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It is very foolish not to love your neighbour as yourself, since his
good is no less good than yours. Convince people of this--and who can
resist such perfect logic?--and _presto_ all property in things has
disappeared, all jealousy in love, and all rivalry in honour. How
happy and secure every one will suddenly be, and how much richer than
in our mean, blind, competitive society! The single word love--and we
have just seen that love is a logical necessity--offers an easy and
final solution to all moral and political problems. Shelley cannot
imagine why this solution is not accepted, and why logic does not
produce love. He can only wonder and grieve that it does not; and
since selfishness and ill-will seem to him quite gratuitous, his ire
is aroused; he thinks them unnatural and monstrous. He could not in
the least understand evil, even when he did it himself; all villainy
seemed to him wanton, all lust frigid, all hatred insane. All was an
abomination alike that was not the lovely spirit of love.
Now this is a very unintelligent view of evil; and if Shelley had had
time to read Spinoza--an author with whom he would have found himself
largely in sympathy--he might have learned that nothing is evil in
itself, and that what is evil in things is not due to any accident in
creation, nor to groundless malice in man.
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