O que vocês acham desse trecho? (retirado de
The man versus The State, Herbert Spencer. (livro completo online
aqui).
On hailing a cab in a London street, it is surprising how
frequently the door is officiously opened by one who expects to
get something for his trouble. The surprise lessens after
counting the many loungers about tavern-doors, or after observing
the quickness with which a street-performance, or procession,
draws from neighbouring slums and stable-yards a group of idlers.
Seeing how numerous they are in every small area, it becomes
manifest that tens of thousands of such swarm through London.
"They have no work," you say. Say rather that they either refuse
work or quickly turn themselves out of it. They are simply
good-for-nothings, who in one way or other live on the
good-for-somethings -- vagrants and sots, criminals and those on
the way to crime, youths who are burdens on hard-worked parents,
men who appropriate the wages of their wives, fellows who share
the gains of prostitutes; and then, less visible and less
numerous, there is a corresponding class of women.
Is it natural that happiness should be the lot of such? or is
it natural that they should bring unhappiness on themselves and
those connected with them? Is it not manifest that there must
exist in our midst an immense amount of misery which is a normal
result of misconduct, and ought not to be dissociated from it?
There is a notion, always more or less prevalent and just now
vociferously expressed, that all social suffering is removable,
and that it is the duty of somebody or other to remove it. Both
these beliefs are false. To separate pain from ill-doing is to
fight against the constitution of things, and will be followed by
far more pain. Saving men from the natural penalties of dissolute
living, eventually necessitates the infliction of artificial
penalties in solitary cells, on tread-wheels, and by the lash. I
suppose a dictum, on which the current creed and the creed of
science are at one, may be considered to have as high an
authority as can be found. Well, the command "if any would not
work neither should he eat," is simply a Christian enunciation of
that universal law of Nature under which life has reached its
present height -- the law that a creature not energetic enough to
maintain itself must die: the sole difference being that the law
which in the one case is to be artificially enforced, is, in the
other case, a natural necessity. And yet this particular tenet of
their religion which science so manifestly justifies, is the one
which Christians seem least inclined to accept. The current
assumption is that there should be no suffering, and that society
is to blame for that which exists.
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