পাতা:প্রবন্ধ পুস্তক-বঙ্কিমচন্দ্র চট্টোপাধ্যায়.djvu/৮৭

৭৮ হিন্দুৰ্ম্মের নৈসর্গিক মূল। আচরণের পক্ষ সমর্থন করিতে আপনাদিগকে যোগ্য বিবেচনা করিয়াছেন, তাহাদিগের মধ্যে যাহারা মতবৈপরীত্যশূন্য, on the road..........In sober truth, nearly all things for which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to onc another are nature's every day performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognished by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives; and in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monster whom we read of ever purposoly inflicted on their living fellow creatures. If by an arbitrary reservation we refuse to account any thing murder but what abridges a certain term supposed to bo allotted to human life. nature dose also this to all but a small precentage of lives, and dose it in all the modes, violent or insidiousin which the worst human beings take the lives of one another. Nature impales men, breaks theus as if on the wheel, casts them te be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death. crushes them with stones like the first Christian Martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes, them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of ner exhalations and has hun. dreds of other hideous deaths such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian neversurpassed. All this Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and noblest indifferently with the meanest and worst; upon those who are engaged in the highest and worthiest enterprises, and often as the direct consquence of the noblest acts, and it might almost be imagined as a punishment for them. She mows down those on whose existence hangs the wek being of a whole people, perhaps of the pros cts of the human race for generations to come, with as little compunction as those whose death is a relief to themselves and to those under their noxious influence. Such are natnre's dealings with life. Even when she does not intend to kill, she inflicts the same tortures in apparent wantonuess. In the clumsy provision which she has made for that per