s of the country mercilessly afflict the
sect to which themselves belong. They arrest its leading members on false
charges, throw them into loathsome and unwholesome dungeons, subject them
to the crudest tortures and sometimes put them to death. The provinces in
which the state religion is especially strong are occasionally raided and
pillaged by government soldiery, recruited for the purpose by conscription
among the dissenting sects, and are sometimes actually devastated with
fire and sword. The result is not altogether confirmatory of the popular
belief and does not fulfil the pious hope of the governing powers who are
cruel to be kind. The vitalizing efficacy of persecution is not to be
doubted, but the persecuted of too feeble faith frequently thwart its
beneficent intent and happy operation by apostasy.

Having in mind the horrible torments which a Golampian general had
inflicted upon the population of a certain town I once ventured to protest
to him that so dreadful a sum of suffering, seeing that it did not
accomplish its purpose, was needless and unwise.

"Needless and unwise it may be," said he, "and I am disposed to admit that
the result which I expected from it has not followed; but why do you speak
of the _sum_ of suffering? I tortured those people in but a single, simple
way--by skinning their legs."

"Ah, that is very true," said I, "but you skinned the legs of one
thousand."

"And what of that?" he asked. "Can one thousand, or ten thousand, or any
number of persons suffer more agony than one? A man may have his leg
broken, then his nails pulled out, then be seared with a hot iron. Here is
suffering added to suffering, and the effect is really cumulative. In the
true mathematical sense it is a _sum_ of suffering. A single person can
experience it. But consider, my dear sir. How can you add one man's agony
to another's? They are not addable quantities. Each is an individual pain,
unaffected by the other. The limit of anguish which ingenuity can inflict
is that utmost pang which one man has the vitality to endure."

I was convinced but not silenced.

The Golampians all believe, singularly enough, that truth possesses some
inherent vitality and power that give it an assured prevalence over
falsehood; that a good name cannot be permanently defiled and irreparably
ruined by detraction, but, like a star, shines all the brighter for the
shadow through which it is seen; that justice cannot be stayed by
inju