the race. I picture them as two great invisible hands hovering over the
garden of life and plucking up the weeds. Looked at in one's own day,
one can only see that they produce degradation and misery. But at the
end of a third generation from then, what has happened? The line of the
drunkard and of the debauchee, physically as well as morally weakened,
is either extinct or on the way towards it. Struma, tubercle, nervous
disease, have all lent a hand towards the pruning off of that rotten
branch, and the average of the race is thereby improved. I believe from
the little that I have seen of life, that it is a law which acts with
startling swiftness, that a majority of drunkards never perpetuate
their species at all, and that when the curse is hereditary, the second
generation generally sees the end of it.

Don't misunderstand me, and quote me as saying that it is a good thing
for a nation that it should have many drunkards. Nothing of the kind.
What I say is, that if a nation has many morally weak people, then it
is good that there should be a means for checking those weaker strains.
Nature has her devices, and drink is among them. When there are no more
drunkards and reprobates, it means that the race is so advanced that it
no longer needs such rough treatment. Then the all-wise Engineer will
speed us along in some other fashion.

I've been thinking a good deal lately about this question of the uses of
evil, and of how powerful a tool it is in the hands of the Creator. Last
night the whole thing crystallised out quite suddenly into a small set
of verses. Please jump them if they bore you.

WITH EITHER HAND.

1.

God's own best will bide the test,
And God's own worst will fall;
But, best or worst or last or first,
He ordereth it all.

2.

For ALL is good, if understood,
(Ah, could we understand!)
And right and ill are tools of skill
Held in His either hand.

3.

The harlot and the anchorite,
The martyr and the rake,
Deftly He fashions each aright,
Its vital part to take.

4.

Wisdom He makes to guide the sap
Where the high blossoms be;
And Lust to kill the weake