This page needs to be proofread.
56
RELIGION

is dead spiritual loss and ought not to be. You may rightly try to hinder what you think hardship or defect. But it is far beyond the facts to say: This or that privation or deprivation is abnormal, an injustice, a necessary spiritual loss. The man, say, is blind. Is he so far less than a man should be? Would Mr. Fawcett have been less or more if he had had his sight? Who can tell? And Mr. Kavanagh, if he had had his limbs? One has a bad wife, a bad son. How can we say what he will make of the burden? We are not entitled to judge that the unique being and equipment which the universe lays upon each individual is such as to impair and defeat the possibilities of good. We must not assume that things would be better if we could make him and his conditions over to suit our smoothed conception of what a man and his life should be.