This is the place of
discipline for all base selfishness and vile authority, for all who have
oppressed and victimised mankind."
"But," I said, "here is my difficulty. I understand the case of the
oppressors well enough; but about the oppressed, what is the justice of
that? Is there not a fortuitous element there, an interruption of the
Divine plan? Take the case of the thousands of lives wasted by some
brutal conqueror. Are souls sent into the world for that, to be driven
in gangs, made to fight, let us say, for some abominable cause, and
then recklessly dismissed from life?"
"Ah," said Amroth, "you make too much of the dignity of life! You do not
know how small a thing a single life is, not as regards the life of
mankind, but in the life of one individual. Of course if a man had but
one single life on earth, it would be an intolerable injustice; and that
is the factor which sets all straight, the factor which most of us, in
our time of bodily self-importance, overlook. These oppressors have no
power over other lives except what God allows, and bewildered humanity
concedes. Not only is the great plan whole in the mind of God, but every
single minutest life is considered as well.
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