If now the modern world
Were taken to reward the good,
It would not suffice
Nor would it be possible with it
To punish the evil so long.
This world, great as it is,
Not sufficing for rewards,
As well as for punishments;
From the time of old
There has been nothing else
But bustle and excitement,
And that's the whole issue.
Always occupied with rewards
And punishments, what leisure
Have men had to rest
In the instincts of the nature
With which they are endowed in full?
But when men begin to honour both
And long for them with partiality,
How great is the deception
Practised on the worldly conditions
By dividing them into the ends of Extreme!
And not only when a performance
Of them is once and suddenly over,
Do they not have done with them,
But they prepare themselves
As with fasting to describe them,
They seem to kneel reverently
When men bring them forward
And they go through them
With excitement of a musical show. . .
And then what can be done to remedy
The evil within the human behaviour?
Ron