পাতা:বিবিধ-বঙ্কিমচন্দ্র চট্টোপাধ্যায় (১৯৩৯).pdf/২২২

R) R लिदिक्ष ॐदक-विडौश डांश আচরণের পক্ষ সমর্থন করিতে আপনাদিগকে যোগ্য বিবেচনা করিয়াছেন, তাহাদিগের মধ্যে যাহারা মতবৈপরীত্যশূন্য, তাহারা এই সিদ্ধান্ত হইতে নিস্তার পাইবার জন্য, হৃদয়কে কঠিনভাবাপন্ন করিয়া স্থির করিয়াছেন যে, দুঃখ অশুভ নহে । তাহারা বলেন যে, ঈশ্বরকে দয়াময় বলায় এমত বুঝায় না যে, মানুষ্যের সুখ তাহার অভিপ্ৰেত ; তাহাতে বুঝায় যে, মনুষ্যের ধৰ্ম্মই র্তাহার অভিপ্ৰেত ; সংসার সুখের হউক না হউক, ধৰ্ম্মের সংসার বটে। এইরূপ ধৰ্ম্মনীতির বিরুদ্ধে যে সকল আপত্তি উত্থাপিত হইতে পারে, তাহা পরিত্যাগ d-rr- SSSLL SSSS-- • - -- - ܫ -- -- and whom they crush on the road.......In sober truth, nearly all things for which men arc hangcd or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature's every day performances. Killing the most criminal act recognised 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 nonsters whom we read of ever purposely 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 be allotted to human life, nature does also this to all but a small percentage of lives, and does it in all the modes, violent or insidious, in which the worst human beings take the lives of one another, Nature impales men, breaks then as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by Wild beasts, burns then to death, crushes then with stones like the first Christian Martyr, starves the with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons then by the quick or slow veno) of her exhalations and has hundreds of other hideous deaths, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed. 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 arc engaged in the highest and worthiest enterprise, and often as the direct consequonce of the noblest acts; and it might almost be imagined as a punishinent for then). She mows down those on whose existence hangs the well-being of a whole people, perhaps of the prospects of the human race for generations to colue, with as little colupunction as those whose death is a relief to themselves and to those under their noxious influence. Such are nature's dealings with life. Even when she does not intend to kill, she inflicts the salue tortures in apparent wantonness. In the clumsy provision which she has made for that perpetual renewal of animal life, rendered necessary by the prompt termination she puts to it in every individual instance, no human being ever conies into the World but another huz ran being is literally stretched on the rack for hours or days, not unfrequently issuing in death. Next to taking life (equal to it