1888.] 071 Antagonism. 293 



slenderly educated mind. A missionary having considered that he 

 had successfully inculcated good principles in the mind of a previously 

 untutored savage, produced him for exhibition before a select audience, 

 and began his catechism by asking him the nature of good and evil. 

 " Evil," the pupil answered, " is when other man takes my wife." 

 " Eight," said the missionary, " now give me an example of good." 

 The answer was : " Good is when me takes other man's wife." The 

 answer was not exactly what was expected, but was not far in dis- 

 accord with modern views among ourselves and other so-called 

 civilised races. I don't mean as to running away with other men's 

 wives ! But we still view good and evil very much as affecting our 

 own interests. At the commencement of a war each of the opposing 

 parties view victory — i.e. the destruction of their enemies — as good, 

 and being vanquished as evil. Congregations pray for this. States- 

 men invoke the God of battles. Those among you who are old 

 enough will call to mind the Crimean war. Each combatant nation 

 gives thanks for the destruction of the enemy, each side possibly 

 believing that they respectively are in the right, but in reality not 

 troubling themselves much about that minor question. We (uncon- 

 sciously perhaps) "compound for sins we are inclined to, by damning 

 tbose we have no mind to." So in the daily life of what is called 

 peace. The stage-coach proprietor rejoiced when he had driven his 

 rival off the road, railway directors and shareholders now do the same, 

 so do publicans, shopkeepers, and other jivals. We are still permeated 

 by the old notion of good and evil. But " antagonism," as I view it, 

 not only comprehends the relation of good and evil, but, as I have 

 said, produces both, and is as necessary to good as to evil. Without 

 it there woukl be neither good nor evil. 



Judging of the lives of our progenitors from what we see of 

 the present races of men of less cerebral development, we may 

 characterize them as having been more impulsive than ourselves, 

 and as having their joys and sorrows more quickly alternated. 

 After the hunt for food, accompanied by privation and suffering, 

 comes the feast to gorging. Theii* main evil was starvation, their 

 good repletion. Even now the Esquimaux watches a seal-hole in 

 the bitter cold for hours and days, and his compensation is the 

 spearing and eating the seal. The good is resultant upon and in 

 the long run I suppose, equivalent to the evil. These men look 

 not back into the past, and forward into the future as w^e do. We, 

 by extending our thought over a wider area, are led to more con- 

 tinuing sacrifices, and aim at more lasting enjoyment in the result. 

 The child suffers at school in order that his futui*e life may be more 

 prosperous. The man spends the best part of his life in arduous 

 toil, j)hysical or mental, in order that he may not want in his later 

 years, or that his family may reap the benefit of his labour. Fiu'ther- 

 seeing men spend their whole lives on work little remunerative that 

 succeeding generations may be benefited. The prudent man transmits 



