memory. A man gets over his accident or disease and
is healthy again, having learned his lesson with the renewed health that
alone makes it of any value to have had that lesson. But shame and sorrow
for sin and disgrace go on for ever increasing in intensity, in
proportion as they purify the soul. Their worm dieth not, and their fire
is not quenched. The deeper the repentance, the more intense the longing
and love for better things, the more poignant the pang of regret and the
sense of irreparable loss. There is no sense, no end, no use, in this law
which increases the severity of the punishment as the victim grows in
innocency.
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