"...The poor souls whom the Will of God caused to be made - have they not a right to resent their birth, if they are born to pain only and hopeless struggling? And if for a while they forget the evil plight into which they by no fault of theirs have been born, by tasting pleasures which a code - to them merely arbitrary - has labelled sinful, by what justice shall they be punished? Human justice at least would be less merciless. Is it just to make a frail thing like a man, place him in the midst of temptation, and then punish him because he falls? Supposing I buy a doll at a toy shop, and place it insecurely on the edge of a table and it falls off, is it just that I should then whip it?..."
from October, a piece in The Book of Months by EF Benson
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