"Oh, I suppose that is true theologically as well as legally."

"Of course; if the law don't want to have a lot of criminals to hunt out
and shut up and punish, it stands to reason that the Source of all law
doesn't. But, for the good of society and the world, these criminals
have to be separated from them, and their bad work stopped. To say that
the law hates them, and takes vengeance on them like a Corsican, is
utterly to misunderstand the nature of law. Yet, that is what
nine-tenths of the parsons teach."

"That is very unfortunate."

"Unfortunate? it's diabolical. If I were to go into a good man's house,
and present his children with a hideous caricature of their father, so
as to terrify some and drive others clean away from him, wouldn't I
deserve to be kicked out? I should think so! Now, I say every good thing
in man must be found a million times better in man's Maker. If the
foundation principle of human law is benevolence to society, the
foundation principle of divine law must be something higher and better,
not revenge. But you know these things better than I do."

"Not at all; I could not express myself better. What you have found out
is stated by Dr. Whewell, the famous Master of Trinity, in the Platonic
form, that every good thing in man and in the world has its archetype in
the Divine Mind. Every bad thing, such as revenge and anger, has no such
archetype, but is a falling away, a deflection, from the good."

"How do you explain the imputation of bad things to God, such as hate,
revenge, terrorism, disease, death, beasts of prey, and all the rest?"

"In two ways; first, as a heathen survival in Christianity, borrowed
partly from pagan national religions, partly from the misunderstood
phraseology of the Old Testament; and, second, as the necessary result
of a well-meant attempt to escape from Persian and Manichaean dualism."

"But there is a dualism in law, in morals, in nature, and in human
nature, everywhere in this world; there's no getting over it."

"Of course there is, but the difference between the dualism of fact and
that of the Persian system is, that the evil is not equal, but inferior
and subordinate, to the good."

"It gets the upper hand pretty often, as far as this world is
concerned."

"And why? Just for the same reason that bad governments and corrupt
parties often get the upper hand, namely, by the vote of the majority,
through which the minority has to suffer. Talk about vicario