But let me hope that you will become more
liberal. The death of a hundred thousand men is at first sight very
shocking; but what in reality are a hundred thousand such men, more than
a hundred thousand sheep? It is mind, Williams, the generation of
knowledge and virtue, that we ought to love. This was the project of
Alexander; he set out in a great undertaking to civilise mankind; he
delivered the vast continent of Asia from the stupidity and degradation
of the Persian monarchy: and, though he was cut off in the midst of his
career, we may easily perceive the vast effects of his project. Grecian
literature and cultivation, the Seleucidae, the Antiochuses, and the
Ptolemies followed, in nations which before had been sunk to the
condition of brutes. Alexander was the builder, as notoriously as the
destroyer, of cities."
"And yet, sir, I am afraid that the pike and the battle-axe are not the
right instruments for making men wise. Suppose it were admitted that
the lives of men were to be sacrificed without remorse if a paramount
good were to result, it seems to me as if murder and massacre were but a
very left-handed way of producing civilisation and love.
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