it for their own, in their native forests; and if it must be done, it were
a pity none enjoyed it. Then for the effects upon the beholding crowd, I
am inclined to think they are rather necessary and wholesome than
otherwise. They help to render men insensible to danger, suffering, and
death; and as we are so often called upon to fight each other, and die in
defence of our liberties, or of our tyrants and oppressors, whichever it
may be, it seems to me we are in need of some such initiatory process in
the art of seeing blood shed unmoved, and of some lessons which shall
diminish our love and regard for life. As for the gladiators, they are
wretches who are better dead than alive; and to die in the excitement of a
combat is not worse, perhaps, than to expire through the slow and
lingering assaults of a painful disease. Besides, with us there is never,
as with you, cool and deliberate murder perpetrated on the part of the
assembly. There is here no turning up of the thumb. It is all honorable
fighting, and honorable killing. What, moreover, shall be done to
entertain the people? We must feed them with some such spectacles, or I
verily think they would turn upon each other for amusement, in civil broil
and slaughter.'

'Your Epicurean philosophy teaches you, I am aware,' said I in reply, 'to
draw happiness as you best can from all the various institutions of
Providence and of man--not to contend but to receive, and submit, and be
thankful. It is a philosophy well enough for man's enjoyment of the
passing hour, but it fatally obstructs, it appears to me, the way of
improvement. For my own part, though I am no philosopher, yet I hold to
this, that whatever our reason proves to be wrong or defective, it at the
same time enforces the duty of change and reform--that no palpable evil,
either in life or government, is to be passively submitted to as
incurable. In these spectacles I behold an enormous wrong, a terrific
evil; and though I see not how the wrong is to be redressed, nor the evil